Energy Strategy Must Focus on Manufacturing

[sfc_oliver]

Perhaps this is the reason the plant where my son works (producing parts for nuclear power plants in France and China) has cut their workforce in half and moved everyone to the midnight shift to save on energy costs.

Yep that sure helps Manufacturing. Hard to keep good help too when you can only work the midnight shift.

I am still unconvinced. It's still nothing but the natural cycle of the earth. There is nothing we can do to stop it or change it. Except spend more money of course.


Again, Politicians need to get their noses out of it.

[irishbobcat]

Energy Strategy Must Focus on Manufacturing
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a new national energy strategy that puts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and sets up a market for regulated industries to buy and sell "allowances" that encourage companies to reduce emissions beneath that limit.
The proposal will soon be taken up by the full House, and the Senate is starting work on its own bill. At issue in both chambers will be not only the cap and trade provision, but also the effect of the bill on the American economy, especially for the clean energy manufacturing sector. Fortunately, the House bill now includes several important domestic clean energy manufacturing provisions that will:
·   Help finance clean energy manufacturing and deployment.
·   Encourage manufacturers to retool or expand their facilities to produce clean energy systems.
·   Help auto manufacturers produce the batteries that will power the electric cars of the future.
Though the House bill will dramatically increase demand for clean energy, it does not provide the comprehensive investments we need to ensure that America's manufacturing sector is geared up to meet that demand. As the bill makes its way through the House and Senate, we will redouble our efforts to strengthen it by encouraging legislators to adopt Apollo's Green Manufacturing Action Plan, a comprehensive strategy to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient. By including such investments in the final energy bill, we can ensure that our manufacturing sector has the capacity to meet new clean energy demand and that newly created jobs stay in America.
Focus on Manufacturing
As structured, the House bill provides utilities and other regulated industries billions of dollars in assistance to invest in energy efficiency, smart grids, and renewable energy to reduce emissions and build major new markets for clean energy systems. By establishing a cap and a price for emissions, industries are free to make investment decisions in low carbon technologies and equipment, most of which can and should be made by Americans in high-quality green-collar jobs. The bill establishes economic incentives for capital investments that speed the country's economic transition to clean energy.
Many of these points were echoed this week in Cleveland at a statewide conference on Labor in the New Energy Economy co-sponsored by the Apollo Alliance, Policy Matters Ohio, Wisconsin Strategy, and the Northshore Federation of Labor. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown one of the keynote speakers, commended Apollo and the other organizations for seeing the energy bill as an opportunity to revive manufacturing, particularly in the Midwest.
"All of you together forced policy makers to pay attention to the importance of manufacturing, to force government to begin to look at issues, to look at what does this mean to preserve the middle class," said Sen. Brown. "To look at what this means to give people with less privilege an opportunity to join the middle class."
Europe as Model
Midwestern industrial states would do well to follow the successful example of several European nations. By next year, Germany will have more people building windmills than building vehicles (and this in a country that is home to Mercedes Benz, Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche!). Our own Seph Petta, a writer and researcher in Apollo's San Francisco office, published a terrific article on Europe's capacity to join public policy and investment to produce new clean energy markets that its domestic manufacturers are supplying.
That lesson is starting to resonate in the United States. Ohio, for example, is building a photovoltaic manufacturing corridor outside Toledo that has generated 6,000 new jobs, according to state figures. Michigan is developing a lithium-ion battery manufacturing and assembly corridor outside Detroit to supply power to American-made, next-generation electric vehicles.
Much more is needed, though. We must take advantage of this historic opportunity to transition to a clean energy society. In the last three months, the United States has committed to invest more than $340 billion in clean energy and green-collar job generation over the next two years. Federal investment is building new demand for clean energy systems and equipment, as will a cap on carbon.
Still, economic gains from the nation's transition to clean energy will only take root if we ensure that the parts and tools of the clean energy economy are made in American factories by green-collar workers earning good wages and benefits.
You can follow these developments on our Web site. Chris Greenspan is doing a terrific job covering the energy bill debate in Washington on our Daily Digest. Our feature articles over the last month have focused on different dimensions of clean energy policy and manufacturing. We are focused on this season of possibility because so much is at stake for the economy, the environment, and for millions of people eager to work in clean energy manufacturing jobs that promise a new era of American prosperity.
Take care and talk to you again next week.
Yours,

Keith Schneider
Communications Director
Apollo Alliance
keith@apolloalliance.org

We need Manufacturing and Green jobs for our poor, working, and middle class to come out of these energy bills!

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning County Green Party
Ohio Green Party

www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/