Apollo Alliance, Clean Energy Updates

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Apollo Alliance, Clean Energy Updates

by
Keith Schneider
Communications Director
Apollo Alliance

Even in this era of costly crisis and even more expensive rescue, $50 billion is still a lot of money. That sum or even more is what aides and Congressional leaders say President-elect Barack Obama will propose this month to build new transit lines, weatherize homes, improve energy efficiency in buildings, manufacture clean next-generation vehicles, and create new green-collar jobs. Happy New Year in this moment of such promise and excitement.
Here at the Apollo Alliance our feet are firmly planted in the reality of what lies before the nation - the coming policy battles, the need to continue making the case for a clean energy, good jobs economy. Yet we also celebrate the fact that we can engage in this conversation with our nation's highest leaders - many of whom are committed to a major economic and environmental transition. For example, nominated Labor Secretary Hilda Solis supports spending $125 million on green-collar job training. In response to a question from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Solis told the panel she would actively support appropriating funds for green-collar training, something that President-elect Barack Obama also supports.
The Apollo Alliance played a huge role in developing the idea of a green-collar training program, shaping the Green Jobs Act, and marshaling our national coalition of labor, environmental, business, and social justice groups to support its passage. We continue to press for ample federal support to carry out the measure's promise for workers seeking to build durable careers in the clean energy sector.
There was strong clean energy, good job activity in the states, too. New York Governor David A. Paterson (see pix right) set a new standard for generating clean energy and green-collar jobs when he called this week for New York to meet 45 percent of its electricity needs through improved energy efficiency and clean renewable energy by 2015. Reaching that goal, one of the most ambitious state clean energy agendas, would generate 50,000 new green-collar jobs, said Paterson. New York's governor is clearly making a bid to put clean energy development at the center of his state's economy, just as governors in more than a dozen other states are doing.
In Ohio, Governor Ted Strickland threw his support behind The New Apollo Program.  Also, John Nichols of The Nation singled out the Ohio Apollo Alliance's co-convener Policy Matters Ohio as the 'Most Progressive State Or Regional Group' of 2008. Ohio Apollo helped the state pass a renewable portfolio standard in 2008.
President-elect Obama is pushing the federal government to catch up. On Thursday, he introduced several details of his American Recovery and Reinvestment stimulus plan. The new administration proposes to double the production of alternative energy in three years, and improve energy efficiency in more than 75 percent of federal buildings. President-elect Obama also wants to improve the energy efficiency of two million homes, up sharply from the 140,000 homes that the federal government weatherizes each year now, which generates 8,000 jobs, according to the Department of Energy. Weatherizing one million homes, according to the Energy Department, generates 78,000 green-collar jobs.
"We will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," said the president-elect. "Jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain."
"We'll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy. That means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation."
More crucial than the scale of the spending on clean energy that President-elect Obama plans in the stimulus package is what the President-elect says it represents to his overall economic development strategy. Clean energy projects are both a component of an estimated $700 billion to $1 trillion two-year stimulus to put 3 million people back to work, and the first wave of public investment to switch how America powers itself.
From our perspective, the president-elect appears to be taking the right steps to build the clean energy, good jobs economy that the Apollo Alliance asserts is possible and necessary. We are particularly enthusiastic about the president-elect's recognition of the potential for significant green-collar job growth. As Apollo has long argued, green-collar jobs - high-quality, career-track jobs doing work that enhances or preserves the environment - generally require more education than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree, and will pay family-supporting wages. That's huge in a nation in which less than 30 percent of adults earn a college degree, according to the U.S. Census.
These jobs are real. For example, an aggressive program to promote domestic manufacturing of renewable energy products alone, according to analysis by the Apollo Alliance, would produce 85,000 permanent green-collar jobs on the factory floor - not to mention hundreds of thousands more indirect jobs in the local economy - and benefit up to 70,000 U.S. firms capable of making the required components, mostly located in the 20 states hardest hit by manufacturing job losses.
We can make a difference here in Ohio!
Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party
www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/