The Latest From the Apollo Alliance on Clean Energy

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The Latest From the Apollo Alliance on Clean Energy
Though it wasn't money from the just-passed stimulus bill, the Obama administration this week made its first big investment in renewable energy and good green-collar jobs. The Department of Energy, under a $40 billion clean energy loan guarantee program that the prior administration never used, awarded a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc., Solyndra is a four-year-old California-based maker of cylindrical solar photovoltaic generating systems that has a state of the art manufacturing plant in Fremont, California.
This is why federal support is so crucial to the clean energy sector and green-collar job generation, particularly now. The guaranteed loan, the company said in a statement, will help finance a $725 million plant, capable of manufacturing 500 megawatts of photovoltaic generating equipment per year, that Solyndra is building in California. Solyndra executives said that constructing the plant will employ approximately 3,000 people, and operating it will generate 1,000 green-collar production jobs. Moreover, the 500 megawatts of photovoltaic energy it is capable of manufacturing each year is equivalent to the power generated by a mid-sized coal-fired electrical plant.
Scaling Up The Clean Energy Sector
Loan guarantees of this magnitude are just what the Apollo Alliance called for in The New Apollo Program, our national clean energy economic development strategy. It's useful to remember that before the banking industry collapse last summer, and the severe downturn that began in September, clean energy was the fastest growing industrial sector in the United States. A big focused federal investment, Apollo asserted, would generate millions of new jobs in industries that are good for the environment.
, Apollo Board Members Leo Gerard, the president of the United Steelworkers of America, and Michael Peck, founder of MAPA Group and Gamesa's director of media, institutional and labor relations in North America, make the same point. They report that 750,000 Americans already are employed in green-collar jobs. "They make energy-efficient products, produce renewable power and invent cleaner technologies, among other things," Gerard and Peck wrote.
Much more, they said, is possible. "President Barack Obama and Congress can and should create millions more green jobs by passing and signing climate-change legislation that includes a cap-and-invest system to regulate carbon emissions and investments to grow clean energy technologies that will repower, refuel and rebuild our economy."
Sound Policy and Investment Matters
Pennsylvania is an excellent case in point for how good clean energy policy and sound public investment can really work. Governor Ed Rendell and his aides have focused on building a new foundation for the state's economy. Gamesa, the Spanish wind manufacturer, now employs 1,000 well-paid industrial workers in its Pennsylvania plants.
The point is that producing energy from sources other than coal and oil represents an enormous industrial, technological, and jobs opportunity. Americans understand its dimensions and are genuinely enthusiastic. This week in Chicago, for instance, tickets to the second annual Chicagoland Green Collar Jobs Summit, a convening of the city's important clean energy policy makers and practitioners, sold out. Producers of other green-collar job and clean energy industry gatherings around the country report similar excitement.
One of the people who is really helping to make the clean energy future happen is our own Jerome Ringo, (see pix above) the president of the Apollo Alliance, who is on the road 300 days a year to deliver our clean energy, good jobs message. We feature Jerome this week on our home page. Keep pace with events on our Apollo Blog and Digest. And there are new links to information about how the stimulus dollars are being spent and how you can get involved on our Recovery Act Information Center. This week we posted guidance documents from the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency for governments and companies seeking clean energy, good jobs grants and loans. Look for them under "Implementation Resources."

Keith Schneider
Communications Director
Apollo Alliance
keith@apolloalliance.org
Clean Energy is working in PA, when will Governor Ted get on the ball and get Ohio moving in the right direction?

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party

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