Data Points: The New Apollo Program Fact Sheet

The New Apollo Program will generate billions of dollars in savings each year through greater efficiency in buildings, industrial facilities, power plants, and the power grid.  It will generate and invest $500 billion over the next ten years and create more than five million high quality green-collar jobs.

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Data Points: Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency is one of the tools in The New Apollo Program toolbox that will create a clean energy, good jobs economy.  And it’s a big tool, one that offers great opportunity.  By 2035, three-quarters of U.S. buildings will be either new or substantially renovated.  And energy efficiency pays for itself with energy savings and creates high-quality jobs.

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Apollo Weekly Update, 11/21/08: Rescuing Detroit

This week, the Apollo Alliance program staff spent two days in Detroit with our colleagues from Apollo affiliates in 12 states and 5 cities. Our work focused on how to begin scaling up the clean energy, good jobs opportunity that Apollo envisioned in 2004 and that Barack Obama embraced as one of his campaign’s central messages.

It’s hard to imagine a more apt place to convene. Detroit is one of the regional capitals of the national economic emergency. General Motors, the signature industrial institution of the 20th century, is fighting for its life in the 21st. In the very same hours that we were meeting in a UAW conference room, GM’s chief executive, the head of the UAW, and the leaders of the two other American auto companies were in Washington asking a Senate committee for a $25 billion survival loan. Congress responded with a practical request, asking the executives to lay out a business plan for the federal investment.

The Apollo Alliance and its state and metropolitan affiliates support the bridge loan. Our senior staff and board members are working with influential lawmakers, among them Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, to make the case that the American auto industry has vastly improved its vehicle lineup, quality, and energy efficiency. There is too much opportunity in fuel-efficient design and technology to allow American car manufacturers to melt away. And there are too many family-supporting jobs – including nearly half a million in Michigan alone – to allow the companies to fail.

You should know that the Apollo Alliance hasn’t wasted a moment since the election in pursuit of the clean energy, good jobs economy. Ron Ruggiero, our national field director, noted that the clean energy, good jobs message that the Apollo Alliance developed just four years ago has become the new development strategy for the nation. “When’s the party?” he asked.

The answer is that the party happened on November 4, and since then our game speed has increased. Our playbook is The New Apollo Program, a comprehensive investment strategy, which we introduced in October. It calls for scaling up and accelerating clean energy production, improving efficiency and conservation, building new infrastructure like transit and a 21st century electric grid, supporting American manufacturing and next-generation vehicles, and training millions of people to assume the career-building jobs the clean energy economy has started to produce.

Kate Gordon, our co-director and chief program strategist, asserts that the 10-year, $500 billion New Apollo Program is the economic stimulus package that America needs and that Congress has begun to debate. After leaving Detroit on Wednesday, Kate joined Co-Director Cathy Calfo and Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides in Washington to make that point clear to our allies in the labor, environmental, and business communities, and to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

We see a number of legislative opportunities to compel the federal government to make focused investments in clean energy. Bills to rewrite transportation and energy policy will be considered next year. This week President-elect Obama told a group of governors that he’s determined to take action to accelerate production of clean energy and reduce pollutants that cause climate change. We are working with a number of lawmakers on a proposal to retrofit American manufacturing plants to produce the tools and equipment of the clean energy economy while also making the plants cleaner and more energy efficient.

We’re also working with our partners to increase funding for the Green Jobs Act, which passed last year, to increase the number of green-collar training programs and the number of workers who participate.  And we are making the case that any stimulus plan must include significant new funding for clean energy research and development.

In other words, this organization is deploying all the tools and people at our disposal to implement The New Apollo Program.

Our most important ally, of course, is the president-elect. Just as he did from the very start of his campaign in February 2007, in informal town hall settings and in significant nationally noted speeches, President-elect Barack Obama is using the weeks between the election and the inauguration to describe his determination to switch from fossil fuel to clean energy. His goal: to once and for all fix the problem that started the American emergency.

If there’s one truly audacious idea that Obama rode to the presidency, it’s the notion that America can produce a new era of prosperity by changing how it powers itself. The basic details of his New Energy For America plan – a 10-year, $150 billion investment in wind, solar, biofuels, energy efficiency, transit, and conservation to create 5 million jobs – look awfully familiar to us.

Apollo Feedback: Detroit Bailout Raises Support, Ire

Last week we let you know that in partnership with our members the Apollo Alliance supported government intervention to rescue the American auto industry with a $25 billion bridge loan. We reached this conclusion knowing of the industry’s long-time recalcitrance on fuel mileage, climate safeguards, product lines, and the imperious behavior of its chief executives, who in case you don’t know by now, flew to Washington last week on corporate jets and without any clear plan for how they would use the money.
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Apollo Weekly Update, 11/13/08: President-elect and New Principles

On August 4, 2008, Barack Obama formally unveiled a clean energy strategy to wean America from foreign oil and to begin solving climate change. His New Energy For America plan is a ten-year, $150 billion initiative that not coincidentally is the same title of our own 2004 study and entirely consistent with the goals of The New Apollo Program, which we rolled out in six states last month. All three plans call for scaling up the tools and practices of a clean energy economy, and charting a new development strategy for the United States.

Obama owned the clean energy message during the campaign. His victory is a powerful demonstration of the economic transformation most Americans expect and want his administration to lead.

We all know how hard the transition will be. But the new president’s work on clean energy will be helped by two new and powerful market forces that the Obama campaign helped to crystallize.

The first is the influence and relationship of the American economy with fossil fuel. Until very recently, one of the underlying principles of the American economy was that the more fossil fuel we used, the wealthier we became. That is no longer the case, not is it likely to be ever again. The more fossil fuel we use the more impoverished and endangered we are.

The second is a profound change in the relationship between environmental and economic principles. Since the early 1960s environmentalists have helped the nation understand how economic principles affect the environment. Economic development produces wealth. It also produces pollution and toxins and ill-advised construction that threatens species, babies, wild lands, and communities.

The Obama campaign, working on the idea that the Apollo Alliance elevated to national prominence since its founding more than four years ago, turned that nearly 50-year-old frame around. Look at the potential, he essentially argued, when environmental principles are applied to the economy. Energy efficiency, conservation, rapid transit, clean vehicles, biofuels, wind, and solar represent the most important new growth sectors in the nation, capable not only of fixing the economy and healing the environment, but also of producing millions of family-supporting jobs.

“We simply cannot pretend that we can drill our way out of this problem,” he said in August. “We need a much bolder and much bigger set of solutions. We have to make a serious, nationwide commitment to developing new sources of energy and we have to do it right away.”

The question, in the face of soaring budget deficits and financial crisis, is can he deliver? The answer, if you pay attention to our Web site, is that America’s clean energy economy already is unfolding. Twenty-nine states have enacted renewable energy standards to compel development of wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources in the utility industry. Clean energy production and development is a $25 billion-a-year industry, and the fastest growing industrial sector in the country. Clean energy is responsible for an estimated 500,000 new jobs since 2004, according to figures from states, investment analysts, and the wind, solar, geothermal, and other clean energy trade associations.

What’s needed from the federal government, say executives and elected leaders is the same thing that The New Apollo Program advocates and that President-elect Obama says he will act on quickly: A big, focused investment program to scale up the clean energy tools and technology that already exist.

Millions of family-supporting jobs are possible. Leo Gerard, the president of the United Steelworkers of America and an Apollo Alliance board member, is fond of telling audiences that it takes 26 tons of sheet steel and 19,000 parts to make and install a wind turbine generator.

Along with Obama’s victory, another place where America’s clean energy transition has made its presence known is in political campaigns. More than 70 percent of the transit measures on ballots across the country were approved, including the $10 billion bond for a regional high speed rail network in California. My colleague Heidi Pickman is documenting clean energy’s influence in election victories on the Apollo blog. If you know of clean energy electoral successes please email her.

We know you are intensely interested. When we asked last week what President Obama should do first, so many of you responded that we published your dispatches in two Apollo Feedback posts here and here.

The Apollo Alliance is in the thick of the national work to accelerate the clean energy, good jobs economy. We anticipate some big announcements over the next few weeks as the new administration and a new Congress start to put in place the clean energy, good jobs investments and policies that Americans last week overwhelmingly said they support.

Apollo Feedback: What Obama Should Do First, Part Two

We asked what President-elect Obama should do first. Almost 100 of you from the Apollo Nation responded. There are lots of good ideas here in the second part of our Feedback feature highlighting your suggestions for the new president. The first part is here.

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Apollo Weekly Update, 10/31/08: Hope Made Real and Visible

Happy Halloween. Maybe it is a little scary out there. More so than at any time in recent history the United States nervously waits at the junction where grievance and hope meet. On Tuesday, America decides that it wants to head in the direction of hope.  

The Apollo Alliance and the clean energy, good jobs economy we are working so hard to help build represents hope made real and visible. As Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides wrote this week on our blog and in an op-ed we are circulating across the nation: “Clean energy isn’t a mirage. It’s the fastest growing industrial sector in the United States. It is already generating $25 billion a year in sales and revenue, is growing at 30 percent a year.”

He added: “Imagine the growth in jobs, technology, equipment, suppliers, and productivity if the United States actually treated the development of clean energy as a national economic priority. And consider just as seriously the remarkable benefits to America’s security, environment, economic stability, and communities that would be realized by keeping at home the nearly $400 billion that we send each year to foreign nations, many hostile to our interests, to import their oil. It’s time for America to quit bailing and to start building.”

As the Apollo Alliance has noted on its Web site, in our public events, in reports, and in the just completed six-state roll out of The New Apollo Program, there is no time to spare. The old economy is sinking. A new one, gradually emerging, needs to dramatically gain speed and influence.

How certain of we of that point? This certain. On September 4, a Thursday, federal Transportation Secretary Mary Peters called the heads of every state transportation department to alert them to an unusual circumstance in the history of American mobility. The Highway Trust Fund was empty. Two days later, on Saturday, the Fed announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were close to collapse. The very next day, Sunday, the Fed announced a rescue plan for the two largest mortgage banks in the country.

Though Congress bailed out the mortgage banks and soon after passed a bill that partially filled the trust fund, the import of what occurred was not lost on the world’s credit and stock markets. It’s also coming into clearer focus for the country.

What happened was that the federal financial institutions that supported highway construction and suburban home development, arguably the central drivers of America’s prosperity over the last 60 years, were insolvent. America’s drive through economy – reflected in $4 gasoline, falling home values, record rates of foreclosure, a Minnesota bridge collapse – is nearing its economic and fiscal limits. The Highway Trust Fund itself, dependent on gas tax revenues, emptied because Americans responded to what was unfolding around them by spending so much less time behind the wheel.

Yet just as significant as the momentous events of early September in Washington is the question that followed. What’s next for America? And the answer to that is the resounding call for changing how America’s economy literally runs itself, the transition the Apollo Alliance anticipated when it was founded earlier this decade and which is now one of the salient choices in this election – whether America is ready to invest significant public resources in the environmentally and economically useful switch from fossil fuel to clean energy.

As Phil Angelides writes: “Our current economic crisis has reminded us once again that financial engineering and manipulation are not substitutes for long-term investment and job creation. People need jobs and relief from high energy costs. Our dependence on oil is putting the nation’s security at risk. Foreign competitors are moving rapidly to exploit the opportunities offered by clean energy. We can seize the opportunity to become the leader of a new global green economy. We’re Americans. Let’s do it.”

Please sign our Jobs, Baby, Jobs! Petition. And see you next week.

Apollo Feedback: What Comes First For New President? Green-Collar Jobs, Economy, Clean Energy, Says Apollo Nation

When we asked what comes first for President-elect Barack Obama, almost 100 of you responded. The Economy. The War. Green-collar jobs. Sun. Wind. Zero-emission vehicles. Transit. One writer suggested Just For Men, to cover the new president’s sure-to-gray-hair. Take a look. So many of you replied that we divided the responses into two Feedback features. This is part one. Part two is here. Thanks so much.

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Apollo Weekly Update, 11/7/08: New President, Clean Energy Successes

With a measure of restraint and grace that was almost at odds with the burst of joyful tears and global celebration that his election victory prompted, President-elect Barack Obama Tuesday night described one more time his allegiance to a new kind of economy that fixes “a planet in peril,” and addresses the “new energy to harness and new jobs to be created.”

Never before has an American president been elected with such green priorities, and never before has the country been so ready to embrace them.  The result in the presidential election and in a number of state races and ballot initiatives on Tuesday confirm with unmistakable clarity that the country – coast to coast – is prepared to help the new president pursue an economic development strategy based on clean energy, good jobs, and environmental sustainability.

In California, despite a grinding budget deficit and rising unemployment, voters approved a $10 billion bond to begin building a 220-mile-per-hour high-speed rail network linking cities in southern and northern regions with the Central Valley.  Los Angeles voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase to expand the city’s subway.

Missouri voters approved Proposition C that requires the state’s biggest utilities to obtain 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2021, the 29th state to enact a renewable energy standard.

Representative Tom Udall, the son of Stewart Udall, Interior Secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, won a Senate seat in New Mexico. His cousin, Representative Mark Udall, the son of the late Representative and presidential candidate Mo Udall, won a Senate seat in Colorado. Both Udalls, members of what is arguably the greenest political family in the United States, are active supporters of clean energy and will likely be at the very head of the work on Capitol Hill to pass the Obama administration’s clean energy agenda.

In Colorado, voters defeated ballot initiatives that were hostile to organized labor. The right to organize is intact in a state with a huge and growing clean energy job potential.

On the flip side, the League of Conservation Voters reported that seven of the 12 Capitol Hill lawmakers on its “Dirty Dozen” list were defeated.

A number of political observers noted that 65 percent of the new members of the House and all of the new members of the Senate come from states with strong renewable energy requirements.
Two of those new House members hail from Michigan, where the Apollo Alliance program staff is heading the week of November 17 to meet in Detroit with our state and local affiliates. This is Apollo’s second visit in five weeks to Detroit, where we held a town hall event in October with Senator Debbie Stabenow in support of The New Apollo Program.

The state that largely invented the drive through economy of the 20th century – it built the cars, the traffic lights, the first concrete roads, the first mall, the first cul-de-sacs, the first freeways, just to name a few – is picking up the pace to catch up to the clean energy and good jobs economy of the 21st century. Detroit’s new mayor, Ken Cockrel Jr., has expressed interest in designing a clean energy, green-collar development strategy, similar to the one that Apollo helped Newark design this year.

The state passed a renewable energy standard in September and a week before the election Governor Jennifer M. Granholm named Skip Pruss, a well-respected attorney and environmental expert, to head the Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth. The agency’s top priority: Invest in clean energy manufacturing and new green-collar Michigan jobs. The Apollo Alliance is working with DELEG on Michigan’s green-collar jobs initiative.

Despite these advances, we all know how hard this clean energy, good jobs economic transition will be. The new president’s most important job in our view, and in the view of millions of Americans who voted for him, is to accelerate clean energy development and put people to work. Rail transit, as our new article on the Web site reports, is a good place to start.

What do you think? What should President Obama work on first? Write me at keith@apolloalliance.org. We’ll post your responses in our next Feedback feature. For the time being, this week we’ll breathe deep of the well-earned oxygen of hope and congratulate Barack Obama on a stirring victory that changed the world.

Fast Track For National Rail Transit

MINNEAPOLIS - Technically speaking “light rail transit” encompasses an urban rail line capable of carrying 2,000 to 20,000 passengers an hour at speeds reaching 70 miles per hour. “Heavy rail” describes longer, faster commuter and inter-city trains.

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