The Sun, the Wind, and the Promise of Ohio’s Clean Energy Development
TOLEDO -This worn Lake Erie city is an unlikely launching point for Ohio’s new clean energy economy. Dark storefronts and empty homes in Toledo, like the missing teeth of a tired grin, scar the shrinking city of 295,000 that once declared itself the auto parts capital of the world. Tall grass grows in the cracked asphalt of empty parking lots by closed factories that once made steel and glass and manufactured parts that kept America behind the wheel.
Marin City’s Green Energy Training Initiative
The Marin City Community Development Corporation (MCCDC) this spring launched the Green Energy Empowerment program, a training initiative designed to help underserved residents find employment in green-collar jobs. The first phase of the project is a comprehensive effort to free 100 target families and dozens of at-risk youth in Marin City from the cycle of poverty though career development, skills training, and job placement in the clean energy field.
Recology Pursues Zero-Waste in Bay Area
San Francisco-based Recology is the national leader in helping American cities draw ever closer to becoming zero-waste communities. With the company’s guidance, San Francisco has achieved a recycling rate of 72 percent, the highest in the nation.
Apollo Alliance Applauds Domestic Clean Energy Manufacturing Investments in American Clean Energy and Security Act
Provisions Will Help Manufacturers Retool for Clean Energy Economy, Keep New Green Jobs in America, and Put Nation on Path to Energy Independence
CONTACT: Sam Haswell: (415) 371-1700 x201
SAN FRANCISCO - Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance, today issued the following statement praising the U.S. House of Representatives for approving critical investments in domestic clean energy manufacturing as part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act:
“The Apollo Alliance commends Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chairmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, and other members of the House for their leadership and determination in passing this seminal legislation. The American Clean Energy And Security Act is a giant leap forward to establish energy security, reduce harmful carbon emissions, and create millions of green jobs that will put our citizens back to work and get our economy back on track.
“In particular, the bill’s inclusion of investments to help U.S. manufacturers retool plants and retrain workers to produce the systems and components of the clean energy economy is a major victory that will keep millions of new, green jobs here at home and help revive America’s long suffering manufacturing sector. We offer special praise to Representatives John Boccieri, Zachary Space, and other members of the Ohio Congressional delegation for their insistence on including these investments in manufacturing jobs in the House energy bill.
“The new energy policy will significantly increase demand for clean energy, and we now have a mechanism for meeting that demand and weaning the nation from its dependence on foreign energy suppliers. In addition to creating and keeping jobs in America, investments in domestic manufacturing will allow manufacturers across the country to tap into clean and efficient energy markets.
“As the Senate resumes work on its version of the energy bill, the Apollo Alliance will continue to press legislators on both sides of the aisle to support investments in our domestic manufacturing sector to meet the demands of the new clean energy economy.”
In April, Apollo Alliance released its Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), which detailed aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient. Last week, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009.” Based on Apollo’s GreenMAP, the IMPACT Act would put America’s ailing manufacturing sector on the road to recovery by facilitating the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.
“This confirms that clean energy legislation is an opportunity for Ohio manufacturing,” said Brown. “I applaud Rep. Boccieri for fighting to include the IMPACT Act in the House bill. By creating a funding source to help Ohio manufacturers retool, we can revive Ohio manufacturing through investments in clean energy. This will go a long way toward making Ohio the Silicon Valley of clean energy manufacturing.”
For more information, visit ApolloAlliance.org.
The Apollo Alliance is a coalition of labor, business, environmental and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs
Apollo Alliance Announces Formation of Missouri Affiliate
Coalition Will Promote Clean Energy, Good Jobs Economy in Missouri
CONTACTS:
National: Sam Haswell: (415) 371-1700 x201
Missouri: Joe Thomas (314) 494-9890
SAN FRANCISCO – The Apollo Alliance today announced the formation of its Missouri affiliate, a broad coalition of labor, environmental, community and business leaders that will promote policies and projects to help revitalize the Missouri economy by creating a new clean energy, good jobs economy.
Since its founding in 2003, Apollo Alliance has worked at the local, state and national levels to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs by promoting investments in energy efficiency, clean power, mass transit, next-generation vehicles, emerging technologies, and clean-energy education and training.
Missouri, which is coping with nearly nine percent unemployment and the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years, stands to benefit from the new jobs that will be created in the clean energy economy. With significant investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency manufacturing – as called for by Apollo Alliance in its Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP) – Missouri could gain thousands of well-paying building-material and energy-efficient appliance manufacturing jobs. Such investments will also lead to jobs in finance, transportation, installation, and other related businesses.
“We are thrilled to welcome our new Missouri affiliate into the Apollo fold,” said Phil Angelides, Chairman of the Apollo Alliance. “We’re on the verge of making an historic leap from a country than runs on fossil fuels to one that runs on clean energy. To fully realize this transition, we’ll need the kind of strong, on-the-ground organizing presence that Missouri Apollo will provide.”
The steering committee of the Missouri Apollo Alliance includes: Emily Andrews, Executive Director of St. Louis Regional Green Building Council; Liz Forrestal, Executive Director of Missouri Votes Conservation; Lara Granich, Executive Director of Missouri Jobs with Justice; Melissa Hope, Sierra Club; Garry Kemp, Secretary of Kansas City Building and Construction Trades Council; Clyde McQueen, President and CEO of Kansas City Full Employment Council; Erin Noble, Energy Policy and Outreach Coordinator for Missouri Coalition for the Environment; and Emil Ramirez, United Steelworkers, District 11.
Missouri joins more than a dozen state and local Apollo affiliates around the country. The Alliance is particularly strong in the Midwest, where Apollo affiliates in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin are already working to ensure a just transition to a clean energy economy.
Apollo Co-sponsors Green Prosperity Forum In NYC
Green Prosperity: Economic Recovery and Sustainability - Part I
Date: June 23, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM
220 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor
New York New York 10001
A modern economy based on fossil fuels is destined to fail. National unemployment reached 9.4 percent in May 2009 – the highest rate in 25 years. Business as usual just isn’t working anymore.
America is on the verge of transforming our economy from one that is dependent on foreign oil to one that’s based on clean energy produced in America.
The first step in the transformation - the stimulus and other policies being considered in the energy bill, such as a Renewable Energy Standard or a cap on carbon – will generate unprecedented demand for clean energy labor, systems and components.
But what happens in step two? Viable reform requires more than job creation; we need to implement a clean energy domestic manufacturing program that will retool and revive our manufacturing sector and create a new generation of green-collar jobs; we also need to encourage standards of employment, production, and consumption that are sustainable.
Join The Apollo Alliance and Demos for a lively discussion tackling these interrelated challenges: reviving the economy (e.g. expanded opportunity and shared prosperity) and reversing environmental decline. The sustainability movement is just beginning, and we have a chance at real reform.
Demos Senior Fellow Richard Benjamin will moderate a discussion with author and New York University professor Andrew Ross and Adam Werbach, the Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S and one of the foremost experts on sustainability strategy.
For more information and to RSVP, visit their website.
Support for Clean Energy Manufacturing in Congress
This week, Apollo Alliance Chairman Phil Angelides joined Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown on Capitol Hill to introduce the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act (IMPACT) Act of 2009.” The measure, which Sen. Brown hopes to enact as part of our new national energy policy, proposes a $30 billion revolving loan fund designed to help small- and medium-sized manufacturers improve their energy efficiency, retrain workers for clean energy manufacturing jobs, and retool plants in order to expand into the clean energy supply chain.
Senator Brown (pix left, with Angelides center, and Blue-Green Alliance Director David Foster on right) based his proposal on Apollo Alliance’s Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), which was introduced in April and lays out aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient.
The country’s manufacturers are poised to act on our recommendations. The recovery bill signed by President Obama in February, the appropriations bill enacted in March, and the budget agreement approved in April commit more than $300 billion to clean energy investment and green-collar job generation. These investments will provide vast new clean energy markets, but “without a program to support our own domestic manufacturers, policies that create new demand for clean energy will just lead to more imports,” explained Angelides.
IMPACT Act
We estimate that Sen. Brown’s IMPACT legislation, once enacted, will create at least 680,000 direct manufacturing jobs nationally and 1,972,000 indirect jobs over the next five years. “The domestic manufacturing industry helped build our nation’s middle class and is critical to national security,” said Sen. Brown. “It accounts for 12 percent - $1.6 trillion - of the U.S. gross domestic product and almost three-fourths of the nation’s research and development. Despite this, the U.S. manufacturing industry has contracted for 16 consecutive months.”
Earlier this month, Angelides, Apollo Alliance President Jerome Ringo, and Board Member Michael Peck joined several prominent business, labor, and policy leaders in calling on Senate leaders to make significant investments in retooling plants and retraining America’s manufacturing workers.
Letter to the Senate
“Including investments in domestic manufacturing in the energy bill will deliver economic rewards to all 50 states,” they wrote in a letter to members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Some committee members hesitant to support the legislation may be pleased to learn that their constituents will benefit enormously. The states hit hardest by manufacturing job losses over the past few decades - states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri - are the ones that have the most potential for a revitalized manufacturing sector capable of making the clean and efficient energy systems that will be the backbone of the new energy economy.”
An aggressive program based on Apollo’s GreenMAP that focuses on manufacturing would benefit tens of thousands of U.S. firms capable of building the equipment and components of the clean energy economy, the majority of them located in the 20 states hardest hit by manufacturing job losses.
Green-Collar Jobs Are Here by the Thousands
A number of new studies of the clean energy sector, including one made public this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts, confirm that manufacturers and states all across the country are poised to benefit from a major federal investment. Pew researchers found more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, many of them manufacturers, and 770,000 jobs in the clean energy sector. Over the last decade, jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a rate of 9.1 percent nationally, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent. (URL to our blog on the report)
Be sure also to keep track of the quickening pace of state and federal action on clean energy policy on our Apollo Blog and Daily Digest.
Banner Week For Apollo, Clean Energy and Good Jobs
A lot has happened this week in the clean energy, good job world.
Most importantly for us, on Wednesday with Apollo chairman Phil Angelides at his side, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009,” a bill that would put America’s ailing manufacturing sector on the road to recovery by facilitating the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.
Also on Wednesday, Apollo president Jerome Ringo, talked up the need for retraining workers and retooling manufacturers at the Senate Democratic Green Jobs Summit.
And reports galore were issued. All of which provide more evidence that the clean energy economy is alive and thrivin’.
Apollo Alliance Joins Sen. Brown in Introducing Measure to Help Manufacturers Retool for Clean Energy Economy
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) was joined today by Apollo Alliance Chairman Phil Angelides and other notable business, labor and clean energy leaders as he introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009,” a bill that would put America’s ailing manufacturing sector on the road to recovery by facilitating the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.
The stimulus and other policies being considered in the energy bill - such as a renewable energy standard or a carbon cap - will generate unprecedented demand for clean energy parts and systems. Yet, 70 percent of America’s clean and efficient energy systems are currently produced abroad, including half of the country’s existing wind turbines and all transformers for the electrical grid. Read more
Apollo Alliance Joins Sen. Sherrod Brown to Introduce Bill to Help Manufacturers Retool for Clean Energy Economy
Based on Apollo’s GreenMAP, New Bill Would Create 2.5 Million Jobs and
Advance U.S. Energy Security by Investing in Domestic Clean Energy Manufacturing
CONTACT: Sam Haswell: (415) 797-8174
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) was joined today by Apollo Alliance Chairman Phil Angelides and other notable business, labor and clean energy leaders as he introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009,” a bill that would put America’s ailing manufacturing sector on the road to recovery by facilitating the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.
The stimulus and other policies being considered in the energy bill – such as a Renewable Energy Standard or a carbon cap – will generate unprecedented demand for clean energy parts and systems. Yet, 70 percent of America’s clean and efficient energy systems are currently produced abroad, including half of the country’s existing wind turbines and all transformers for the electrical grid.
“Without a program to support our own domestic manufacturers, policies that create new demand for clean energy will just lead to more imports,” said Angelides. “It is critical that Congress enact legislation that provides direct and substantial investment in clean energy component manufacturing to ensure that jobs are created in the U.S., and to wean us from our dependence on other nations to meet our energy needs.”
The IMPACT Act would provide significant resources for small- and medium-sized manufacturers through a 2-year, $30 billion manufacturing revolving loan fund, which will provide much needed liquidity for domestic manufacturers to improve manufacturing processes and to retool and expand production of clean energy products. The Apollo Alliance estimates that, once enacted, the bill will create 680,000 direct manufacturing jobs and nearly 2 million indirect jobs over five years.
“We can revive American manufacturing through investment in clean energy,” said Senator Brown. “This bill will help our manufacturers retool, put our auto suppliers back to work, and produce clean energy technologies.”
Brown’s legislation would also expand and focus Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEPs) on clean energy manufacturing. Under Brown’s legislation, the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a division of the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, would receive $1.5 billion in federal funds over five years to help manufacturers access clean energy markets and adopt innovative, energy-efficient manufacturing technologies.
“The only way to put our existing manufacturing sector to work, and to scale up to meet the new demand created by the cap and trade program, is to have a dedicated source of funding for investments in component manufacturing,” said Angelides. “We are proud to support Senator Brown’s bill, which will allow manufacturers across the country to tap into clean and efficient energy markets.”
In April, Apollo Alliance released its Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), which detailed aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient. Developed in collaboration with industry, labor, environmental groups, and academic experts, the Apollo GreenMAP called for direct federal funding for clean energy manufacturers to retool facilities and retrain workers to develop, produce and commercialize clean energy technologies.
