Apollo Weekly Update, 2/20/09: Clean Energy Breakthrough in Stimulus, Next Steps

Thank you to the 5,400 members of the Apollo nation who got involved over the last month, responding to our email alerts urging you to let members of Congress know how important it was to pass the breakthrough clean energy and green-collar jobs provisions of the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The $787 billion stimulus legislation that President Barack Obama signed on Tuesday in Denver contains $86 billion in clean energy and green-collar job programs, plus $27.5 billion in road and highway construction funds, much of which state transportation department directors say will be used to repair infrastructure and not on building new highways.

As we’ve noted since the package was introduced on January 15, the provisions that formed a big part of the foundation of the stimulus is funding to build new transit and high speed rail lines, weatherize homes, develop next generation batteries for clean vehicles, scale up wind and solar power, build a modern electric grid, and train a new generation of green-collar workers.

President Obama clearly wanted the country to see clean energy development as the centerpiece of the recovery bill. He signed the law at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, a building that gains a portion of its electricity from a rooftop solar photovoltaic array. (See pix at left and below)  He was introduced by a local solar industry executive.

The president’s remarks pointed to a central goal of his administration: Charting a new economic path for the country that is safer, cleaner, greener, and capable of generating middle class jobs.  “Because we know we can’t power America’s future on energy that’s controlled by foreign dictators,” President Obama said, “we are taking a big step down the road to energy independence, and laying the groundwork for a new, green energy economy that can create countless well-paying jobs.”

Success
In every way, the clean energy provisions of the stimulus bill are a surpassing achievement. The magnitude of the investment and the bill’s comprehensive sweep reflect the unleashing of a pent-up demand for a new way to power and employ America. The sweep of the investments — $17.7 billion for rail development, $34 billion for energy efficiency, $7.9 billion for renewable energy, $10.9 billion for a smart electric grid, $3.3 billion for next generation batteries and alternative fuel vehicles, $4.5 billion for energy research, $3.4 billion for demonstrating technology to capture and store carbon dioxide - define two old principles that, at last, have gained legitimacy at the highest levels of the American government.

The first is that the same idea that lies at the core of what we do at the Apollo Alliance - that scaling up the clean energy economy is central to economic development and job generation - is at the top of the list of the nation’s economic priorities. The second is that public sector leadership will spur private investment.

Many, many groups and individuals who worked for years in and out of the public spotlight can take from the recovery act’s passage large measures of satisfaction.

Apollo’s Role in Stimulus
Here at the Apollo Alliance we note how the organization’s founders distilled 35 years of debate about the environment and the economy into a memorably simple message: Pursuing clean energy development would secure the nation’s energy supply, solve the climate crisis, and rebuild the middle class. Our founders - including Dan Carol, Joel Rogers, Bob Borosage, and Bracken Hendricks — then recruited an untraditional national coalition of labor, business, environmental, and social justice organizations and leaders to advocate for clean energy and good jobs.

While the clean energy focus of the stimulus was inspired by the Apollo’s vision, the specific content of many of the bill’s provisions was influenced by policy proposals that the Apollo Alliance made last year in The New Apollo Program and the Apollo Economic Recovery Act. “The recovery bill represents the focused work of labor, business, environmental and social justice organizations who developed a clear strategy about where the nation needed to go, and worked together to achieve it,” said Phil Angelides, former California treasurer and chairman of the Apollo Alliance.

As Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, noted in a statement. “We’ve talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades. The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.”

Now we turn to new challenges: Securing legislation, possibly through upcoming energy and climate bills, that limit emissions of climate change gases and provides stable funding to pursue clean energy development and job growth. The Apollo Alliance also is determined to push a comprehensive policy to revitalize American manufacturing so that domestic firms can produce the parts and systems needed to scale up renewable energy and energy efficiency. And we are helping states and communities understand how to best ensure that stimulus funds are used to create not just green jobs, but good green jobs.

Feedback
Our question to you is simple: what more does the nation need to do to pursue clean energy development? What’s next for Congress, for your states, for you or your organizations? Send us your responses and we’ll publish them in our Feedback feature. Send your dispatches to keith@apolloalliance.org.