Make It In America Webinar Draws A Crowd

This week, the Apollo Alliance sponsored a successful webinar about the need to bring investment in clean energy manufacturing to the forefront of the national clean energy debate. Nearly 100 people joined the webinar to hear from Kate Gordon, vice president of energy policy at the Center for American Progress and senior policy advisor to the Apollo Alliance; and two clean energy business leaders: Michael Peck, principal at MAPA Group and a member of Apollo’s board, and Bill Keith, president of Indiana-based SunRise Solar.

“The U.S. economy needs to diversify again, it needs to recommit to manufacturing, to agriculture, to sectors that are not financial and services sectors … that we don’t want to be totally reliant on a debt-focused economy. We need to be making things, we need to be exporting things, we need to be using things that we made. This is why manufacturing is so important, and the clean energy economy is an enormous opportunity to re-commit to manufacturing,” Gordon told the webinar participants.

The webinar, entitled “Make it in America: Manufacturing and the Energy/Climate Bill,” was co-sponsored by RE-AMP, a network of nonprofits and foundations working on climate change and energy policy in the upper Midwest. You can find and listen to the webinar in its entirety.

Tasked with facilitating the webinar was Apollo Alliance’s new policy director, Matt Mayrl. Matt’s ties to Apollo run deep, having worked with Apollo when we were based at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

We’re tremendously excited to welcome Matt to the Apollo team. Most recently, Matt worked for the city of Boston in the Mayor’s office and the Office of Administration & Finance, where he was an adviser to the city’s chief financial and operating officer.

Matt was one of Apollo’s first staffers, helping to build the Apollo Strategy Center and coauthoring New Energy for States and New Energy for Cities. Matt has established himself as a national expert on one the country’s fastest growing economic development finance programs – tax increment financing (TIF). Through his work with the City of Boston, Apollo, and on TIF issues, Matt has developed expertise in public finance, government management, and energy and economic development policy.

You can also learn more about another of the webinar participants, Bill Keith of SunRise Solar, in a Signature Story that was published this week on the Apollo Alliance website. Keith is a former roofer who founded a solar-powered attic fan company out of his garage in 2003. Despite the company’s humble beginnings, its profits have grown from $40,000 in 2003 to a projected $4 million in 2009, demonstrating again the economic potential of clean energy manufacturing in America.

Coming Up Next Week …

*Don’t miss Apollo Board Chair Phil Angelides on CBS Sunday Morning this Sunday, August 23. He’ll be talking about the long legislative history of trying to bring high-speed rail to California and the U.S., and the costs and benefits of high-speed rail, both for the state and the country. Tune in to your local CBS TV station on Sunday at 9 AM EST (6 AM PST) to find out more about why the Apollo Alliance supports high-speed rail. Click here for some fast facts about high-speed rail.

*On Thursday, August 27, Apollo Alliance will hold an event in Shelby Township, Michigan, to promote the IMPACT Act and feature the clean energy manufacturing success story of the Eagle Manufacturing Corporation. Eagle has been building machinery and doing auto-related work for close to 50 years, and is now preparing to transition into clean energy manufacturing. For more information about the event, contact Apollo’s Michigan Coordinator, Dana Sevakis, at sevakis (at) apolloalliance.org.

P.S. Congratulations to Apollo Alliance intern Jenna Scatena

This week, Jenna Scatena, Apollo’s communications department intern, was named the Climate Community Citizen of the Week. Congratulations, Jenna! Learn more about what Jenna is doing to promote environmental sustainability and climate action at the Climate Community website.

You can keep track of the quickening pace of state and federal action on clean energy policy on our Apollo Blog and Daily Digest.

And how about joining us on Twitter?