On Kansas High Plains, There’s No Place Like A Clean Energy Home
GREENSBURG, Kansas - The worst thing that ever happened to the more than 1,400 residents of this southwest Kansas farm town was the tornado that 26 months ago turned nearly every house and commercial building into scattered piles of splintered wood and broken bricks.
The best thing that ever happened to the 900 residents who remained has been a reconstruction effort based on a $100-million clean energy economic development strategy. Greensburg’s clean energy development plan has attracted the attention of two presidents, generated some of the most energy efficient homes and public buildings in the United States, and turned Greensburg into, arguably, the greenest small town in America. Read more
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.
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.
House Committee Approves Energy, Climate Bill; Conference in Ohio
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a new national energy strategy that puts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and sets up a market for regulated industries to buy and sell “allowances” that encourage companies to reduce emissions beneath that limit.
The proposal will soon be taken up by the full House, and the Senate is starting work on its own bill. At issue in both chambers will be not only the cap and trade provision, but also the effect of the bill on the American economy, especially for the clean energy manufacturing sector. Fortunately, the House bill now includes several important domestic clean energy manufacturing provisions that will:
• Help finance clean energy manufacturing and deployment.
• Encourage manufacturers to retool or expand their facilities to produce clean energy systems.
• Help auto manufacturers produce the batteries that will power the electric cars of the future.
Michigan Clean Energy Companies — A Sampling
Dowding Industries, a manufacturer of wind turbine components has orders from European and American wind turbine manufacturers. The company built a new $7 million plant in Eaton Rapids that could eventually employ 350 new green-collar jobs.
Hemlock Semiconductor, which makes polycrystalline siliconfor photovoltaic panels, is building a new $1 billion facility near Midland, providing 500 new green-collar jobs.
Michigan’s Sun, Wind Sprout New Clean Energy Jobs Sector
MANISTEE, MI - Every half-century or so since its founding in 1841, this stubborn Lake Michigan port city, which cut hardwood for lake steamers in the 19th century and built parts for Detroit carmakers in the 20th, has endured the optimistic surge and demoralizing retreat of economic transition. Last month, on the kind of cold, wet, early spring day that makes residents question their allegiance to northern Michigan, Manistee latched onto what it believes is the next era of industrial opportunity, a future built quite literally out of thin air.
Capping Carbon, Michigan Moves on Clean Energy
Over the last three months, with determination and legislative success born of economic urgency, the White House and Congress have done more to treat America’s addiction to fossil fuels than any government in history. The $787 billion Recovery Act enacted in February and the appropriations bill approved in March invested nearly $200 billion to scale up wind, solar, clean fuels, next generation vehicles, a smart energy grid, energy efficiency, and transit. President Obama’s budget outline, approved in April, calls for $150 billion more in clean energy development.
Now, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are working on a new energy policy that, if done right, would put a cap and a price on carbon emissions and drive demand for a whole new generation of jobs in the clean and efficient energy sectors.
Green Manufacturing Action in D.C., New Apollo Staff
The substantial investments that the Obama administration and Congress are making in the clean energy sector also are the start of a wave of new green-collar employment. Reports from California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Nevada, Iowa, Minnesota and other states show that as federal funds flow out of Washington for energy efficiency improvements, weatherization, plant retooling and other programs, green-collar employment is on the rise.
Serious Materials, the California company that manufacturers energy efficient windows, is a case in point. Since the start of the year, Serious has hired more than 200 new employees to reopen two plants, and it has plans to develop several more plants.
Apollo Welcomes Four to its Staff
It takes intelligence, expertise and stamina to foster America’s transition to a clean energy, good jobs economy. The Apollo Alliance gains all that and more in welcoming Sam Haswell, Dana Sevakis, Shanelle Smith, and Joe Thomas to our communications and field staff.
“These are people of exceptional skill who are committed to Apollo’s mission of clean energy and good jobs,” said Cathy Calfo, co-director of the Apollo Alliance. “Sam, Dana, Shanelle and Joe are valuable additions to the Apollo team.
Sam Haswell, our senior communications associate, brings a decade of marketing and communications experience in the public and private sectors to his role at Apollo. From 2006 to 2009, Sam was the director of communications for Rainforest Action Network (RAN), where he oversaw all of the organization’s communications strategies and platforms, and supervised a five-member staff. Prior to joining RAN, Sam managed communications and media strategy for Oceana Inc.’s successful campaign to convince Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines to install advanced wastewater treatment systems fleet-wide. He also helped launch Oceana’s Stop Seafood Contamination campaign, which, since early 2005, has worked to eliminate the use of mercury in chlorine production. Earlier in his career, Sam served as press secretary to former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton and as deputy communications director for Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate Mike Ciresi. Sam earned a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and studied literature and philosophy at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.
Dana Sevakis, Apollo’s Michigan state coordinator, began her organizing career while attending the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she helped direct the local chapter of Rainforest Action Network. During that time, she worked on RAN’s campaign to convince Home Depot and other major home improvement retailers to not sell products made from old-growth and rainforest timber. The successful campaign earned the Boulder chapter national recognition. After graduating in 2000 with a B.A. degree in environmental studies, Dana joined the Chicago Recycling Coalition to improve the city’s “Blue Bag” recycling program. She also worked for Chicago Jobs with Justice, a labor-community coalition engaged in strengthening worker’s rights. In 2004, Dana, a Michigan native, returned to the Detroit area as a member of the political and communications staff for SEIU Local 3, a Midwest regional “Justice for Janitors” local. During the 2008 national election, she was a consultant for Michigan Voice, a state group that coordinated civic engagement organizations, and America Votes, a national organization focused on mobilizing voters.
Shanelle Smith, our Ohio state coordinator, was a leader in the Kent State University NAACP chapter before graduating with a degree in political science. Shanelle was recently named a 2009 Ohio Political Leaders Fellow by the Center For Progressive Leadership, joining 45 other outstanding young leaders in the center’s inaugural class. Shanelle interned at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. A native of Perrysburg who was raised in a strong union family, Shanelle is completing an M.A. in political science from the University of Toledo.
Joe Thomas, the new Missouri state coordinator, was raised in St. Louis and spent three years as an organizer in the Show Me state before joining the Apollo Alliance in May 2009. Even before he graduated magna cum laude in 2007 with a B.A. in English literature from Washington University, Joe was a trainer in grassroots organizing with the United States Students Association, teaching college students how to build effective direct action organizations on campus. He also was the student youth co-chair for the St. Louis Area Chapter of Jobs with Justice, focusing on connecting students to community, labor, and religious organizations. After graduation, Joe was a deputy field organizer with Missouri Campaign for Change, and served in a number of organizing and office staff positions with Missouri Jobs With Justice, a coalition of community, labor, student, and religious groups committed to economic justice that grew out of the St. Louis chapter.
Welcome aboard Sam, Dana, Shanelle and Joe.
Apollo Co-Director Testifies in DC; “Make it in America” Ad Airs in Ohio
Testifying last month before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Apollo Alliance Co-Director Kate Gordon urged Congress to restore American jobs by investing in domestic clean energy manufacturing. Gordon was joined by a host of nationally prominent clean energy experts at the four-day hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, including former Vice President Al Gore and Dan Reicher, an Apollo Alliance board member and director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.
While commending the new bill’s comprehensive approach to encouraging clean energy development and solving climate change, Gordon called on the committee to strengthen several critical economic measures. She told the committee – which included the bill’s co-authors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) – that federal investments need to be specifically directed to domestic manufacturers of clean energy equipment and components in order to generate more family-supporting green-collar jobs. She also called on the federal government to help workers in communities that are dependent on carbon-intensive industries as they make the transition to a clean energy economy.
“America imports more than 70 percent of clean energy components – at the same time as we are bleeding manufacturing jobs, especially in the heartland,” said Gordon. “We have an opportunity with this bill to invest in domestic firms so they can retool their equipment and retrain their workers to make the wind turbines, solar panels, advanced batteries, and other clean energy systems of the future.” (URLs to testimony)
Link to Apollo GreenMAP
Gordon’s congressional testimony came a week after the Apollo Alliance’s release of Make It In America: The Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan. The roll-out of the report included Apollo’s first television advertisement, a 30-second spot airing in Ohio that encourages Republican Senator George Voinovich to support domestic clean energy manufacturing. The ad signaled the start of Apollo’s broad-based campaign to restore millions of American jobs and rebuild U.S. manufacturing capacity to meet America’s future clean energy needs.
