Make It In America: Apollo’s Green Manufacturing Action Plan

For more updated information and resources, visit the GreenMAP program page.

The Apollo Alliance has created the roadmap for revitalizing America’s manufacturing sector. Part of The New Apollo Program, our comprehensive national strategy for building a clean energy, good jobs economy, Make It In America: the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP) calls for federal investment in the domestic manufacture of clean energy equipment and components, and in making manufacturing plants more energy efficient overall. An aggressive program such as we propose could benefit tens of thousands of U.S. firms capable of making the equipment and components of the clean energy economy, the majority of them located in the 20 states hardest hit by manufacturing job losses.

In the fall of 2008, the Apollo Alliance brought together representatives from academia, industry, labor, and environmental groups to develop strategies for rebuilding domestic manufacturing for the growing clean energy economy. This group, which includes the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the American Wind Energy Association, the Solar Energy Industries Association, Environmental Defense Fund, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, the National Council for Advanced Manufacturing, the International Economic Development Council, Johnson Controls, Inc., General Motors, the Renewable Energy Policy Project, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, and the Campaign for America’s Future, among others, developed a set of federal policy recommendations to spur domestic green manufacturing:

1. Provide direct federal funding for clean energy manufacturers to retool their facilities and retrain their workers to develop, produce, and commercialize clean energy technologies.
2. Attach standards to funding: condition federal support to manufacturers on their ability to meet labor and domestic content standards.
3. Increase funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, both to expand its role in strengthening the clean energy supply chain and to establish partnerships with regional/local development and manufacturing support organizations.
4. Increase funding for the Green Jobs Act and direct funds administered under the Act toward workforce and skill standards development for the clean energy manufacturing industries.
5. Create a “Presidential Task Force on Clean Energy Manufacturing” to bring together a range of federal agencies to make the manufacturing of clean energy systems and components a national priority.

Shrinking Sector
The U.S. manufacturing sector is in trouble. Since 1999, 4.6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared, many of them sent overseas. More than 1 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since the start of the current recession in December 2007, including 200,000 in January 2009 alone. These are some of the country’s best middle-class jobs, paying an average of $25,000 more per year than service sector jobs and often providing health care and pension benefits. For workers without four-year college degrees, these jobs have long been the ticket to the American middle class. As manufacturing and associated jobs disappear, the only option for many of these workers is low-paid service sector jobs without clear career advancement opportunities. The result: growing inequality and a dramatically shrinking middle class.

Despite its hardships, American manufacturing still represents a considerable share of the U.S. economy. The sector’s gross output in 2005 was $4.5 trillion, and it still supports nearly 13 million jobs, or nearly 10 percent of total non-farm employment. And the clean energy sector, despite its recession-induced woes, is on the rise: the domestic market for solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, and biomass engines is projected to reach $226 billion annually by 2016. Demand for solar and wind power will continue to expand over the next twenty years, and between 70 and 80 percent of the new jobs created in those industries will be in the manufacturing sector.

Clean energy manufacturing offers an opportunity to strengthen and expand America’s middle class. But there’s one big problem:  we don’t make most of these systems here in the U.S.  Fully half of America’s existing wind turbines were manufactured overseas. And we rank fifth among countries that manufacture solar components, even though the solar cell was born in America. The fact that other countries are prepared to deliver these products - and we are not - means that every new American bill creating demand for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency services actually creates new jobs overseas, even though we have a robust manufacturing infrastructure and skilled workforce here in the U.S.

We must not squander the opportunities in the transition to a clean energy economy by giving up on American manufacturing. With the right roadmap through the transition - one that directly invests in domestic clean energy manufacturing - we will reduce our nation’s carbon footprint, expand exports, increase our energy security, and create and retain high-quality jobs in our valuable manufacturing sector over the long term. For a country trying to rebuild its middle class and reduce its carbon footprint, the only path forward is one that invests in domestic clean energy manufacturing.  

Support the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan
With the goal of informing federal clean energy manufacturing legislation in mid-2009, we are actively engaging endorsers and allies from Congress, manufacturing trade associations, labor unions, clean energy industries, and other business interests. Consistent with the vision of the GreenMAP initiative, our partnerships will further the principles of domestic production and good jobs, and engage the broader movement toward a clean energy future of increased climate stability, energy security, and widely shared economic prosperity.