Comparison of the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act of 2009 with the New Apollo Program

The American Clean Energy And Security Act - passed on June 26, 2009 - 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.

The ACES Act includes many elements of The New Apollo Program (NAP). Specific examples of that include:

• NAP: Reduce energy use in new and existing buildings at least 30% by 2025; ACES Act: Modifies national building codes to improve energy efficiency by 30% immediately and by 50% in 2015, with an additional 5% reduction in energy usage every three years until 2030.
• NAP: Produce 25% of the nation’s power from renewable and recycled energy resources by 2025; ACES Act: Establishes a combined Efficiency and Renewable Electricity Standard of 6% beginning 2012 and rises to 20% by 2020.
• NAP: Bring the power grid into the 21st century; ACES Act: Establishes coordinated national grid planning principles that prioritize smart grid technologies and incorporation of distributed renewable energy generation.
• NAP: Improve efficiency by 20% in existing power plants and industries by 2025; ACES Act: Establishes national strategy to support Carbon Capture and Sequestration and supports the development of standards regarding plant energy efficiency.
• NAP: Connect America’s 21st Century neighborhoods and cities with world class transit systems; ACES Act: Requires establishment of transportation-related emissions reduction goals. Requires metropolitan planning organizations to consider sustainability, livability, and emissions reductions in land use planning.
• NAP: Restore America’s manufacturing leadership to meet the demands of the clean energy future; ACES Act: Invests in U.S. manufacturing to retool plants and retrain workers to produce the systems and components of the clean energy economy
• NAP: Invest in a national low-carbon fuel infrastructure and next generation alternative fuels; ACES Act: Requires utilities to develop a plan for building infrastructure to support electric vehicles and provides for deployment of charging stations in public and private locations.
• NAP: Establish a National Energy Innovation Fund to invest in the most promising clean energy technologies; ACES Act: Utilizes one percent of emission allowances to create eight Energy Innovation Hubs to encourage and finance innovative research toward commercialization.
• NAP: Train America’s workers for the clean energy economy; ACES Act: Increases funding for the Energy Worker Training Program (created by the Green Jobs Act) to $150 million per year, and establishes a separate Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Training Fund, in which 0.75% of auction proceeds will be deposited and cannot be used for any other purpose.
• NAP: Ensure the transition to America’s clean energy economy creates widely shared economic opportunities; ACES Act: Groups of workers in identified carbon-intensive sectors, public agencies, and adversely affected services workers are eligible for benefits from the Department of Labor.
• NAP: Establish a federal ‘cap & invest’ program to generate and strategically reinvest the resources necessary to build the new clean energy economy; ACES Act: Establishes a market-based program for reducing global warming pollution from electric utilities, oil companies, large industrial and manufacturing sources, and geologic sequestration sites. Under the program, covered entities must have marketable federal permits (“allowances”) for each ton of pollution emitted into the atmosphere.

For a full comparison of The New Apollo Program to the ACES Act, click here.

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.