By Bill Sullivan
Green Right Now
Image: cleanenergyweek.org
Legislators wrestling with health care reform, job concerns and a spiraling federal deficit have another group vying for their attention in Washington this week. Thanks to a hastily thrown-together coalition, it’s Clean Energy Week, with environmental activists and business leaders descending on Capitol Hill to press for money for more and better green initiatives.
An unlikely catalyst for that change: The jobs bill, which many hope will include more green items than normal. As the week began, the Senate was considering a proposal to deploy $11 billion of the potential jobs bill for efficiency measures. Creation of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) and a Green Bank also were part of the discussion.
Reed Hundt, co-chairman of the Coalition for the Green Bank, says the clean energy movement has been presented with a rare opportunity, however strange the bedfellows in some cases may be.
“We never expected, six months ago, that we’d be talking about the jobs bill as the bus we’d be getting on right now,” he said. “And in no way does it mean that we don’t need comprehensive energy legislation.
“It just means that if we can get a couple of passengers on the bus right now, let’s do it, because if we do get these expenditures and these lending authorities created, they will further demonstrate the relative ease of implementing all these other measures.”
With unemployment still hovering at about 10 percent nationally, environmental groups are touting the link between good, sustainable policy and good business. Hundt estimates that $2 billion in low-cost loans to utilities and other potentially green operations could stimulate up to $40 billion in total spending. That, in turn, could create up to 400,000 new jobs, he said.
More than 100 organizations and groups have banded together for Clean Energy Week, the brainchild of American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) President Michael Eckhart and Jeff Anderson, co-founder and executive director of Clean Economy Network. When the two met for breakfast about three weeks ago, they noted that the Renewable Energy Technology Conference (RETECH), expected to attract more then 2,500 attendees, already was scheduled for Washington this week. That, plus budget discussions on Capitol Hill, created a perfect opportunity, as Eckhart put it, to “create a bit of noise” about clean energy.
“The purpose of Clean Energy Week is to get center stage with the Congress among the three, four, five, six major agendas our government has before it today,” he said. “It’s time to make decisions about these policies, to put these policies in place in order to put the nation in motion.
“It’s not just for us and our agenda. This is good for the country.”
The group, which planned 15 related events for the week, stated three major objectives:
- Engage Congress and the Administration to take action now.
- Educate industry and government on the practical applications for clean energy that are economically viable and will create jobs.
- Seek to encourage greater investment in clean energy and energy efficiency technology.
In addition to mobilizing environmental groups, Clean Energy Week organizers also have enlisted the business community. About 120 CEOs from across the country will stage a “fly-in lobby day” to knock on the doors of their respective representatives.
“With so many national imperatives competing, we believe the drumbeat for passage of clean energy policy must be strong, it must be consistent, and it must come from every corner of the United States,” said Kateri Callahan, President of the Alliance to Save Energy.
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