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| Blythe Solar Plant in California. Photo credit: First Solar. |
This week, the effort by Texas oil companies to stop the implementation of California’s landmark climate and clean energy bill, AB 32, made national headlines. Not satisfied with their efforts to derail federal climate and clean energy legislation, oil giants Valero Energy and Tesoro, both of San Antonio, Texas, are funding a campaign to prevent AB 32 from going into effect until California’s unemployment rate goes below 5.5 percent.
A Field Poll released Tuesday showed that a strong majority of Californians support AB 32, the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act. Despite arguments by the likes of Valero and Tesoro that AB 32 will hurt the California economy, 69 percent of poll respondents said they believe that California can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expand jobs and economic prosperity at the same time.
It’s not surprising that in these economic times, opponents of clean energy and climate measures are using economic arguments to overturn efforts to alter the energy status quo. But various academic studies have analyzed AB 32’s potential economic impact, and the most rigorous among them have shown that that the law will have a net positive impact on California job creation. Californians will save money by using products that are more energy efficient—like appliances that use less electricity and fuel-efficient cars—and will spend that money on other goods and services throughout the the state’s economy.
Additionally, California’s decades-long commitment to forward-thinking energy efficiency policies has resulted in substantial job creation. The most recent study of California’s green jobs, released in December 2009 by Collaborative Economics and Next 10, found that during the current economic crisis, green jobs in California grew by five percent between 2007 and 2008, even as total jobs dropped a percent.
When California legislators passed AB 32 in 2006, they determined that the state would reduce its GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. They then tasked the California Air Resources Board to figure out which clean energy measures would enable California to meet this goal in the most cost-effective manner while also maximizing benefits to the economy, environment and public health.
For other states that are considering clean energy and climate measures, AB 32 is a model in that it includes the vast diversity of possible climate and clean energy policies. Key AB 32 measures include the following:
*A 33 percent renewable portfolio standard, to be met by 2020.
*A “million solar roofs” initiative.
*Strict building and appliance energy efficiency standards.
*GHG emissions standards for passenger vehicles.
*A low-carbon fuel standard.
*A plan for high-speed rail between Northern and Southern California.
*A cap and trade program, in collaboration with other Western U.S. states and Canadian provinces.
*Many other measures in areas including land use, industrial energy efficiency, agriculture, forests, recycling and waste, and water.
Visit the California Air Resources Board website for more details about the measures included in AB 32.
Also, stay tuned for a new plan from the California Apollo Alliance to take California beyond AB 32. The California Apollo Program, to be published this spring, is a comprehensive economic strategy to rebuild California’s economy on the shoulders of the growing clean energy sector.
AWEA Releases U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report
According to a new report by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), despite an ongoing recession and a dearth of national renewable energy policies, the U.S. wind industry broke all previous records by installing over 10,000 megawatts of new generating capacity in 2009. This is enough power to meet the energy needs of 2.4 million homes. “Our annual report documents an industry hard at work and on the verge of explosive growth if the right policies—including a national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES)—are put in place,” said AWEA CEO Denise Abode. “A national RES will provide the long-term certainty that businesses need to invest tens of billions of dollars in new installations and manufacturing facilities which would create hundreds of thousands of American jobs.”
AWEA’s U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report states that approximately 85,000 people are employed in the wind industry today and hold jobs in areas as varied as turbine component manufacturing, construction and installation of wind turbines, wind turbine operations and maintenance, legal and marketing services, and transportation and logistical services.
Texas leads the nation in installed wind capacity, followed by Iowa, California, Washington state and Oregon. States that added the most wind capacity in 2009 included Indiana, which added 905 MW of wind energy capacity in 2009, and Illinois, which added 632 MW. Thirty-six states have utility-scale wind projects.
This year, AWEA added sections to its annual report on manufacturing and workforce development. The U.S. wind industry has been criticized recently for a number of high-profile projects that planned to exclusively use wind turbines manufactured overseas. According to the AWEA report, 10 new manufacturing facilities came online in the U.S. last year, a slowdown from 2008. The total number of wind turbine component manufacturing facilities now operating in the U.S. is more than 200.
“In 2009, the U.S. wind industry lost considerable ground in terms of keeping the domestic manufacturing jobs it gained in 2007 and 2008 even though wind manufacturing—due to the size and weight of the components involved—represents the largest renewable sector potential for local production,” said Michael Peck, an Apollo Alliance board member and head of the MAPA Group, whose clients include wind manufacturer Gamesa. “Without a clear and consistent national climate and energy policy, these jobs and factories have started to go overseas, a trend exacerbated by China and Europe, who have out-mandated, out-invented, out-deployed and out-exported compared to the U.S. model still perfecting outsourcing. The time is past urgent for the Administration and Congress to flip on the switch fairly quickly so that ‘green and clean’ doesn’t become ‘made somewhere else.’”
Click here to read some of the key findings of the AWEA report.
In other news …
*Intern at the Apollo Alliance! Apollo is seeking smart, organized, energetic people with strong research, writing and internet skills to intern with us this summer in our program and communications departments. Read the Program Intern job description and the Communications Intern job description. The application deadline is April 15.
*Read our newest clean energy success story about wind energy company Astraeus. Check out our new signature story, Michigan Wind Manufacturer Astraeus, Named after Greek Mythology’s Father of the Four Winds, Hopes to Father a New Generation of Wind Turbines, about a Michigan company that started out in 1965 as a tool and die shop and now plans to revolutionize the manufacture of wind turbine components using processes and materials that it hopes will reduce the cost of wind energy to the point that it is competitive with coal.