{"id":264343,"date":"2010-02-02T09:53:24","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T14:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenrightnow.com\/?p=8646"},"modified":"2010-02-02T09:53:24","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T14:53:24","slug":"clean-energy-week-brings-activists-businessmen-to-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/264343","title":{"rendered":"Clean Energy Week brings activists, businessmen to Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bill Sullivan<\/a>
\nGreen Right Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Image:<\/p>\n

Image: cleanenergyweek.org<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Legislators wrestling with health care reform, job concerns and a spiraling federal deficit have another group vying for their attention in Washington this week.\u00a0 Thanks to a hastily thrown-together coalition, it\u2019s Clean Energy Week<\/a>, with environmental activists and business leaders descending on Capitol Hill to press for money for more and better green initiatives.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Reed Hundt, co-chairman of the Coalition for the Green Bank<\/a>, says the clean energy movement has been presented with a rare opportunity, however strange the bedfellows in some cases may be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never expected, six months ago, that we\u2019d be talking about the jobs bill as the bus we\u2019d be getting on right now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd in no way does it mean that we don\u2019t need comprehensive energy legislation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just means that if we can get a couple of passengers on the bus right now, let\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

More than 100 organizations and groups have banded together for Clean Energy Week, the brainchild of American Council on Renewable Energy <\/a>(ACORE) President Michael\u00a0 Eckhart and Jeff Anderson, co-founder and executive director of Clean Economy Network<\/a>. When the two met for breakfast about three weeks ago, they noted that the Renewable Energy Technology Conference<\/a> (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 \u201ccreate a bit of noise\u201d about clean energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to make decisions about these policies, to put these policies in place in order to put the nation in motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just for us and our agenda. This is good for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group, which planned 15 related events<\/a> for the week, stated three major objectives:<\/p>\n