{"id":395390,"date":"2010-03-05T18:15:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T23:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apolloalliance.org\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2010-03-05T18:15:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T23:15:29","slug":"apollo-co-hosts-clean-energy-economy-conference-in-washington-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/395390","title":{"rendered":"Apollo Co-Hosts Clean Energy Economy Conference in Washington, DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>This Thursday, the Apollo Alliance and Center for American Progress (CAP) co-sponsored a conference in Washington, D.C. that brought together leading policymakers, academics, business and labor leaders, and other experts to discuss what policies will support the United States in becoming not only a consumer of clean-energy technologies but also a leading producer of them.<\/p>\n

The conference, Picking a Winner: How to Make the U.S. a Leader in the Clean Energy Economy<\/strong>, was held amid growing concerns about clean-energy jobs\u2014particularly manufacturing jobs\u2014going overseas rather than being located in the United States. It covered the diversity of policies\u2014trade, energy, industrial, innovation and workforce policies, to name a few\u2014that will need to be implemented for the U.S. to regain its competitiveness in the global clean energy economy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re here today because America is in trouble,\u201d said Apollo Chairman Phil Angelides during his opening remarks at the conference. \u201cWe are quickly losing the chance to be a leader in what will be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century: the global clean energy economy. While other countries are making massive investments in clean energy infrastructure and production\u2014and creating tens of thousands of new jobs as a result\u2014the United States doesn\u2019t even have the capacity to meet its own demand for renewable energy components.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conference speakers included Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA); Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI); John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress; Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff of the AFL-CIO; Kathleen McGinty, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; and William Spriggs, assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Labor; among others. Jared Bernstein (pictured above), chief economist and economic policy advisor to Vice President Joseph Biden, closed the conference by emphasizing the Obama administration\u2019s commitment to strengthening the U.S. manufacturing sector\u2014especially through supports for the domestic manufacture of clean energy technologies\u2014because of the high quality of manufacturing jobs and their importance to having a thriving U.S. middle class.<\/p>\n

Apollo and CAP also both released new reports about the clean energy economy on Thursday. The Apollo report, co-authored with Good Jobs First, analyzes the United States\u2019 competitive position in the global race for clean-energy manufacturing jobs. The report, Winning the Race: How America Can Lead the Global Clean Energy Economy<\/em><\/strong>, finds that under current policies, the U.S. stands to lose an estimated 100,000 clean-energy manufacturing jobs to foreign competitors between now and 2015, and potentially a quarter million manufacturing jobs by 2030. The report also finds that many U.S. and foreign-based clean-energy manufacturing firms are investing money and creating jobs in low-wage countries such as China that are key competitors in the clean-energy race. To read the report, visit www.ApolloAlliance.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The CAP report is called Out of the Running? How Germany, Spain, and China Are Seizing the Energy Opportunity and Why the United States Risks Getting Left Behind<\/em><\/strong>. According to the report, these three countries have vastly different political economies, but are alike in that each one is implementing clean-energy policies across three critical areas: markets, financing and infrastructure. As a result, these countries are pulling far ahead of the United States in clean-energy production, installation, and export\u2014and increasingly in clean-energy innovation as well. In fact, when clean-energy technology product sales were expressed as a proportion of respective gross domestic product, the United States ranked 19th on the list. Click here<\/a> to read the report.<\/p>\n

Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan Task Force Holds Initial Meeting<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Apollo Alliance held another important meeting in Washington, D.C. this week. On Wednesday, Apollo hosted the first meeting of the Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) Task Force, a group of high-level business, labor and environmental leaders, and transportation and manufacturing policy experts who will work together throughout 2010 to develop recommendations for a clean energy transportation policy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and U.S. dependence on foreign oil while simultaneously creating good American manufacturing jobs.<\/p>\n

The U.S. transportation sector accounts for nearly 30 percent of the country\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions and represents 70 percent of domestic oil consumption, most of which is imported. Apollo\u2019s New Apollo Program<\/a><\/em><\/strong> advocates for a more forward-thinking U.S. transportation policy that results in a 21st century transit system and rebuilds our nation\u2019s deteriorating transportation infrastructure, but the issue has taken on a new urgency because the current national transportation authorization bill has expired, and the next transportation bill will likely be passed during the next year.<\/p>\n

The TMAP Task Force will focus on how to ensure that the next transportation bill leverages future investments in stronger transit into new, high-quality jobs in the manufacture of advanced rail vehicles, alternative fuel buses and clean trucks, as well as these vehicles\u2019 component parts. In addition to working with the Task Force to develop its recommendations, Apollo is partnering with researchers from Northeastern and Duke Universities, and the Worldwatch Institute, who will be conducting analyses of urban mass transit systems such as subways, light rail, streetcars, buses and inter-city rail (including high-speed rail) to better inform the development of strong domestic transit manufacturing policy proposals.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s TMAP meeting in Washington included presentations by former Massachusetts Governor and Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Political Science Michael Dukakis; Apollo Alliance Senior Advisor and Center for American Progress Vice President of Energy Policy Kate Gordon; and Transportation for America Campaign Director James Corless.\u00a0 All spoke of the importance of a new approach to transportation as a key component of the transition to a clean energy, good jobs economy.<\/p>\n

The TMAP project is modeled on the Apollo Alliance\u2019s successful Green Manufacturing Action Plan<\/a>. Stay tuned for more updates as the TMAP project develops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Thursday, the Apollo Alliance and Center for American Progress (CAP) co-sponsored a conference in Washington, D.C. that brought together leading policymakers, academics, business and labor leaders, and other experts to discuss what policies will support the United States in becoming not only a consumer of clean-energy technologies but also a leading producer of them. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}