Clean Energy Week Underscores Need for Stable, Long-Term Energy Policy
Nearly 100 national organizations, including 25x’25, have joined together to make this Clean Energy Week. By working together to produce a high-impact week of powerful and effective activities and events, the organizations are maximizing their efforts to move clean energy to the forefront of national policy. President Obama’s State of the Union address last week underscored the need to put into place those long-term and stable policies and funding that accelerate the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
The New York Times recently pointed out that multinational corporations are exploiting the boom in China’s commitment to renewable energy, locating large manufacturing facilities there with the best technology available. The Chinese government says it wants to increase the share of its electricity generation met by renewable sources from the four percent currently provided by wind, solar and biomass to 8 percent by 2020.
“The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” Obama told Congress and the country last Wednesday night, exhibiting the conviction that clean energy solutions are essential components of job creation and economic growth. While the case can be made that the United States is moving in the right direction, when compared to the initiatives undertaken in other nations, there is a long way to go. As the president emphatically noted, China, India and Germany, among others, are not standing still. They, too, are striving for first place in the race to a global clean energy economy, putting more emphasis on math and science, and rebuilding their infrastructure.
On the positive side of the equation, Congress has adopted as a national goal the 25x’25 Vision – meeting 25 percent of our nation’s energy needs with renewable resources from our farms, ranches and forestlands by 2025. There have been positive steps toward reaching that goal. On a national scale, Congress earlier this year approved the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which includes an estimated $36 billion that the White House says will double the nation’s capacity to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels and other clean energy components in three years, while also doubling its renewable energy generation by 2012. And yesterday the President unveiled his fiscal 2011 budget proposal, which included a nearly five-percent funding increase for DOE energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
More specific examples of forward progress include last week’s opening of the DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC and University of Tennessee-Genera Energy LLC cellulosic ethanol demonstration facility that can produce 250,000 gallons of biofuels made from agricultural residue and bioenergy crops like switchgrass (commercial production is planned for 2012); and the location in rural Texas of the world’s largest wind farm, Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, with 421 turbines that have the capacity to generate 735 megawatts.
Still, to make these achievements and others more than individual parts of a scattershot effort to boost our economy, enhance our energy security and improve our environment, there is a clear, national imperative to enact comprehensive, long-term and stable clean energy policy. It is only the assurance that can be provided by a long-term commitment from our national leadership that will enable a wide variety of clean energy programs to create vast numbers of new jobs, ensure U.S. global leadership in the emerging clean energy era, enhance our security and preserve our planet for future generations.
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