Excerpted from the Apollo Alliance Bulletin:
Nearly a year after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman finally released their clean energy and climate bill, the American Power Act, this Wednesday.
A diversity of environmental groups, businesses and others praised Kerry and Lieberman for pushing clean energy and climate issues to the forefront of the national debate and urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring the bill before the full Senate as quickly as possible. However, many groups plan to withhold their endorsement of the 987-page bill until it is strengthened in several key areas.
The most important element of the American Power Act is that it caps and puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. It also sets targets for reducing those emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. Putting a price on polluting emissions will give businesses an incentive to switch to cleaner sources of energy and should lead to significant private investment in the clean energy sector.
Other positive elements of the bill are that it will invest $6 billion annually to increase energy efficiency and decrease oil consumption in the transportation sector; $6 billion for industrial energy efficiency and clean tech manufacturing; and $7 billion for clean vehicle manufacturing. (See below for more details on the American Power Act's clean energy manufacturing provisions.)
Key measures that are missing from the bill are a national renewable energy standard; long-term support for domestic clean energy manufacturers along the lines of Sen. Sherrod Brown's Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act; and transition assistance for workers and communities that are negatively impacted by clean energy and climate policies. The bill also doesn't include explicit language clarifying that projects funded by carbon allowance revenues are subject to prevailing wage requirements; these requirements are one way to ensure that green jobs are also good jobs.
A complete analysis of the American Power Act as it compares to the New Apollo Program will be available next week at ApolloAlliance.org.
With more than 200,000 gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day, what greater reminder do we need that the United States needs to shift to cleaner sources of energy-and make that shift now!
Click here to read the American Power Act or a summary of it.
Apollo is asking our supporters to fax Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid TODAY and tell him: Now is the moment to act decisively on clean energy and climate legislation, but let's do it right! Let's fulfill the job-creation potential of new clean energy policies by investing in America's clean energy businesses and workforce.
We can't miss this opportunity to create millions of high-quality American jobs in the clean energy economy!
