Clean Energy
Issues: Clean Energy, Clean Energy Jobs, Renewable Energy, Renewable Energy on Native Lands
Clean Energy
Clean energy creates high-paying American jobs, cuts pollution, and is helping end our dependence on foreign oil.
The clean economy employs 2.7 million Americans. Clean economy jobs are manufacturing intensive, with 26 percent of all clean economy jobs in manufacturing compared with 9 percent in the broader economy. And these jobs are good-paying — wages in clean economy jobs are 13 percent higher than median U.S. wages.
Other countries see the potential in clean energy. There was a total of $269 billion in capital invested in clean energy worldwide in 2012, five times the investment levels seen in 2004. Over the coming decade, another $2.3 trillion will likely be invested in the clean energy sector.
Wind:
In the last 6 years, the U.S. has installed nearly 50,000 megawatts of wind, enough to power 12 million homes. Not even during the nuclear power heyday of the 1960s and 70s did we build that much nuclear electrical capacity in so short a time.
In 2012, 13,000 megawatts of wind capacity were installed in America, more than any other energy source, including natural gas. Wind has gone from generating one percent of U.S. electricity in 2008, to four
percent today.
Wind creates good-paying jobs. Since 2007, U.S. wind energy jobs have increased more than 50 percent and now employ 80,000 workers across all 50 states, around the same number employed in coal mining. These jobs stay in America. Nearly 70 percent of all of the equipment installed at U.S. wind farms are produced domestically, an increase from 25 percent in 2004.
The cost of wind turbines has dropped by up to a third since 2008. Today, electricity from newly constructed wind farms is price competitive with new natural gas and coal power plants and is cheaper than new nuclear plants.
Construction is expected to commence on America’s first offshore wind farm later in 2013. The Department of Energy has found that there’s enough wind off of the coast of just the northeast states alone to equal total current U.S. electric consumption.
Solar:
Solar energy is booming. 2012 marked the third consecutive year that U.S. solar installations nearly doubled year-over-year. Globally, the last five years have seen solar production explode by more than 1,000 percent and panel prices decline by 80 percent.
The growing demands for solar is putting people to work. Over the last three years, employment in the U.S. solar industry has more than doubled to 119,000 workers across more than 5,000 companies in all 50 states.
Solar has been following a pattern similar to Moore’s Law for semiconductors. Every time solar manufacturing capacity doubles worldwide, the price of solar cells falls 20 percent.
This rapid transformation is good for American consumers, but it has spelled disaster for some solar manufacturers that could not keep pace with competition. During periods of intense growth and technological innovation, many companies will fail. But the ones that survive have the potential to transform the world. For every successful company like Google or Amazon that emerged from the dot-com era, there were many more companies that failed. Remember Pets.com?
The United States is not yet scratching the surface of its solar energy potential. While solar currently generates less than 1 percent of U.S. electricity, the Department of Energy estimates that solar could satisfy 14 percent of total U.S. electricity demand by 2030, and 27 percent by 2050.
Consumers Benefit From Wind and Solar:
Fuel Economy:
The landmark 2007 Energy Bill included the first increase in motor vehicle fuel economy in a generation, which has transformed the auto industry, helped consumers, and which is already having a significant impact on U.S. consumption of oil.
Boosting fuel economy has created a race for technology and innovation. The U.S. auto industry has recovered, hiring 250,000 workers since 2009.
The Obama Administration has pushed fuel efficiency standards even higher to 54.5 miles per gallon for cars and light-duty trucks by 2025. This will help American families save more than $1.7 trillion in f
This means that we will reduce our reliance on foreign oil from dictators and terrorist regimes located in the Middle East. The new fuel efficiency standards will save a total of 12 billion barrels of oil and reduce oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels a day by 2025, or half of the oil we import from OPEC each day.
Efficient vehicles can make a real difference in reducing global warming emissions. Fuel economy standards will cut carbon pollution from vehicles by 6 billion metric tons over the life of the program, which is more than the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. in 2010.
Electric Vehicles:
Electric vehicles are also an important part of this race. By allowing vehicles to refuel through the electricity grid, we have the potential to cut consumers’ fuel bills by 80 percent and eliminate dependence on foreign oil entirely. Vehicles powered by clean and domestic batteries will help keep American troops out of harm’s way.
Competing with China:
Five years ago, China was nowhere to be seen in the clean tech sector. But that has changed. Financial analysts rank China the #1 most attractive place to invest in renewable energy. Sixty percent of all new companies going public in the clean energy sector are doing so in China. They’re adding more than 100,000 clean energy jobs annually.
There is a $2.3 trillion global market in clean energy technologies at stake and China plans to dominate it. They’re not satisfied with producing today’s televisions and toasters. The Chinese have realized the enormous potential in this industry. Today, China has more wind capacity installed than any other country. Additionally, China is advancing solar. Four Chinese solar companies received $30 billion in financing from the Chinese government in 2010 alone. This intervention led directly to a 50 percent drop in the price of solar panels in 2011.
Encouraging Clean Energy in the U.S. :
Even if people don’t have solar on their rooftops or a contract to buy wind power, they’re probably benefitting through lower electricity costs. This is because once built, wind and solar and other renewable energy technologies have zero fuel costs. In regional power auctions, they suppress wholesale electricity prices system-wide.
That is one reason 92 percent of Americans think that developing sources of clean energy should be a federal priority. 63 percent support requiring utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources. The states have listened—30 states and the District of Columbia now have mandatory renewable electricity production targets. To see a visual representation of growth in renewable and other energy sources, be sure and download our committee Energy App.
