Vice Presidential Memo on Clean Energy Progress Released
New energy future is becoming a reality.
Jason Vance
Published: Dec 15, 2009
The office of the Vice President in cooperation with the President's Council of Economic Advisors and the Office of Energy and Climate Change is releasing a report detailing how many and what kind of jobs have been, are being and are expected to be created in new clean energy industries.
"The energy components of the Recovery Act represent the single largest investment in clean energy in American history," said Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner during a press briefing. "These investments are leveraging billions of dollars in private investments and fostering American innovation and ingenuity that will allow us to maintain and grow a U.S. leadership position in the global energy market."
Browner said that by the end of 2010 the government will have funded more than 15 giga-watts of new wind, solar and geothermal energy, more than a 50% increase over the baseline amount of renewable energy when the President took office. In January an announcement of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act funding to advance energy manufacturing facilities will be made, which is expected to leverage $5.4 billion in private investment.
Chief Economic Adviser to the Vice President Jared Bernstein joined Browner on the conference call and talked about the Recovery Act and that in addition to trying to offset some of the pain from the big economic downturn, it is also laying the foundation for some of the President's top priorities.
"We view this new foundation as critical to stimulating an economic expansion characterized by growth that is both cleaner and more broadly shared than today," Bernstein said. "Growth based on meaningful investments in our future, not on financial speculation bubbles. But we also need jobs right now, so these programs give us a twofer, we can do well by doing good. We can help stimulate the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the near term, putting folks to work in green jobs."
Bernstein characterized this memo as a progress report that provides the President with a sense of the progress of what is being done and their size and scope.
"This is the first time that we have really shown the comprehensive nature of what it is that this Administration has been about," Browner said. "If you think about the President's commitment to breaking our dependence on foreign oil to creating a new generation of clean energy jobs, you see in this progress report that we are using all of the tools available to us."
To listen to Browner and Bernstein's remarks to the media use the audio player above. To view a copy of the memo, click on the link below.
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