2021 Congressional Clean Energy EXPO and Policy Forum

Host Honorary Co-Hosts For more information

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and the House and Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (REEE) Caucuses held a Virtual Congressional Clean Energy Expo on Monday, July 26, 2021. Building on the more than 20 years of experience hosting clean energy leaders from various sectors, we once again showcased technology and policy solutions to today’s climate and energy use challenges.

Presenting before Congress and the public, top-level speakers shared findings and innovations on the impacts they are having to mitigate climate change, improve the economy, build resilience, and protect our security interests. 

This year’s half-day conference featured four sessions, including a panel featuring the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus Co-Chairs, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

Senate REEE Caucus Deputy Co-Chairs Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and House REEE Co-Chair Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.) also provided remarks.

 

Discussion Table of Contents

Welcome/Overview from Daniel Bresette

A conversation with Congressman Ron Kind (Wisconsin)

A conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary Alejandro Moreno

What does climate change mean for national security and resilience?

   Highlights

 

A conversation about energy efficiency and renewable energy with Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) and Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho)

 

What does climate change mean for jobs and economic development?

   Highlights

Welcome/Overview from Daniel Bresette Executive Director, Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI)

A conversation with Congressman Ron Kind (Wisconsin) Co-Chair of the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus

A conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary Alejandro Moreno Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Power, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy

Read a Q&A with Deputy Assistant Secretary Alejandro Moreno

 

What does climate change mean for national security and resilience? Introductory remarks from Senator Susan Collins (Maine)

Joe Bryan, Senior Advisor for Climate, Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense Lisa Jacobson, President, Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) Timothy Unruh, Executive Director, National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO) John Conger, Director, Center for Climate & Security (CCS) Beth Gibbons, Executive Director, American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) Zolaikha Strong, Vice President of Government Affairs, National Hydropower Association (NHA)

HIGHLIGHTS

What does climate change mean for national security and resilience?

Joe Bryan, Senior Advisor for Climate, Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense

• What does climate have to do with national security? In fact, there is little about what the Department of Defense (DOD) does to defend the American people that does not have to do with climate change.
• Climate change impacts inform some of the areas DOD needs to focus on (i.e., climate change is mission generating), like melting in the Arctic opening up new areas of ocean and extended drought in Central America leading to northern migration. Climate change also impacts DOD operations, such as when bases need to be evacuated because of wildfires and hurricanes and when training is suspended because of extreme heat. Further, climate impacts have significant costs when military bases are destroyed by extreme weather events.
• Climate change is going to cost DOD in resources and readiness. There is not a competition between what is good for the climate and what is good for DOD’s mission.
• Military bases house critical missions that need to stay up and running even if the grid goes down. When we have a threat environment from weather and cyber that puts the grid at risk, then what do you do to increase mission resilience? You need to get really energy efficient and you need to bring energy storage and distributed generation inside the base fenceline, preferably solar or resources that minimize logistics requirements. You also put controls in place to make sure resources are directed at the right assets; you do not want to keep the lights on at the gym when the mission is suffering from lack of power.
• Marine Corps Air Station Miramar has a microgrid capable of powering critical missions even if they lose grid power. They leverage a range of assets from landfill gas to solar. Last summer, Miramar took the burden of 6 megawatts of power off the grid to reduce pressure on the utility facing extremely high demand during a heatwave. This preserved power for everyone. We need more of this capability.
• President Biden’s budget request includes significant increases for programs like the Energy Resilience Conservation Improvement Fund to strengthen base resilience.
• Two-thirds to three-quarters of DOD’s energy use is from things like ships and airplanes, not bases. Reducing energy demand is not only good for the climate, it is critical for military operations.
  • DOD cannot be aggressive enough with decreasing operational energy demand. The President’s budget proposes new investments in key operational energy programs, including hybrid electric tactical vehicles, engine improvements on Navy ships, and reducing airplane drag to improve fuel efficiency.
  • These investments are a priority because they are great for the mission and happen to be good for the climate.
• President Biden has made lithium-ion batteries a priority, and this is closely tied to electric vehicle deployment.
• The commercial electric vehicles industry is critical to DOD capabilities. The scale and pace of the transition to electric vehicles is massive and fast. These batteries are at the heart of the transition to electric vehicles.
• Right now, China dominates the lithium-ion battery supply chain, and that is a problem from DOD’s perspective because military capabilities depend on batteries. The Navy alone has 2-3,000 systems that rely on lithium-ion batteries.
• It is the commercial sector that will drive supply chain investment. DOD is a big customer but cannot move the market on its own. We need the commercial electric vehicle industry to drive supply chain investment back to the United States. Electric vehicles are good for the climate and also necessary for DOD’s mission.

Lisa Jacobson, President, Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE)

• The businesses that BCSE represents not only have technology and expertise to share, but they also have a national imperative to participate in climate work because while we can work at home and abroad to reduce emissions and improve resilience, we also have a larger challenge in front of us—the safety and security of populations around the world.
• From a business perspective, national security is an important topic. The private sector is deeply impacted by disruptions to supply chains.
• Impacts of climate change are severe and increasing. This is one of the areas that BCSE tracks in the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. A few years ago, BCSE started a new section of the Factbook on resilience and resilient investment and how the clean energy technologies and services that BCSE members offer are expanding resilience.
• Resilience, national security, and competitiveness are all interwoven, and these issues are top of mind for the companies and industries that BCSE represents.
• Public investments in these areas should be used to leverage private-sector activity. There needs to be public-private partnerships.
• National security is vital to U.S. companies; we need stability here at home and abroad. There is a direct impact on jobs and investment here in the United States.

Timothy Unruh, Executive Director, National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO)

• A specific type of public-private partnership is an Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC). This form of contract has been around for 40 years. About $7 billion of work is done under this type of agreement every year.
• ESPCs are a unique tool to modernize public facilities.
• ESPCs have enjoyed broad bipartisan support for the last 30 years.
• The President’s Performance Contracting Challenge has been used in the past and coordinated by the Department of Energy (DOE). Each federal agency accepted a goal to implement ESPCs over a five-year period. Through active agency leadership and consistent engagement of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the federal government implemented over $4 billion in federal facility improvements. That is $4 billion of private sector investments into federal facilities.
• Another effective DOE program is the Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies (AFFECT) program. Congress established the program to allow federal agencies to compete for grants by proposing plans to leverage the grants into agency-wide ESPC programs. The first year, $3 million in grants leveraged $75 million funding for the programs.
• Unlike other public-private partnerships, ESPCs repurpose money that a public facility is already spending on wasted energy and the maintenance of obsolete equipment to create a stream of guaranteed savings to repay the investors. These are very safe investments with extremely low default rates.
• There have been over $60 billion of performance projects to date.
• DOE has standard contracts and documents for ESPCs, and they have a database of more than 7,000 projects that document the success of ESPCs.
• State Energy Offices develop program regulations and processes to help state facilities, local governments, K-12 schools, universities, and water and wastewater facilities to better utilize these contracts.
• NAESCO is working with DOE to make an accreditation program that will enable customers to identify high-quality Energy Service Companies.
• The Energy Services Coalition helps connect the private and public sectors.
• This relates to resilience because we need to expand the use of performance contracting as there is not enough federal funding to get the job done. Energy efficiency improvements are interrelated with many necessary resilience improvements.
  • For example, new windows and doors need to minimize leakage and also need to be wind, hurricane, and perhaps even blast resistant.
• Pandemic-related building improvements, such as ventilation and UV lighting sanitation, are also tied to energy efficiency.
• Efficiency provides sufficient savings to pay for itself, but resilience work does not. Also, doing both steps together reduces cost, but doing them separately means that the resilience work might never get done.
• For this reason, NAESCO sees that a resilience down payment by the federal government can be leveraged by ESPCs to get more done with less. It is estimated that for every $1 spent by Congress, at least $4 will come in from the private sector.
• As federal, state, and local governments see a need for resilience improvement in building infrastructure, they will find that leveraging their investment with ESPCs will lower their buildings’ emissions while also increasing resilience to climate impacts.

John Conger, Director, Center for Climate & Security (CCS)

• Climate change is a national security issue. The Department of Defense plans for climate change as a national security issue as it impacts global stability.
• Climate change means that the way planning has happened in the past is not good enough and planning needs to change.
• More than any other aspect of climate policy, climate and security has been an increasingly bipartisan and pragmatic space.
• In 2017, Congress declared climate change was a direct threat to security. For the House floor vote, 46 Republicans joined all the Democrats to affirm this provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and it was signed by President Trump.
• In 2018, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees continued to include pragmatic climate measures in defense legislation, such as resilience measures and Arctic strategies.
• In December 2018, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said he was not going to block climate measures in the NDAA if they were important to the military. He was about to become the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
• The Washington Post saw this pattern and published a piece that said, if you want President Trump to sign climate legislation, all you needed to do was put it in a defense bill.
• To take one example, a 2018 study assessed the vulnerability of a [$1 billion] radar facility in the Pacific, noting that it may not be usable by the 2030s because of saltwater intrusion into the aquifer due to sea level rise.
• Repeated worldwide threat assessments by the intelligence agencies say that climate change is a national security issue as far back as the Bush Administration.
• Over the years, the reason that there has been a bipartisan consensus is because of the billions of dollars of impacts that extreme weather events have had. When Congress has to start writing checks, for example to repair Tyndall Air Force Base, everything becomes more real. Pragmatism emerges when the impacts are clear.
• It makes a big difference when senior leadership prioritizes the issue. That is happening now without question. This has sent a shockwave of momentum through the Department of Defense and that came from the President.
• Congress continues to work on this issue, and it is expected that there will be more relevant provisions in the NDAA and appropriations bills.

Beth Gibbons, Executive Director, American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP)

• ASAP aims to identify how to do cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral work to adapt to climate change. Central to this work is integrating future climate conditions in our day-to-day work.
• In 2020, there were 22 billion-dollar or greater disasters in the United States. In 2021, we have already seen eight billion-dollar or greater disasters.
• Why does climate adaptation matter? When those bills come due, we need mechanisms to prevent them. That is where climate adaptation comes in. It requires new, iterative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary thinking. Climate adaptation solutions need to be people-centric and future-oriented. This means breaking the paradigm that we are planning for the weather or system of yesterday. We need to be forward looking and strategic. DOD is leading in this area.
• DOD provides some examples of what adaptation solutions can look like.
• For example, take the Hampton Roads area in Virginia. On the tip of Virginia, it is home to 1.7 million people, one of the world's most impressive natural deep-water ports, and it has the most military installations of any place in the United States. In 2014, they launched the Hampton Roads Sea Level Rise Preparedness and Resilience Intergovernmental Planning Pilot Project (IPP). The effort brought together players from a whole-of-government approach—local government, regional bodies, state government, and federal agencies. The project assessed what resources they have, questions they needed answered, and how to collaborate to secure their assets. Through the research, they found they are facing three to seven feet of sea level rise, with a minimum of a 9.8-foot storm surge. These impacts are expected to require action on the part of all the actors involved in the pilot projects. They have since worked on shoreline restoration, including living shorelines, dune rehabilitation, and hardening waterways as well—so they are using a combination of green and gray infrastructure. They also worked on improved communication tools for the residents and the military base.
• We know that climate change is going to impact communities across the board. Partnerships can be very powerful—changing the landscape for what resilience looks like today.

Zolaikha Strong, Vice President of Government Affairs, National Hydropower Association (NHA)

• Hydropower has been part of the conversation for a long time. Until last year, hydropower provided about nine percent of all energy generation in the United States. This went down to seven percent last year with wind energy accelerating.
• The hydropower industry is looking at how it can better provide a strong role for hydropower and pumped storage to accelerate its positioning in the clean energy mix.
• NHA has engaged in an “uncommon dialogue” process between the hydropower industry and conservation and environmental groups. In October 2020, after two and a half years of negotiations, the group published a joint statement of collaboration, “U.S. Hydropower: Climate Solution and Conservation Challenge.”
• This work took place in the context of the current dam situation in the country: there are about 90,000 dams in the United States, and only 2,500 of those dams currently generate electricity.
• The uncommon dialogue has three main focus areas:
  • Rehabilitating dams to improve safety;
  • Retrofitting dams to increase renewable energy generation; and
  • Removing dams that no longer provide a benefit to society, with a focus on stakeholder engagement and safety.
• The industry is actively incorporating climate resilience strategies to mitigate vulnerabilities by looking at optimization and efficiency, river management, forecasting, and research on climate science.
• The hydropower industry tracks precipitation, timing of snowmelt, and other regional water fluxes to make sure it is able to provide the energy that is needed.

Q&A

Q: What can other federal agencies learn from the Department of Defense (DOD) and what can DOD learn from other federal agencies?

Bryan: We need a whole-of-government approach. And we need to work with state and local partners. We have interagency relationships that allow us to think about how we are going to talk about climate globally and how we are going to communicate that climate is a priority for the United States. We partner with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Domestically, droughts that impact DOD also affect the rest of the country, including farmers and communities. DOD works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) to figure out the right solutions. Their goal is to figure out how to support not only the defense mission, but also what is needed for the whole country.

It is challenging for DOD to get enough funding to make the changes to bases that are needed. They need to leverage the capabilities of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the financing and expertise of the private sector to make the changes needed. It needs to be a whole-of-country approach. There is a tremendous amount we can learn from each other.

Jacobson: The DOD’s rigorous planning and assessment and the rigor of its implementation is something that other agencies will look to as best in class. What underpins it is Congress's history of recognizing the national security risk that climate change imposes on our country and economy. The rest of the government and the rest of the economy respond when DOD makes something a priority publicly. We are talking mostly about adaptation and resilience as they relate to national security, but the clean energy work that DOD did was groundbreaking and the private sector took notice. When the DOD put the statistics forward to show that renewable energy can be reliable and affordable energy—that was the start of the private sector taking another look at what it can do with renewable energy.

Conger: DOD does not have a monopoly on wisdom, but they have a head start. They got started earlier and had the freedom to do what they wanted when other agencies were steered away from climate change as a focus area. One key area to learn from is climate mainstreaming. Climate change has been integrated in important ways. It is not in a silo, rather it is integrated into a lot of people’s jobs. DOD has also done significant work in writing guidance and setting the rules in place. DOD has put these documents out over the last 10 years with climate change incorporated throughout. Climate change is a part of everyone’s jobs. DOD has also been able to show other federal agencies that when you change how you spend the money you are already getting to incorporate climate considerations—that has a huge climate impact.

Gibbons: DOD has a head start knowing how to integrate future climate conditions into its risk portfolio. There is an opportunity for a lot of data sharing. We see climate adaptation efforts collapse under the burden of different sources of data. DOD has authority. The mountain of uncertainty is getting smaller because of a lot of DOD’s work. Being willing to tell the story is something that DOD might not be used to, but it is very important to share stories like the Hampton Roads example. It is important to tell the full story including where challenges are so that people do not think it is going to be smooth sailing if we just get together.

Strong: Data and interagency coordination are key. The government is one of the biggest procurers of energy equipment—they can share lessons learned from that.

Q: How can we ensure that the benefits of the work that is being done around climate and national security are realized on an equitable basis?

Bryan: The impacts of climate change fall most on the people least able to respond. For example, people without air conditioning are the most impacted by heat, and people without insurance do not have places to go to after a disaster. This is true in the United States, and around the world. This poses a challenge for national security reasons. The Hampton Roads area is a good example of why you need to work with communities—if you cannot use the roads to get to work, that is bad for the military and for others in the community.

Jacobson: The Justice40 interim guidance was released in mid-July 2021 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Council on Environmental Quality, and the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy. It sets out a holistic planning process for government agencies on a quick timeline. One element is a broad stakeholder engagement process with rigorous assessment by agencies and programs with an equity lens. They are going to uncover data we have not had before. This form of a combined bottom-up and top-down planning process will be informative and hopefully help people at the end of the day in communities.

Conger: Equity and climate justice are in our self-interest. The most fragile nations are also the ones that are most deserving of investments from a climate justice perspective. At a local level, a lot of communities around DOD bases are lower income. Investing in DOD base communities contributes to environmental justice. These bases depend on local communities, so if the base is resilient, but the community is not, the base is actually not resilient. It is in the interest of DOD to incorporate communities into their work.

A conversation about energy efficiency and renewable energy Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) Co-Chair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) Co-Chair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus

 

What does climate change mean for jobs and economic development? Introductory remarks from Senator Chris Van Hollen (Maryland)

Abby Ross Hopper, President & CEO, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) Paula Glover, President, Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) Jason Walsh, Executive Director, BlueGreen Alliance (Building Clean) Heather Zichal, CEO, American Clean Power Association Genevieve Cullen, President, Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) Chris Bliley, Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, Growth Energy

HIGHLIGHTS

What does climate change mean for jobs and economic development?

Abby Ross Hopper, President & CEO, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)

• In 2020, the solar industry employed 231,000 workers, created $25 billion of economic activity, and provided stable jobs with benefits.
• But to reach the Biden-Harris Administration’s climate goals, the solar industry needs to grow four times faster. Meeting these goals will generate a workforce employing one million people.
• There is an incredible opportunity to build a clean energy economy that will create hundreds of thousands of solar jobs. To keep the solar industry’s growth on the right trajectory, we need stability for companies so they have certainty when deploying huge amounts of capital. Certainty comes in the form of tax policy. The investment tax credit is critical to financing and having projects move forward in the solar industry. We are asking Congress for a 10-year extension of this tax credit.
• Direct pay for the investment tax credit is another way to unleash many solar projects.
• Other critical pieces include an energy storage investment tax credit, making sure the workforce is ready to build out a clean energy transition, and domestic manufacturing. To take full advantage of the economic opportunities, it is important to create a healthy and vibrant manufacturing sector.

Paula Glover, President, Alliance to Save Energy (ASE)

• We are talking about careers, not just jobs.
• We should be thinking about efficiency first. If we can maintain our quality of life and still use less energy, that is a huge win.
• The largest employer in the clean energy economy is energy efficiency. It employs more than 2 million Americans, and is responsible for nearly 70 percent of all clean energy jobs.
• If we are able to make our homes, buildings, industries, and vehicles more efficient, we can reduce carbon emissions in the United States by 50 percent by 2050. Efficiency has a big role to play.
• The jobs that exist around energy efficiency cover a wide variety of skill sets, including construction workers, manufacturers, and energy auditors. It is difficult to market, but it is a huge asset as there are many different types of jobs. High school graduates to four-year college diplomas and beyond are employed. There is a large span of opportunity.
• Energy efficiency jobs are available in 99.8 percent of counties in the United States, meaning they are available everywhere.
• Energy efficiency plays a significant role in looking at how to address climate change and what economic opportunities are available as we move to this just energy transition.
• There is an opportunity to continue to grow the sector and reduce barriers to entry, but that relies on policy.
• DOE has released the 2021 U.S. Energy & Employment Jobs Report, and found that energy efficiency lost more jobs than any sector in 2020, with one reason being that contractors could not enter people’s homes because of the pandemic. The 2020 version of this report (providing information about 2019) found that energy efficiency added more new jobs than any sector in the energy industry.
• It is mandatory that we get this sector back to its pre-pandemic rate of growth. We need targeted policies in place, such as reforming tax credits. One analysis found that simply reforming tax credits could create 600,000 jobs by driving demand.
• The goal should not be to just build back, but to build back better. A clean energy economy and energy efficiency need to be available to everyone. The current energy efficiency workforce is far from representative of women and African Americans. We support the Blue Collar to Green Collar Jobs Development Act (H.R.156), as it focuses on underserved communities.
• We have to remedy the issues around the workforce and make sure energy jobs are accessible to all communities, are inclusive, and are well-paid.

Jason Walsh, Executive Director, BlueGreen Alliance (Building Clean)

• Americans should not have to choose between good jobs and a clean environment. We can and should have both.
• We can address the climate crisis and create new jobs as we work to build our economy and recover from the pandemic.
• As we work to drive down emissions, we have seen how clean energy investments can spur economic growth and high-quality job creation.
• For example, a unionized crew of tradespeople built the offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island. Union auto workers are building cleaner cars and trucks. Workers in St. Louis and Los Angeles are gaining access to high-skilled jobs in energy efficiency retrofitting, pipe fitting, and transit manufacturing.
• At the same time, we are not moving nearly fast enough to make the necessary investments to meet our climate goals.
• Unionization is a key pathway. Union jobs pay better, have better benefits, and are safer.
• There are a range of complementary policy mechanisms for raising wages, building career pathways, and increasing access to good jobs. These include registered apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and other union-affiliated training programs, as well as project labor and community benefits agreements.
• As we work to meet climate goals, attaching these tools to public investment in clean energy can help ensure these investments translate into good and accessible jobs.
• To bring home the full benefits, policymakers must ensure these investments also translate into domestic manufacturing.
• Countries around the world are rushing to capture these manufacturing benefits. Far too many clean energy technologies are manufactured overseas. Decades of bad policy have weakened supply chains. Steps must be taken now to strengthen these supply chains and create jobs. We need to include policies that increase demand for clean energy, as well as provide supply-side incentives.

Heather Zichal, CEO, American Clean Power Association (ACP)

• To achieve a majority renewable energy-powered grid by 2030 would require nearly one trillion dollars in capital investments in renewable power projects, storage systems, and the transmission needed to shift the power around the country and bolster resilience and reliability.
• ACP is proud to support the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, along with the important provisions that are included in the Clean Energy for America Act (S.1298) and the GREEN Act of 2021 (H.R. 848), all representing a significant investment in advancing clean energy deployment and combating climate change.
• This transition will be a powerful economic growth engine. The pathway to a 21^st century economy powered by 21^st century clean energy has the opportunity to create 500,000 to 600,000 new jobs by 2030, creating a tremendous opportunity for a unionized workforce.
• Manufacturing, professional service, and construction sectors are seeing the majority of employment growth, with manufacturing at 38 percent growth, professional service at 25 percent, and construction at 21 percent.
• Wind turbine technicians and solar installers are jobs in high-demand that are providing and installing renewable energy.
• Union labor is an important component of clean energy development.
• In 2020 alone, $39 billion was provided in renewable energy project investments. Clean energy is driving investment into rural areas, and companies paid an estimated $1.7 billion in state and local taxes and nearly $800 million in land lease payments in 2020.
• Clean energy projects, manufacturing facilities, or both exist in 84 percent of Congressional districts.

Genevieve Cullen, President, Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA)

• There have been many reports that remind us that we cannot get to national greenhouse gas emission goals without scaling electrification in the transportation sector.
• Electrification is where the global market is going, so this is an opportunity for the United States to decide whether we will lead or just follow.
• Electrifying transportation has unique, enormous human benefits, including better air quality, lower energy and transportation costs, and more livable communities for everyone.
• There are a little under two million plug-in vehicles and 8,000 fuel cells vehicles on the road today. There are 60 models of plug-in cars, up from only two available in 2010. There are close to 50,000 public charging stations across the United States and Canada.
• Global sales of plug-in vehicles will outpace internal combustion engine sales by 2040.
• The 2021 U.S. Energy & Employment Report found that alternative fuels and hybrid manufacturing employ approximately 273,000 workers, a net increase of 7,300 jobs in 2020.
  • The electric vehicle (EV) sector grew by 6,000 jobs, at a rate of 7 percent. Hybrid vehicles grew by 6,000 or so jobs, at a rate of 5.5 percent.
  • More than 66,000 jobs in battery energy storage and 69,000 in various forms of grid modernization were added, all related to the EV ecosystem.
• As we scale the market, we will scale employment. Multiple analyses show different numbers and rates, but they all demonstrate the ability to scale opportunities across this ecosystem.
• Advanced Energy Economy, a national association of businesses, modeled what the Biden-Harris Administration's $274 billion EV transition investment would look like.
  • It would create an estimated 10.7 million jobs (measured in job years). Specifically, purchase incentives would create 6 million jobs, EV manufacturing and supply chain investment would create 2.6 million jobs, charging infrastructure investments would create 1.2 million jobs, and workforce training would generate over 100,000 jobs.
• Policy will be the major driver of electrifying transportation. Purchase incentives for electric drive vehicles are critical, not just for cars, but for trucks and buses.
• Next steps include increasing uptake across every vehicle segment and across price points; comprehensive investment in infrastructure that not only serves interstate communities, but multi-unit dwellings and urban and rural communities; direct investment in U.S. manufacturing; resilient and increasingly domestic supply chains; and investing in research and development.

Chris Bliley, Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, Growth Energy

• A recent Department of Energy analysis found that 90 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation today are from petroleum. So, any steps taken on alternative fuels to reduce our dependence on oil and foreign imported oil are a positive.
• Two hundred biorefineries across the United States produce roughly 10 percent of our nation's liquid fuel supply, and are poised to do much more.
• Every gallon of ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 46 percent compared to gasoline. With off-the-shelf technologies, we actually have the ability to get to a 71-75 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
• We are going to have liquid fuels in our transportation sector for decades to come, so it is imperative that we do everything we can on the fuel side to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Today, we account for 300,000 jobs and about $35 billion of U.S. GDP.
• If we went to a nationwide E15 standard, which is a 15 percent ethanol blend that has been approved for more than 95 percent of vehicles on the road today (all 2001 and newer models), we can get 17 million tons annually of greenhouse gas reductions—the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road. We'll also create an additional 183,000 jobs, generate $10 billion in household income, $1.7 billion in federal tax income, and $1.6 billion in state and local tax income.
• It is a win-win for jobs, climate, local, state, and federal governments, and households.
• Beyond E15, we are looking for a future where we can increase vehicle efficiency. As automakers move to electrification or improve engine efficiencies, we can use higher octane fuels. Ethanol is one of the highest and cleanest octane sources in the world.
• By using a higher ethanol blend in conjunction with smaller, higher compression engines, we can get the benefits of cleaner fuel and improved engine efficiency.
• In order to continue to sustain these benefits and jobs, often in rural areas, we need policy clarity and reliability. We have a strong renewable fuel standard, but it has not always been implemented the way that it should and it has been delayed, freezing important investments.
• We have a number of pathways under the renewable fuel standard for cellulosic biofuels, which generate 60 percent or more reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This has been sitting at the Environmental Protection Agency waiting for approval for nearly four years. It is critical that some of these things move through the approval process.

Q&A

Q: What is the potential for the clean energy workforce to contribute to broader equity and justice goals?

Hopper: In terms of workforce, we know there will be this massive transition, and there is an opportunity to be really intentional in how we go about it in terms of benefits and pay, what these careers look like, and how employees are valued and kept safe. There is a huge opportunity to be intentional about how we are treating and recruiting the workforce. The communities served are really important, as well. We do a lot of thinking about communities that have been historically harmed by more traditional fuels or whose voices have not been heard in the decision-making process, so they can now have a role in their own energy futures.

Glover: We are looking internally at our organization and what equity means there and how to create a workforce that has inclusivity. As an advocacy organization, we are thinking about the language we would like to see in legislation. A piece is the workforce, but a larger piece is about small business and wealth creation. Who are the vendors? Who is doing the work and where? How can we create opportunities for other small business owners to participate? We learned from the pandemic that Black-owned businesses were hit hardest. We are asking policymakers to think about what needs to happen to ensure these businesses and communities get the opportunities to participate. We need to be direct about equity. Tax credits are not enough for energy efficiency to be implemented everywhere. We need to think about existing policy and how there can be equitable access.

Zichal: It is exciting to see that equity and justice are at the center of this discussion, and it shows how the conversation has changed. Many advocates deserve a lot of credit for this. The Biden-Harris Administration gets kudos for being so thoughtful about how they have really raised these issues front and center. The American Clean Power Association has launched an internal effort to work with member companies around pay benefits, career pathways, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are also in the process of a filming project to lift up stories about what is happening for former oil and gas workers in renewable energy.

Walsh: If we want workforce development to drive equity, we need to be intentional about the policy models that we use. One of the interesting things about the process of developing a new generation of clean energy tax credits has been talking with colleagues about a registered apprenticeship program run by the Department of Labor that encompasses programs across the country. They are really the representation of what has been a successful model, and are typically grounded with commitments to hire within the communities where projects are taking place, with an emphasis on workers who are currently underrepresented. There are a number of examples of targeted hiring on the projects themselves that then get those workers from those communities into registered apprenticeship programs, and then into careers.

Cullen: When talking about equitable energy transition, it is not only the technology, markets, and workers but the communities that get the benefits. We need to be building and expanding pathways for this new workforce to create better job opportunities and careers. Investments for building out this market need to ensure that households at all income levels have access.

Bliley: For the biofuel industry, we are creating jobs in areas that may only have one or two employers right now and do not have a lot of existing opportunities. These are good, skilled jobs. The environmental benefits that biofuels create also play into the equity discussion. Where fuel is used the most tends to be urban areas, generating lots of toxic emissions from today's petroleum fuel. With biofuels, we are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, along with other toxic pollutants, at the same time that we are reducing costs for consumers.

 HOST 

Environmental and Energy Study Institute

 

 HONORARY CO-HOSTS 

House Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Caucus

Senate Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Caucus

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If you have any questions about the EXPO, please contact:

Rebecca Blood at [email protected]