Time to Start the Energy Revolution

Rep. Ed Markey | The Hill | May 20, 2009

While every president since Richard Nixon has called for energy independence, the time for delay, denial and inaction has come to an end. That is why Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and I have introduced the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). This bill provides a comprehensive approach to solving our economic, energy and climate crises. It’s time to put Americans back to work, in the jobs needed to bring about the age of the clean energy economy.

To build this legislation, we included diverse ideas from every region of the country that culminated in an energy policy that reflects American natural resources and technological advantages.

The Waxman-Markey bill includes a 20 percent renewable energy standard that promotes investments in wind, solar, biomass and geothermal resources. It increases efficiency measures for buildings and appliances that will save families and businesses money.

In order to cut global warming pollution, our bill uses the same bipartisan solution we used to fight acid rain in 1990. Our plan will protect consumers from the price spikes so common in the old energy economy, by providing more than half of the value of the pollution program back to consumers.

To address global warming, our legislation features a consumer-focused climate plan that cuts global warming pollution 83 percent by the middle of the century, and makes critical investments in clean energy technology and programs to protect vital American manufacturing jobs and train the clean energy workers of the future.

The backbone of our legislation is a plan to create good-paying jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. In my 33 years on the Energy and Commerce Committee, I cannot remember a time when such a diverse group of leaders came together to back a proposal. Supporters include former Vice President Al Gore, national security statesman and former Republican Sen. John Warner (Va.), dozens of executives from Fortune 500 companies, consumer advocates, faith leaders and labor and environmental leaders.

They all realize that at this critical point in history, when our nation is suffering through a recession that has cost 4.4 million jobs, now is the time America must take the lead in the clean energy revolution.

The race for clean energy technology is one we simply cannot afford to lose. Denmark is leading the world in wind power. China is quickly becoming the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy technologies. Korea and Japan are leapfrogging America in battery and electric vehicle technology.

Right now we are in danger of losing the clean energy race. Because we have failed to put in place a set of policies that challenge the dominance of fossil fuels, only one-fourth of the world’s top renewable energy companies are American-owned.

What we need now is to invest in both the right policies and the right technologies to unleash this low-carbon revolution.

I learned from my 27 years of experience as chairman of the telecommunications subcommittee that once we put the right policies in place, we will have an explosion of energy innovation across our nation.

Not one home in America had broadband when we passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Not one. After we changed the incentives, it unleashed a wave of innovation across the country, as the cable, telephone and satellite industries began their mad dash to deploy these new technologies. We moved in a very brief period of time from the black rotary dial phone to the BlackBerry.

And now we have a whole new vocabulary of Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Amazon and Hulu. These words are the international language of technology. What will the language of energy technology be 10 years from now? Will America create that language, or will someone else?

Bill Gates has said that in the short term, say five years, we overestimate the impact of technology; but in the long term, say 10 years and beyond, we underestimate the impact of technology. He was right on information technology, and the same lessons apply to energy technology. If we pass the Waxman-Markey legislation we will have an energy revolution in 10 years’ time. We must. The future of our economy depends on it.

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