How Do We Get There: Gore’s 100% in 10 years

When Al Gore challenged America to shift to 100% renewable energy within a decade, the question on most people’s minds was, “Is he nuts?” After all, such a goal is more than a little ambitious – particularly for a country that is still wedded to the oil and coal industries. When it comes to energy, America is practically as dirty as they come. The past 8 years of Bush leadership has done nothing to change that; rather, Bush did everything he could to further the interests of dirty energy.

As Gore sees it, there are five steps to achieving this goal. First, he wants Obama and the new Congress to offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of solar thermal plants in the Southwestern desert, wind farms in the corridor from Texas to the Dakotas and plants in geothermal hot spots. Second, he believes we should be building a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural areas where it’s generated to the cities where the majority of it is used.

Third, he wants to help America’s automobile industry make the shift to plug-in hybrids that can run on renewable energy. Fourth, he suggests embarking on a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation, energy-efficient windows and lighting. Finally, Gore believes the U.S. should put a price on carbon here at home and lead the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty with a more effective treaty that would cap global carbon dioxide emissions and encourage nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming as quickly as possible.

Gore’s plan may seem at first blush like pie-in-the-sky, never-gonna-happen kind of extreme wishful thinking. But, it’s not impossible. It would take swift action, strong leadership and plenty of funding – but 100% renewable energy in a decade is not out of reach.

There are literally cheap, abundant sources of energy all around us. It’s really kind of absurd when you think about it that we put so much effort into drawing fossil fuels out from underneath the surface of the earth when all the power we need is right here, and we don’t have to destroy the environment to use it. Furthermore, these budding renewable energy industries are already teeming with players eager to research, plan and carry out new energy infrastructure. They just need funding.

Solar, wind and geothermal companies already abound in the U.S., and recent economic woes are the only reason they haven’t continued their explosive growth. There are a lot of green businesspeople out there just waiting to jump in to this new industry and help it expand, and plenty of people out there ready to fill the jobs that it will create.  As billionaire oilman and renewable energy proponent T. Boone Pickens pointed out in a recent CNN interview, building the wind corridor from Texas to North Dakota would create 168,000 jobs in the first year – up to 3 and a half million jobs in the course of a decade.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have already learned the hard way that the way they’ve been doing business isn’t sustainable. They’ve made far too many a business decision based upon the idea that Americans would always want – and be able to afford – huge gas-guzzling SUVs. After the credit crisis caused auto loans to dry up and auto sales to drop dramatically, automakers like GM find themselves in need of a government handout.

This is where Gore’s goal to help automakers switch to plug-in hybrids could really pick up steam. Though automakers, when profitable, used to fight tooth and nail all government attempts to green up their industry via higher fuel efficiency standards and reduced emissions, now they’re at the government’s mercy.  The government may make a bargain with the industry, offering financial help – and in exchange, automakers must focus on producing high-mpg cars, hybrids, plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars.

The number one concern most people have voiced about Gore’s plan is the cost. No doubt, it would be staggering. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record – since we have brought up Van Jones and Green for All again and again here at EarthFirst – the key is turning this switch to renewable energy into a massive jobs and economic revitalization program. Van Jones covers this concept extensively in his new book, The Green Collar Economy.

The current state of the economy certainly makes it much, much harder to achieve Gore’s goal. Our government is giving hundreds of billions of dollars to failing corporations when that money could be put to much better use in the form of a ‘green bailout’. But all isn’t lost: the Center for American Progress has prepared a $100 billion, two-year recovery plan that could put renewable energy on the fast track. The proposal, entitled ‘Green Recovery: A Program to Create Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy’ (PDF), outlines exactly what we need to do climb out of this economic hole and make the switch to renewable energy at the same time.

It also addresses the fourth part of Gore’s plan: retrofitting buildings with high-performance windows, improved insulation and energy-efficient appliances. Weatherization assistance could be fully funded to the level authorized by the Energy Independence and Security Act, and the energy-efficiency retrofit program in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program should be expanded. The federal government should also match state public funds and other locally based programs that support energy efficiency and green building retrofits to both public and private buildings. Strong financial incentives, including tax credits and loan guarantees, should also be used to encourage private property owners to participate.

Perhaps most important of all is the need for a new smart grid. Our current outmoded, decaying power grid simply can’t do the job of transporting green power from rural areas where it’s produced to the rest of the country. Gore estimates the cost of a new green energy grid at around $400 billion over the next decade. Obama has already said that a smart grid is an absolute necessity, telling Rachel Maddow of MSNBC,

“One of, I think, the most important infrastructure projects that we need is a whole new electricity grid. Because if we’re going to be serious about renewable energy, I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago. And we’re going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated from those car batteries, back into the grid. That can create 5 million new jobs, just in new energy.”

There’s also a growing chorus of voices saying that there’s no reason why renewable energy can’t be produced locally. Many people believe that huge, remote renewable energy plants and farms aren’t green at all, and that creating energy on a local level with technology like micro-wind, for example, is a better choice. That would lessen the need for a huge, expensive new power grid and would spread jobs out across the country. Perhaps their ideas will be heard, too, in the months to come as the Obama administration seeks the best way to tackle this challenge.

There are still plenty of obstacles that will have to be overcome. Of course, we’ve got to keep in mind the fact that the dirty energy industries aren’t going to go down quietly. They’ve enjoyed the unique privilege of having a good buddy in the White House for nearly a decade, who has helped them make record profits and gain even more power. The oil and coal industries in particular would tell you that greenhouse gas emissions, mountaintop removal and other environmental catastrophes are the price we must pay for affordable energy, but of course that’s not true. They’re desperately clinging to their status and they aren’t going to merely step aside.

Big Oil in particular has unleashed a squirming army of lobbyists on Washington in the past few decades, and they’re fighting renewable energy and environmental hurdles with all their might. The Bush Administration has been very accommodating to their demands, and there are certainly still many members of Congress in the pockets of oil companies. But Obama is already in the midst of an unprecedented crackdown on lobbyists, so they shouldn’t expect to continue receiving the kinds of perks they’ve enjoyed under previous presidents.

With Obama in office, Gore’s plan will certainly get more traction than it would have if John McCain – or any other Republican – had won the election. Indeed, Obama has already voiced support for a shift to renewable energy sooner rather than later. In a taped message to the Bi-Partisan Governor’s Global Climate Summit earlier this week, President elect Obama left no doubt that his administration is committed to making serious investments in a clean energy future. He also addressed the final part of Gore’s plan: the need for real government commitment to the fight against global warming.

In the address, Obama stated,

My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.

That will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.

Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.

This investment will not only help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, making the United States more secure. And it will not only help us bring about a clean energy future, saving our planet. It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating five million new green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

I promise you this. When I am President, any governor who is willing to promote green energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that is willing to invest in green energy will have an ally in Washington.  And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.

After all of this, you might be thinking, why ten years? Isn’t that kind of crazy, considering the state of things? The thing is, long deadlines that are decades away don’t exactly spur immediate, passionate action. A sense of urgency is just what we need to make this happen. Plus, a 10-year deadline comes with the benefit of being 80% Obama administration.

None of this would be easy, but what would be even harder is trying to survive on an increasingly inhospitable planet where extreme weather dramatically affects the world food supply.  The very existence of the human race on this planet is at stake, and that’s what makes all of this worth fighting for. And, it would be far better to take on this challenge and fail than not to try at all. We’d still be much further along than we are now.

But let’s not forget the power of this country to make something happen. Despite this country’s history of racial inequality – and lingering tension – we elected a black man to be our leader in a time of crisis because he is the best man for the job. We rose above our past so that we can have a better future, and we’re going to do it again.

As Gore said himself,

In an earlier transformative era in American history, President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon within 10 years. Eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The average age of the systems engineers cheering on Apollo 11 from the Houston control room that day was 26, which means that their average age when President Kennedy announced the challenge was 18.

This year similarly saw the rise of young Americans, whose enthusiasm electrified Barack Obama’s campaign. There is little doubt that this same group of energized youth will play an essential role in this project to secure our national future, once again turning seemingly impossible goals into inspiring success.

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