SENTIENT TIMES February/March 2004

New Energy ~ New Jobs

By Michael Shellenberger

President Bush seems intent on creating jobs as far away from planet earth as possible. With unemployment still high, and continued instability in Iraq, this administration’s sudden interest in space travel is more the result of presidential politics than a true commitment to re-establishing American leadership. A better, if more low profile Apollo Plan was unveiled last January by the Apollo Alliance, a broad coalition including business, labor, environmental, farm and civil rights groups.

Named after JFK’s program to put a man on the moon in under a decade, the New Apollo Project is as ambitious as the space program and as necessary as the inter-state highway system. A recently released report by an independent economist shows that a New Apollo Project will create more than three million new jobs by investing in the transition to new energy systems and modernizing our infrastructure. It will also rebuild cities, strengthen the economy, and free America from oil dependency—all in under a decade.

In the past, economic policies have too often pitted advocates of workers rights and environmentalists against each other. Policy fights over everything from fuel efficiency for cars and trucks to drilling in Alaska have divided more than united. But now unions see the chance to grow the labor movement. Environmentalists see the opportunity to get real investment in clean energy. Businesses, which are starting to join the coalition, see the chance to make a lot of money, while civil rights and urban leaders recognize the value of reinvesting in communities, shared public infrastructure, and good jobs.

And everyone sees a way to break through partisan politics in Washington. The need is obvious. We’ve lost 3 million jobs since 2001, most in the manufacturing sector, which is the backbone of the American middle class. Meanwhile, Japanese and European competitors have increased their global market share of solar panels—a technology American companies invented—from 25 to 50 percent. Europeans dominate 90 percent of the world’s wind turbine production.

American companies are getting left behind because the Japanese and European governments make smart investments in clean energy while we cut taxes and subsidize the oil industry.

There are few technological obstacles to making Apollo happen. What is needed is forward looking vision, and a commitment to solve the most pressing problems of our day. What we need is leadership that rally’s our country to confront today’s, not yesterdays, challenges.

Apollo’s $30 billion annual investment will go into everything from saving the American auto industry by subsidizing and accelerating the transition to hybrids and hydrogen cars to retrofitting old buildings to create new demand for solar and wind power. In contrast to the economic growth caused by the dot com exuberance of the late nineties, Apollo is about helping American companies make real things for real people.

If American economists agree on anything it’s that inventing new technologies, investing in infrastructure, and creating whole new industries is what America does best. Like our investment in highways, microchips and even the Internet, Apollo will more than pay for itself. Not only will it save consumers over $200 billion by making our current production and use of electricity far more efficient, Apollo will return over $300 billion to the US treasury in new revenue, as wages and profits rise.

Apollo will create jobs in construction, manufacturing, transportation, building and maintenance. And by modernizing our industrial base, it will save millions of jobs in manufacturing that are now at risk to foreign competition. It will also invest in protecting essential public services, and help municipal governments as they feel the pinch of the worst state fiscal crisis since the great depression. Unlike many of the jobs that are replacing lost manufacturing, Apollo jobs will be in sectors of the economy that tend to pay a living wage and offer health, retirement and other benefits.

Apollo will benefit working-class families in African American, immigrant and white communities, as well as provide good jobs for engineers and professionals.

Energy efficiency and savings on this scale will clean up our air, reduce our commute times, make our neighborhoods more livable, reduce crime, expand the middle class, and broaden economic opportunity across class and race.

Apollo will also free our foreign policy from the influence of oil, which has constrained our ability to deal with Saudi Arabia and other countries with well-documented ties to terrorist groups. And it will help the planet, easing environmental pressures like global warming. Any way you look at it, this new Apollo project is a good bet for America.

Michael Shellenberger is Executive Director of the Breakthrough Institute and a member of the Apollo Alliance Steering Committee. For more information visit www.apolloalliance.org.

“Electricity From The Wind Economic Development For Rural Communities

According to the US Department of Agriculture’s 2003 farm income forecast, 94% of total farm household income comes from off-farm sources. Many rural families work off-farm jobs in addition to farming to make ends meet. Dan McGuire, chief executive officer of the American Corn Growers Foundation, said that low commodity prices combined with high production costs are responsible for this, and wind energy provides another source of income while fostering economic development in rural communities.

McGuire cites a Minnesota project that demonstrates why farmers, ranchers, and rural communities should get involved with wind energy as a new source of income. The Kas Brothers’ Wind Farm at Pipestone, completed in 2001, is the first farmer-owned commercial wind farm in the United States. Developer Dan Juhl installed two NEG Micon 750-kilowatt (kW) turbines with an estimated annual electricity production of 4.5 million kilowatt-hours (kWh). That wind farm now yields $30,000-$40,000 annually for the first ten years of operation and is expected to yield $110,000-$130,000 annually thereafter, depending on the level of electricity production.

McGuire said that this project is an excellent example of community-based economic development. Local contractors Olsen Electric and K-Wind participated. Xcel Energy contracted to purchase the electricity. Local banks provided the financing. The wind turbine, the power contract, the maintenance agreement, and insurance allow the banks to make the loans with little risk. Local ownership also keeps the electricity revenue circulating in the community. This wind farm model is so successful that Juhl has several new projects in the works this year.

Wind power also is providing “a nice kick” to the local economy of Milton-Freewater, Oregon, according to Mayor Lewis Keys. The new 41-MW Combine Hills Turbine Ranch wind farm in his district will provide wind power for area residents, who also will benefit from the infusion of construction dollars.

“Having been a farmer of wheat, barley, and peas for 35 years, it was hard to imagine the surrounding land being used for anything other than farming, but now I can see the diversity of its uses,” Keys said.

Leroy Ratzlaff, a third-generation landowner and farmer in Hyde County, South Dakota, agrees. Ratzlaff’s family used a wind generator in the 1930s before rural electrification reached their farm. In 2003, he leased his land to a wind developer that installed seven wind turbines, providing a much-needed economic boost.

“It’s not as risky as farming,” Ratzlaff said.

The American Corn Growers Foundation commissioned a nationwide, random, and scientific survey of 500+ corn farmers in the 14 states representing nearly 90% of the nation’s corn production. The poll found that 93.3 percent of the nation’s corn producers support wind energy; 88.8 percent want farmers, industry, and public institutions to promote wind power as an alternative energy source; and 87.5 percent want utility companies to accept electricity from wind turbines in their power mix.

Because much of the nation’s wind energy potential is found in rural areas, wind energy offers an unprecedented opportunity for rural economic development. Wind power projects bring new tax revenue to rural communities. Wind power projects create new jobs in rural communities in manufacturing, transportation, and construction of projects. Roads must be built. Towers must be erected. Once the projects are complete, jobs are created in the operation and maintenance of the projects.

The US wind industry currently contributes to the economies of 46 states. And according to a study by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, wind energy produces 27% more jobs per kilowatt-hour than coal plants and 66% more jobs than natural gas plants.

Of course, wind energy offers many benefits beyond rural economic development. Wind energy is “homegrown” energy that can extend non-renewable energy sources, helping to secure our energy future, reduce energy costs, and reduce our dependence on foreign energy. Wind power produces no air or water emissions, which improves the health of our environment. But perhaps the greatest benefit of all is the hope that wind energy projects can offer to rural Americans who wish to remain on their family farms and make a living from them.

Clean Energy Would Create 3.3 Million High-Wage Jobs

The Apollo Alliance has received support from 17 of America’s largest labor unions, as well as a broad cross section of the environmental movement, including the Sierra Club, the NRDC, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Greenpeace.

Dr. Ray Perryman, a corporate economist from Texas who prepared a detailed economic analysis of the proposal for a New Apollo Project said, “If economists agree on anything it’s that inventing new technologies and creating whole new industries is what America does best. We are a creative economy, not a commodity economy. The New Apollo Project would keep us on the cutting edge of manufacturing emerging technologies and secure our long-term prosperity.”

Perryman concluded that the proposed tax credits and investments would create 3.3 million new, high-wage jobs for manufacturing, construction, transportation, high-tech, and public sector workers, while reducing dependence on imported oil and cleaning the air. Perryman’s analysis shows that a New Apollo Project would also position the US to take the lead in fast-growing markets, dramatically reduce the trade deficit and more than pay for itself in energy savings and returns to the US Treasury.

Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr. (D-IL) issued a statement in support of the Apollo Alliance saying, “One of the keys to America’s energy security—and therefore our national security—lies in rebuilding our cities. We need strategic investments to retrofit old buildings, expand transportation alternatives, restore our infrastructure, and create solar, wind and hydrogen technology. Apollo will rebuild our country in a way that benefits all Americans and reestablishes our global economic competitiveness.”

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) said, “The New Apollo Energy Project is an opportunity for a bold new energy policy that can free us from our over-dependence on Middle East oil, expand the economy, and address environmental challenges. We should call for a total national commitment to harness the genius of America’s can-do attitude that would design, invent and deploy the new clean energy technologies that benefit this new century. No single national endeavor has such capacity to expand our economy by tapping our innate and unique technological genius for innovation, and creating millions of new jobs.”

Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, said “A New Apollo Project will help accelerate the transition away from our dependence on imported oil and other polluting fossil fuels, and toward clean energy like solar and wind. An Apollo Project can simultaneously address the threats of manufacturing job loss, global warming and our diminishing national energy security.”

This article was prepared by the American Agricultural Wind Coalition with information provided by the Department of Energy’s Wind Powering America Program. For more information, contact: http://www.eere.energy.gov/windpoweringamerica. Learn more about the foundation’s Wealth from the Wind program at http://www.acgf.org/or write to the foundation at P..Box 18157, Washington, DC 20036.

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