Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Address Clean Energy Priorities at Democratic National Convention Tonight

The National Clean Energy Summit's guiding principles, outlined below, will grow our economy, create jobs, improve our health, protect our national security and clean our polluted air. If just 20% of our nation's power came from renewables by 2020, Americans would benefit by the creation of nearly 200,000 direct jobs, annual energy savings in excess of $10 billion and a future with energy independence.

    The Summit's consensus recommendations include the following:

    The Federal government should:

    -- Provide long-term extension of tax incentives for renewable energy
       production and energy efficiency.  Establish incentives for the
       construction and purchase of super fuel-efficient autos such as plug-in
       electric hybrid vehicles
    -- Set a national renewable electricity standard for utilities to produce
       a significant portion of their electricity from wind, solar, and
       geothermal energy.  This should be at least 20% by 2020.  It would
       reduce consumers' energy costs, energy price volatility and greenhouse
       gas emissions
    -- Establish, enforce and update building code standards for energy
       efficiency in new and retrofitted buildings to save consumers money and
       reduce fossil fuel use.  Provide incentives for efficiency related
       renovations. Reduce building energy use by 50% by 2030.
    -- Put a price on carbon pollution, through a cap-and-trade program or
       other means
    -- Modernize and expand the nation's electrical grid to make it smart and
       more secure, and capable of transferring or storing clean renewable
       energy in combination with electric vehicles, while providing greater
       access to such resources in an environmentally responsible way
    -- Provide the technical and financial resources for a transition of
       states, like Nevada, and/or small countries around the world to be
       completely energy independent and carbon neutral to serve as an example
       of how these goals can be achieved
    -- Act swiftly to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks, and
       increase funding for private-public partnerships to build a
       transportation sector that uses far less or no oil
    -- Buy, and give significant incentives to consumers and small businesses
       to buy, clean alternative fuel and plug-in hybrid vehicles.  This
       should include natural gas heavy-duty fleet vehicles
    -- Initiate electrification of our entire transportation sector so it uses
       only clean domestic energy soon
    -- Fully fund and expand a green jobs/clean energy corps program to
       weatherize millions of homes, train workers for new energy technology
       application, build a smart grid, etc.
    -- Provide incentives to states to decouple utility profits from
       electricity sales to encourage significant new investments in energy
       efficiency, and ensure net metering and "time of use" pricing/real time
       information is available
    -- Create a Federal clean energy fund to invest in research, development
       and deployment of efficiency and renewable technologies
    -- Encourage or direct utilities to organize the retrofitting of existing
       buildings to become significantly more energy efficient
    -- Expedite identification and reservation of Federal public lands that
       have high potential for the environmentally responsible production of
       renewable electricity, and improving permitting processes for clean
       energy production on such lands
    -- Vastly increase the budget for clean energy research, development and
       deployment, including greater emphasis on commercializing research
       funded by taxpayers
    -- Greatly increase investments in public transit to make it more
       affordable and accessible
    -- Fully fund and expand LIHEAP, low-income weatherization and Energy &
       Environmental Block Grant programs
    -- Reduce Federal government energy consumption by half within the next
       fifteen years
    -- Fund research into carbon capture and storage technology that can
       dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power
       plants
    -- Speed the transition from corn based ethanol to sustainable biofuels
       such as cellulosic ethanol made from wood chips, agriculture waste, and
       switch grass.  This could include a joint US-Brazilian investment in
       sugar cane ethanol in the Caribbean, which would create jobs in this
       developing region
    -- Convert solid waste landfills so that they produce waste heat, biofuels
       or fertilizer from methane emissions or organic materials.
    -- Assist China and India and other developing nations with their adoption
       of clean energy technologies


    States Should Consider Policies to:

    -- Require all new state government buildings to be LEED certified.
    -- Convert state vehicle fleets to clean alternative fuels
    -- Create incentives for renewable energy by lowering property taxes for
       these facilities, and exempting them from sales tax
    -- Require that homeowner associations allow solar panels and other
       renewable technologies

SOURCE National Clean Energy Summit

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