Photo Credit: paulaphoto- stock.adobe.com
The Labor Network for Sustainability has endorsed the “Energy Security and Independence Act” (ESIA), sponsored by Senator Sanders and Representatives Bush and Crow. The legislation would take on the climate crisis, deny revenues to authoritarian petrostates, and invest in clean energy manufacturing and energy efficiency.
Here are some highlights of the bill:
- Invest $100 billion in reinvigorating the domestic clean energy industrial base using the Defense Production Act
- Create a Domestic Renewable Energy Industrial Base Task Force to coordinate an all-of-government approach that engages environmental justice communities, manufacturers, scientists, engineers, planners, and labor unions to plan and implement a transition to 100 percent renewable energy
- Provide $10 billion in loans and grants to bolster the domestic renewable energy system component manufacturing supply chain with strong corporate governance standards and benefits for taxpayers
- Provide $30 billion to weatherize 6.4 million homes over the next 10 years to save working families nearly $2 billion each year on their utility bills
- Invest $10 billion to procure and install millions of heat pumps, significantly reducing the consumption of imported fossil fuels
- Create good, union jobs by requiring high-road labor standards for all funded projects
- Fulfill EJ40 commitments by investing at least 40 percent of funds in environmental justice communities
Meanwhile, a group of senators are calling for an “Energy Marshall Plan” to help get Europeans off of Russian energy. In a letter to Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) urged the administration to use the Defense Production Act and military sales to boost manufacturing of electric heat pumps, efficient electric appliances and renewable energy technology. They also asked the president to push for reduced trade barriers and to ramp up clean energy exports to “mirror the Lend-Lease Act program implemented during World War II, through which the United States sent critical supplies to Allied nations invaded by Germany.”
And the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with nearly 100 members, called on the Biden administration to take immediate action to
- Use the Defense Production Act to ramp up deployment of renewable energy technologies.
- Ban new fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and waters.
- Declare a climate emergency and ban crude oil exports.
Read the full CPC executive action agenda here.