Governor Granholm: Federal Government must act to create clean energy jobs

This is a guest post by CAP’s Kalen Pruss.

New unemployment numbers out today show no improvement in the job market.  Although the July unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%, the economy lost 131,000 jobs last month, more than twice as many as economists expected.  Overall, it’s been a very poor summer for job growth, making the Senate’s failure to pass job-growing climate and clean energy legislation that much more disappointing.

Industrial states have largely bourn the brunt of the country’s job high unemployment rate.  Michigan, the “automobile capital of the world,” has faired the worst.  The state’s unemployment rate sat at 13.2% in June, the lowest rate in a year.  Employment numbers shrank every year over the past decade; personal income fell in 2009 for the first time in thirty years; and manufacturing jobs number almost half what they did in the late 1990s.

But the state is starting to take big steps to stem the job loss.  In a presentation at the Center for American Progress Thursday, Governor Jennifer Granholm energetically explained how Michigan is creating jobs by building a low-carbon economy.  Taking advantage of Michigan’s manufacturing base, the Governor is fighting tooth and nail to bring clean energy businesses to Michigan.  Thus far, the results are impressive, and she described many successes.

• Michigan factories will make General Motor’s new Chevrolet Volt, which will get a whopping 230 miles per gallon and travel up to 40 miles on it’s battery pack alone.  (Last month, President Obama visited both the Detroit Hamtramck facility where the car is being built, and the Holland, Michigan, plant where LG Chem is to make the Volt’s lithium ion battery packs.  He took the Volt on “the shortest joyride in history.”)

• Twelve Michigan businesses won $1.35 billion in stimulus investments for advanced battery research and manufacturing last August, over half of such funds made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
• Today, 16 advanced battery companies are located in Michigan, representing almost $6 billion in total investment and the potential to create 62,000 new jobs.
• Since the passage of the Recovery Act, seven major solar companies have invested over $3 billion dollars in Michigan, slated to create almost 21,000 jobs.
• Already, clean energy projects funded by the stimulus package have saved or created 54,000 jobs in the state.
• In sum, 47 clean energy companies have invested over $9 billion in Michigan.

But according to Governor Granholm, Michigan’s transition to a clean energy economy cannot be sustained without some assistance from  the federal government.  For one, Michigan””and other industrial states trying to diversify and sustain job growth””needs the federal government to send a market signal to businesses by passing a climate and clean energy bill.  This will provide certainty for investors and reduce the cost differential between new, clean energy sources and old, dirty sources such as coal.

Second, Granholm asked for additional government incentives to create demand for clean energy products, like feed-in tariffs and clean energy tax credits.  These incentives  would encourage families to purchase solar panels, plug-in electric hybrid vehicles and other emerging technologies, speeding their commercialization.

The two term Michigan Governor also emphasized the importance of capital availability for clean energy start up companies.  Mid-size manufacturers are struggling to get access to credit, she said, but would readily retool their plants to become more efficient and build clean energy technologies if they could only secure the loans.  When businesses get loans, they create jobs, and invest in infrastructure that keeps them in the states and helps local communities grow.

Governor Granholm was very clear: the states cannot wait any longer.  The federal government must act to send the right market signals, create jobs, and build the clean energy economy””and they must start now.  She implored:

“Every other country is doing this.  They are eating us for lunch.  And if we don’t put our finger on the scale for our own people, and our own manufacturers, shame on us.  We will lose this opportunity.  And do we really want to lose the manufacturing backbone of the United States and the jobs that go with it.  We’ve got to be making jobs in this country, and that means we need a federal government that is engaged.”

Guest blogger Kalen Pruss is the administrative assistant for speech writing for the office of the president at the Center for American Progress.