On Clean Energy

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON CLEAN ENERGY,
Trinity Structural Towers Manufacturing Plant
Newton, Iowa,12:52 P.M. CDT,THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you so much.  Thank you, Rich, for the great introduction.  Thank you very much.  Please, everybody have a seat.,It is good to be back in Newton, and it's a privilege to be here at Trinity Structural Towers.  I've got a couple of special thank yous that I want to make, because I've got a lot of old friends -- not old in years, but been friends for a long time now.  First of all, your outstanding Governor, Chet Culver, please give him a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  His wonderful wife, Mari, I see over here.  She's not on the card, but -- (applause.)  My outstanding Secretary of Agriculture, who I plucked from Iowa, Tom Vilsack and his wonderful wife Christie Vilsack.  (Applause.)  We've got the Attorney General of Iowa, one of my co-chairs when I ran in the Iowa caucus and nobody could pronounce my name -- Tom Miller.  (Applause.)  My other co-chair, Mike Fitzgerald, Treasurer of Iowa.  (Applause.)  We got the Iowa Secretary of State, Mike Mauro.  There he is.  (Applause.)  We've got your outstanding member of Congress who's working hard for Newton all the time, Leonard Boswell.  (Applause.)  And your own pride of Newton, Mayor Chaz Allen.  (Applause.)  There he is, back there.  It's good to see you again, Chaz.,It is terrific to be here -- and by the way, I've got a whole bunch of folks here who were active in the campaign, and precinct captains.  And I just want to thank all of them for showing up, and to all the great workers who are here at this plant -- thank you.  (Applause.),I just had a terrific tour of the facility led by several of the workers and managers who operate this plant.  It wasn't too long ago, as Rich said, that Maytag closed its operations in Newton.  And hundreds of jobs were lost.  These floors were dark and silent.  The only signs of a once thriving enterprise were the cement markings where the equipment had been before they were boxed up and carted away.,Look at what we see here today.  This facility is alive again with new industry.  This community is still going through some tough times.  If you talk to your neighbors and friends, I know they -- the community still hasn't fully recovered from the loss of Maytag.  Not everybody has been rehired.  But more than 100 people will now be employed at this plant -- maybe more, if we keep on moving.  Many of the same folks who had lost their jobs when Maytag shut its doors now are finding once again their ability to make great products.,Now, obviously things aren't exactly the same as they were with Maytag, because now you're using the materials behind me to build towers to support some of the most advanced wind turbines in the world.  When completed, these structures will hold up blades that can generate as much as 2.5 megawatts of electricity -- enough energy to power hundreds of homes.  At Trinity, you are helping to lead the next energy revolution.  But you're also heirs to the last energy revolution.,Think about it:  roughly a century and a half ago, in the late 1950s [sic], the Seneca Oil Company hired an unemployed train conductor named Edwin Drake to investigate the oil springs of Titusville, Pennsylvania.  Around this time, oil was literally bubbling up from the ground -- but nobody knew what to do with it.  It had limited economic value and often all it did was ruin crops or pollute drinking water.,Now, people were starting to refine oil for use as a fuel. Collecting oil remained time consuming, though, and it was back-breaking, and it was costly; it wasn't efficient, as workers harvested what they could find in the shallow ground -- they'd literally scoop it up.  But Edwin Drake had a plan.  He purchased a steam engine, and he built a derrick, and he began to drill.,And months passed.  And progress was slow.  The team managed to drill into the bedrock just a few feet each day.  And crowds gathered and they mocked Mr. Drake.  They thought him and the other diggers were foolish.  The well that they were digging even earned the nickname, "Drake's Folly."  But Drake wouldn't give up.  And he had an advantage:  total desperation.  It had to work.  And then one day, it finally did.,One morning, the team returned to the creek to see crude oil rising up from beneath the surface.  And soon, Drake's well was producing what was then an astonishing amount of oil -- perhaps 10, 20 barrels every day.  And then speculators followed and they built similar rigs as far as the eye could see.  In the next decade, the area would produce tens of millions of barrels of oil.  And as the industry grew, so did the ingenuity of those who sought to profit from it, as competitors developed new techniques to drill and transport oil to drive down costs and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.#p#分页标题#e#,Now, our history is filled with such stories -- stories of daring talent, of dedication to an idea even when the odds are great, of the unshakeable belief that in America, all things are possible.,And this has been especially true in energy production.  From the first commercially viable steamboat developed by Robert Fulton to the first modern solar cell developed at Bell Labs; from the experiments of Benjamin Franklin to harness the energy of lightning to the experiments of Enrico Fermi to harness the power contained in the atom, America has always led the world in producing and harnessing new forms of energy.,But just as we've led the global economy in developing new sources of energy, we've also led in consuming energy.  While we make up less than 5 percent of the world's population, we produce roughly a quarter of the world's demand for oil.,And this appetite comes now at a tremendous cost to our economy.  It's the cost measured by our trade deficit; 20 percent of what we spend on imports is the price of our oil imports.  We send billions of dollars overseas to oil-exporting nations, and I think all of you know many of them are not our friends.  It's the same costs attributable to our vulnerability to the volatility of oil markets.  Every time the world oil market goes up, you're getting stuck at the pump.  It's the cost we feel in shifting weather patterns that are already causing record-breaking droughts, unprecedented wildfires, more intense storms.,It's a cost we've known ever since the gas shortages of the 1970s.  And yet, for more than 30 years, too little has been done about it.  There's a lot of talk of action when oil prices skyrocket like they did last summer and everybody says we got to do something about energy independence, but then it slips from the radar when oil prices start falling like they have recently.  So we shift from shock to indifference time and again, year after year.,We can't afford that approach anymore -- not when the cost for our economy, for our country, and for our planet is so high.  So on this Earth Day, it is time for us to lay a new foundation for economic growth by beginning a new era of energy exploration in America.  That's why I'm here.  (Applause.),Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy.  The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.  We can remain the world's leading importer of oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of clean energy.  We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects.  We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity:  The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.,America can be that nation.  America must be that nation. And while we seek new forms of fuel to power our homes and cars and businesses, we will rely on the same ingenuity -- the same American spirit -- that has always been a part of our American story.,Now, this will not be easy.  There aren't any silver bullets.  There's no magic energy source right now.  Maybe some kid in a lab somewhere is figuring it out.  Twenty years from now, there may be an entirely new energy source that we don't yet know about.  But right now, there's no silver bullet.  It's going to take a variety of energy sources, pursued through a variety of policies, to drastically reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels.  As I've often said, in the short term, as we transition to renewable energy, we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas.  We're not going to transform our economy overnight.  We still need more oil, we still need more gas.  If we've got some here in the United States that we can use, we should find it and do so in an environmentally sustainable way.  We also need to find safer ways to use nuclear power and store nuclear waste.,But the bulk of our efforts must focus on unleashing a new, clean-energy economy that will begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, will cut our carbon pollution by about 80 percent by 2050, and create millions of new jobs right here in America -- right here in Newton. ,My administration has already taken unprecedented action towards this goal.  It's work that begins with the simplest, fastest, most effective way we have to make our economy cleaner, and that is to make our economy more energy efficient.  California has shown that it can be done; while electricity consumption grew 50 percent in this country over the last three decades, in California, it remained flat.,Think about this.  I want everybody to think about this.  Over the last several decades, the rest of the country, we used 50 percent more energy; California remained flat, used the same amount, even though that they were growing just as fast as the rest of the country -- because they were more energy efficient.  They put in some good policy early on that assured that they weren't wasting energy.  Now, if California can do it, then the whole country can do it.  Iowa can do it.#p#分页标题#e#,Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we've begun to modernize 75 percent of all federal building space, which has the potential to reduce long-term energy costs just in federal buildings by billions of dollars on behalf of taxpayers.   We're providing grants to states to help weatherize hundreds of thousands of homes, which will save the families that benefit about $350 each year.  That's like a $350 tax cut.,Consumers are also eligible as part of the Recovery Act for up to $1,500 in tax credits to purchase more efficient cooling and heating systems, insulation and windows in order to reduce their energy bills.  And I've issued a memorandum to the Department of Energy to implement more aggressive efficiency standards for common household appliances, like dishwashers and refrigerators.  We actually have made so much progress, just on something as simple as refrigerators, that you have seen refrigerators today many times more efficient than they were back in 1974.  We save huge amounts of energy if we upgrade those appliances.  Through this -- through these steps, over the next three decades, we will save twice the amount of energy produced by all the coal-fired power plants in America in any given year.,We're already seeing reports from across the country of how this is beginning to create jobs, because local governments and businesses rush to hire folks to do the work of building and installing these energy-efficient products.,And these steps will spur job creation and innovation as more Americans make purchases that place a premium on reducing energy consumption.  Business across the country will join the competition, developing new products, seeking new consumers.,In the end, the sum total of choices made by consumers and companies in response to our recovery plan will mean less pollution in our air and water, it'll reduce costs for families and businesses -- money in your pocket -- and it will lower our overall reliance on fossil fuels which disrupt our environment and endanger our children's future.,So, that's step number one:  energy efficiency.  That's the low-hanging fruit.  But energy efficiency can only take us part of the way.  Even as we're conserving energy, we need to change the way we produce energy.,Today, America produces less than 3 percent of our electricity through renewable sources like wind and solar -- less than 3 percent.  Now, in comparison, Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power.  We pioneered solar technology, but we've fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in generating it, even though we've got more sun than either country.,I don't accept this is the way it has to be.  When it comes to renewable energy, I don't think we should be followers, I think it's time for us to lead.  (Applause.),We are now poised to do exactly that.  According to some estimates, last year, 40 percent of all new generating capacity in our country came from wind.  In Iowa, you know what this means.  This state is second only to Texas in installed wind capacity, which more than doubled last year alone.  The result:  Once shuttered factories are whirring back to life right here at Trinity; at TPI Composites, where more than 300 workers are manufacturing turbine blades, same thing; elsewhere in this state and across America.