Democratic presidential candidate Jay Inslee released a clean energy plan Thursday that he says would create 8 million jobs in a decade while transitioning the economy away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.
His “Evergreen Economy Plan” calls for at least $300 billion in annual federal government spending over a decade to mobilize another $600 billion each year, totaling a $9 trillion investment, on clean energy research and development, green transportation infrastructure, job-training programs, and affordable housing.
Evoking Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Inslee says his proposal represents an economic response to what he calls the biggest modern threat to civilization: climate change.
“This challenge presents an unprecedented economic opportunity, to lead the world in building a clean energy future,” Inslee said. “Just as it did in the 20th century, America must rise to this 21st century challenge with a bold plan to: create jobs; protect workers’ rights; repower the economy; rebuild our infrastructure; and reinvest in innovation.”
The economic plan is the second component of Inslee’s multifaceted climate agenda that has an overarching goal of making the U.S. achieve net-zero emissions, across all economic sectors, “as fast as possible, and by no later than 2045.”
Net-zero, or carbon neutrality, refers to the process of eliminating as many carbon emissions as are produced within the country.
Inslee released the first part of the agenda this month, which would would put the U.S. on a path to having all “clean, renewable and zero-emission” electricity by 2035, with a goal of closing all the country’s coal plants by 2030.
Inslee, the governor of Washington state, is running a single-issue campaign to fight climate change.
He has presented himself as an experienced pragmatist who has had success with climate change initiatives in his state, one of the greenest in the country.
[Also read: House Democrats introduce climate-focused infrastructure bill with $33B for renewables]
Central to that experience, he says, is his stewardship of the Washington state economy, which he says is the fastest-growing in America due to investments in clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
His economic plan for the federal level would do the following things:
- Establish a ReBuild America Initiative to upgrade millions of buildings over the next two-plus decades to make them more energy efficient
- Create a $90 billion Green Bank for clean energy deployment, and provide grants instead of tax incentives for installing wind and solar
- Double federal government investment in public transit, with spending on electric vehicle charging infrastructure
- Establish a Clean Water for All Initiative to close a “$82 billion annual funding gap” in drinking water, stormwater and wastewater infrastructure
- Make “major investments” in U.S. manufacturing of electric vehicles and batteries that power them, while creating a new Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit to incentivize making products in the U.S.
- Utilize the Export-Import Bank to increase exports of American-made clean energy goods
- Increase clean energy research spending to $35 billion each year, more than five times the current funding, with a focus on advancements in agriculture, a sector particularly vulnerable to climate change
- Enact a “G.I. Bill” of benefits for affected coal workers and communities
- Block so-called Right-to-Work laws, while emphasizing apprenticeship programs and creating and enforcing protections for gender pay equity
