Vice President Joseph Biden is urging companies invested in low-carbon energy to use their clout with Congress to stop Republicans from reversing the progress made on clean energy.
Biden made the call to action on Tuesday while addressing investors at a clean energy summit at the White House. “Many of you have influence on the Hill. We need you to make the case” for maintaining investment in solar and wind energy, he said, with investors Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs represented at the event for their support of renewable energy.
The vice president recalled the progress made toward clean energy under President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package.
The stimulus gave a host of grants and expanded the loan guarantee program for renewable energy at the Department of Energy. It also established the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to advance cutting-edge clean energy technologies. Biden argues that the renewable energy development that was boosted under the economic stimulus could be undone as Congress seeks to reduce the Department of Energy’s renewable energy budget for fiscal 2016.
“We invested over $90 billion in clean energy,” Biden said, “more than ever invested” in U.S. history on clean energy. But the “short-sighted decisions” of the majority on the Hill seek to “ramp it down as fast as we ramped it up.”
The vice president referred to new appropriations bills that could slash clean energy spending at the Energy Department if passed.
He also referred to recent action taken by the House on environmental spending bills, through which lawmakers are seeking to derail key environmental and climate change programs through adherence to strict spending cuts known as budget “sequestration.”
Biden said the GOP is making their moves while they “deny any such thing as climate change,” which “undermines the safety and security of America.”
As a result, Biden said, laboratories and other research institutions are pulling out of early stage innovation research and putting their money into already perfected technologies. But “that’s not where the future is,” Biden said.
“If we don’t seize the moment now,” he said, the nation is “getting closer to not being able to turn around” from a climate disaster.
Many of the actions taken through executive action by the president now could be seen as a direct response to the cuts being proposed on the Hill. Most of the actions pertain to making financing clean energy from outside the government easier, including for philanthropic groups and small business.
The president is directing the Treasury Department to issue new rules to make it easier for charitable foundations to invest in clean energy. The U.S. Small Business Administration will be taking actions to improve and strengthen “financing options for private funds that invest in clean energy technology companies and other early stage, innovation-driven small businesses,” according to the White House.
