California Businesses Join Forces to Create Clean Energy Alliance

In the wake of out-of-state oil companies spending millions of dollars to oppose California’s AB32 climate law, an alliance of California businesses as well as labor, environmental and community leaders have partnered to create the California Apollo Program, which provides a strategy on how the state can continue to create clean energy jobs through a number of initiatives ranging from renewable energy use to retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency.

The group says the California Apollo Program is a blueprint for moving California toward “broadly shared economic prosperity, energy security and climate stability while reinforcing the state’s commitment to a new clean energy future.”

If California’s climate law withstands the attacks from these out-of-state oil companies and is implemented as scheduled, it alone is expected to generate up to $104 billion in economic activity by 2020, according to the alliance.

Some of the program’s strategies include generating 33 percent of California’s power from renewable sources by 2020 and prioritizing in-state production, upgrading California’s existing buildings to world class energy-efficiency standards, ensuring that new construction is “green,” and modernizing the power grid to support clean energy generation and smart-grid technology.

It also includes revitalizing California by expanding environmentally sustainable renewable energy and carbon sequestration projects, helping manufacturers retool their factories and retrain their employees to produce clean energy products, and revamping California’s transportation manufacturing industry to meet growing demand for high-efficiency vehicles.

Some endorsers of the program include SunPower, Natural Resources Defense Council, State Building & Construction Trades Council of California and California Energy Efficiency Industry Council.