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Policy PrioritiesFederalSummary of Senate Hearing on Green JobsOn September 24, 2007, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a full committee hearing entitled "Green Jobs Created by Global Warming Initiatives". Donald Gilligan, president of the National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO) was among the 12 witnesses who were asked to provide comments on the impact global warming initiatives would have on jobs and the U.S. economy. NAESCO President Donald Gilligan testified about how improvements in energy efficiency since 1980 have provided more than 50% of the U.S. growth in energy use with ESCOs delivering $4 billion of energy efficiency projects annually. Gilligan said that NAESCO believes that a major national commitment to energy efficiency, the cornerstone of all green initiatives, will create hundreds of thousands of high-skill, high-wage jobs, will provide a substantial boost to our national economy, and will increase our national security. He cited the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency which found that a national effort by utilities to invest about $7 billion a year in energy efficiency would leverage an additional $20-30 million of non-utility investment which in turn would yield annual savings to consumers of about $22 billion in 2017 or a net present value of about $344 billion. Based on three different studies of job creation effects, Gilligan said a mid-point estimate of jobs created under the investment levels envisioned by the National Action Plan would be about 298,000 jobs. Gilligan's full testimony can be found on the NAESCO website. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), James Inhofe (R-OK) and Bernard Sanders (D-VT) opened the hearing with Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Warner (R-VA) attending parts of the hearing. Questions posed to the witnesses revolved around the mechanisms Congress needs to implement in order to ensure jobs created by global warming initiatives stay in the U.S. and whether these mechanisms would, if implemented, harm the U.S. economy. Other witnesses included Sigmar Gabriel, German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; former Congressman Richard K. Armey , Chairman, FreedomWorks; Jerome Ringo, President, Apollo Alliance; and Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures and former founder of Sun Microsystem. |
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