February 27, 2026

Comprehensive Energy & Climate Bill Passes the House

by Keith Schneider0

The House of Representatives passed a sweeping climate and energy bill last Friday, the first time a U.S. chamber of Congress has passed a bill that sets mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The American Clean Energy & Security Act passed the House with a vote of 219-212; 211 Democrats and 8 Republicans supported the bill. In his weekly address a day after the vote, President Obama said the legislation was “historic” and would “open …

Read More

The Sun, the Wind, and the Promise of Ohio’s Clean Energy Development

by Keith Schneider1

TOLEDO -This worn Lake Erie city is an unlikely launching point for Ohio’s new clean energy economy. Dark storefronts and empty homes in Toledo, like the missing teeth of a tired grin, scar the shrinking city of 295,000 that once declared itself the auto parts capital of the world. Tall grass grows in the cracked asphalt of empty parking lots by closed factories that once made steel and glass and manufactured parts that kept America …

Read More

Michigan’s Sun, Wind Sprout New Clean Energy Jobs Sector

by Keith Schneider2

MANISTEE, MI – Every half-century or so since its founding in 1841, this stubborn Lake Michigan port city, which cut hardwood for lake steamers in the 19th century and built parts for Detroit carmakers in the 20th, has endured the optimistic surge and demoralizing retreat of economic transition. Last month, on the kind of cold, wet, early spring day that makes residents question their allegiance to northern Michigan, Manistee latched onto what it believes is …

Read More

Can Electric Whirr Save The American Auto Industry?

by Keith Schneider0

DETROIT – The old sound of Detroit’s automakers was an octane-stoked Vroom! The sound of Detroit’s future, say top auto industry executives, is an electric whirr. General Motors plans to introduce its breakthrough Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid electric vehicle in November 2010. Ford is already selling the 40-mile per gallon hybrid electric Fusion sedan and is preparing a plug-in model for introduction in 2012. Last December, Chrysler introduced three electric vehicles it is developing for the …

Read More

Death of a Great Reporter

by Keith Schneider21

My friend John Wilke, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and one of the smartest no-nonsense journalists I ever had the good fortune to know, died today. A man who chose the news as the center of his professional life did an awful good job of keeping his own illness from being the news. I only learned of his trials with cancer a little more than a week ago. But for those of us …

Read More

Next: Stimulus Is Just The Start, Galbraith Argues, To Federal Leadership in Clean Energy Development

by Keith Schneider0

In mid-January, as the House of Representatives and the incoming Obama administration readied the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus bill, James K. Galbraith joined a 10-member delegation from the Apollo Alliance in Washington to make the case for a big investment in clean energy and green-collar jobs. On Tuesday, February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which contains $11 billion to build a state-of-the art national energy grid, $6 …

Read More

Jerome Ringo’s Tireless Pursuit of Clean Energy Economy

by Keith Schneider0

Like other nationally prominent public interest leaders, Apollo Alliance President Jerome Ringo spent a few days after Barack Obama’s election considering its full meaning. It wasn’t just that the new president was African American like himself. It was also that President Obama had campaigned and won on almost precisely the same call for a clean energy, good jobs economic transition that Ringo has championed for the Apollo Alliance from one end of America to the …

Read More

Obama’s Clean Energy Salute to Greensburg, Kansas

by Keith Schneider1

Last night, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama commended Greensburg, Kansas, “a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how clean energy can power an entire community, how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay.” America loves its small towns, and two presidents now have …

Read More

Recovery Bill is Breakthrough on Clean Energy, Good Jobs

by Keith Schneider1

In signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act today President Barack Obama ensured that $113.5 billion will be spent over the next two years on developing clean fuels, modernizing rail transit, pursuing energy efficiency, developing high-mileage electric vehicles, and scaling up electrical generating stations powered by the wind, sun, and heat of the earth. The magnitude of the clean energy investment – consistent with the sums spent to launch the Interstate Highway System in the …

Read More

Carol Browner Needs Focus on The Stimulus

by Keith Schneider0

This afternoon Carol Browner appeared on the CNN Situation Room where she didn’t do nearly as good a job answering questions about clean energy and the stimulius as the President and the nation need her to. The stimulus contains more than $115 billion dollars in investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy development, transit, fit-it-first road repair, research and development, experimental projects on carbon sequestration, and manufacturing for next generation vehicles. The scale and comprehensive nature …

Read More