|
Support The Jorgensen Plan
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Domenici, and Members of the Committee, I support and strongly encourage you to combine S. 3233, the 21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act, and S. 2730, the Clean Energy Investment Bank Act of 2008 and to make these combined acts a key component to an immediate economic stimulus package with initial funding of $100 billion dollars.
These bills create a federal funding entity (FFE) whose purpose is to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies which can put people to work immediately – engineers, contractors, plumbers, electricians and solar installers to work in every community throughout America. Investments that can help ameliorate the financial crisis with real assets as collateral for the loans.
I encourage this Committee to specifically provide this $100 billion dollars for an economic stimulus package that focuses on existing, proven technologies that are not being properly exploited, such as energy efficiency enhancements and solar thermal installations for residential and small business.
Loan guarantees, energy-efficiency mortgages, and secondary market support for energy efficiency improvements, solar thermal applications and other similar technologies provide the greatest short and long-term societal benefit for our tax dollars. These ‘unsexy’ improvements and technologies can be made more attractive by encouraging the aggregation of such projects for resale to a government-sponsored secondary market. Don’t through money at a single solution, build sustainable financial markets that can eventually stand on their own and keep generations of Americans working.
Energy efficiency, solar thermal cooling/heating and solar hot water projects can make a meaningful contribution to our energy, environmental, economic or physical security but have difficulty accessing private sources of funding due to aggregation-related credit issues, unknown residual values, inadequate secondary markets for used equipment and/or certain regulatory risks.
Eventually, the federal funding entity needs to expand authority to fund energy supply solutions for new technologies under development that meet the goal of energy independence. Additionally, the federal funding entity requires the flexibility to invest in expansion and improvement of the transmission grid, which will provide benefits in job creation and energy security into the future.
States should participate in the federal funding entity through Intergovernmental Agreements with risks sharing for the deployment of energy efficiency and solar thermal technologies. I spoke at the second annual “Serve to Preserve Summit on Global Climate Change” in Miami this year hosted by Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist. During my session titled “Going Green Makes Economic Sense”, I proposed a $1 billion dollar loan guarantee program to put solar thermal cooling, heating and hot water into Florida’s government buildings. This $1 billion dollar initiative translates into 200 to 300 solar thermal cooling projects ranging from $1 million to $10 million dollars each throughout the State of Florida. A single billion dollar investment in “solar cooling” shifts $4 billion dollar in fossil fuels purchases to create jobs directly in our local communities. Annual energy for cooling and ventilating commercial buildings and homes consume over 50% of all electricity produced in Florida
Dr. Hermann Scheer, a member of the German Parliament, President of EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energy, and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy, met with me at the second annual “Serve to Preserve Summit” in Miami. Dr. Scheer, who has led Germany’s rise to a solar and wind energy superpower, said that countries need to do three things to push renewable energy: guarantee payment (through loan guarantees), guarantee access to grid for any producer of renewable power, and to not cap contribution of renewable power.
Except for a short time working for Price Waterhouse in New York City, I have worked the majority of my life in small family businesses. I am your foot soldier in our “war against unsustainable living”.
After 911 occurred, I felt responsible for that event. And as a responsible person who assumes full responsibility for my actions and inactions, I have been working diligently to see that my sons and daughters live in a better place. My existing businesses turned to recycling and saving energy immediately. And I started a new company focused on solar thermal energy for air conditioning. For the past 18 months, my solar company, Solarsa has spent ½ million dollars engineering three of the largest on-site solar thermal (cooling, heating & hot water) systems in the world that make economic sense regardless of gas prices. Solarsa uses technology that has been tested, certified and readily available. 1000’s of similar systems are in Asia and Europe. Financing remains our biggest hurdle.
With a back ground in accounting and finance, over 25 years of running my own businesses and five years in startup mode for my solar thermal energy company, I present to you;
The Jorgensen Plan:
· Ask the American people to work hard for “Energy Independence”. And we will.
· Provide immediate emergency funding of $100 billion for a federal funding entity (as identified in S. 3233 and S. 2730) and $100 billion each year for the next nine years.
· Provide loan guarantees for large and small energy efficiency and solar thermal projects.
· Create a government-sponsored secondary market to aggregate residential and commercial scale energy efficiency and solar thermal projects so that Americans can invest in our homes, businesses and communities.
You have Americans that will never hold a rifle, but we, Americans are ready to fight and work hard for our “Energy Independence”. Give us not guns, but create financial markets so that we can invest in our homes and businesses. After 911, you had an opportunity to call the American people to war against oil… not for oil. We have no one to blame for 911 and its aftermath, other than ourselves.
We have had enough finger pointing; Americans are ready to take responsibility for 911, climate change, high or low gas prices and world unrest. We no longer accept Washington, Wall Street or Detroit blaming others for their demise.
Shift to long-term thinking. Consider the legacy we leave our children. Thirty years from today, what will our children remember of what we did today? What will the history books say about you, about me? Wall Street bailout. Detroit bridge-loan. Job losses… Not exciting things to be remembered by.
Call Americans to work! To work harder for our “Energy Independence”! We don’t need handouts, but jobs. Jobs that are sustainable. We are willing to work hard, save and invest in our children’s future. Our grandparents knew how to save and maybe we need to live a little more like they did.
From democrats to republicans, both parties have changed because of us, the voters. I call on Congress to immediately replace purchases of fossil fuels with manufacturing, finance, engineering, installation, maintenance and repair jobs through the enactment of a combined S. 3233, the 21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act, and S. 2730, the Clean Energy Investment Bank Act of 2008 and a minimum funding of $1 trillion dollars over ten years.
Call on Americans to help, to invest and to save. Make “Energy Independence”, America’s number one priority. Thirty years from now, I want my grandchildren to see those same solar panels still working that we installed during this first year of our “war against unsustainable living”!
| 
