Why Everyone Should Rally Behind Clean Power

Clean Power Is Affordable – From Production to Use

It is pretty cheap to generate power from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind compared to dirtier fossil fuel energy. Solar is the cheapest power generation source today and solar panel innovation continues to bring down costs and improve efficiency.

Once wind turbines and solar panels are installed, all that’s needed is the transmission of power to the electric grid to get it to homes and businesses.

Generating power from fossil fuels, on the other hand, involves several more steps. Fossil fuels need to be extracted, transported, refined and/or processed, transported again, used as fuel at a power plant, and finally transmitted to the electric grid before reaching homes and businesses.

Each of those additional steps comes with additional costs and emissions. The result is a more expensive and dirtier means of generating electricity.

Clean Power is a Common-Sense, Bipartisan Solution

As a volunteer leader in a local chapter of the nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby, I work to lobby for bipartisan, common-sense solutions to addressing climate change.

Our legislative priorities are energy permitting reform, carbon pricing, healthy forests and building electrification and efficiency. We meet with Democrats and Republicans at the federal and state levels about how we can all benefit from climate legislation.

We attribute our 70% success rate to our unique approach of meeting lawmakers where they are at and offering solutions that work toward their priorities. There are certainly challenges and we don’t always see the legislation we support pass. But we continue to build relationships among lawmakers for climate action.

Thankfully, when it comes to clean energy, it is becoming an easier argument to make as time goes on. We are seeing thousands of jobs, greater private investment and other economic benefits tied to transitioning to a cleaner economy in many parts of the country.

Sustainable jobs are predicted to make up more than 10% of all U.S. jobs by 2032. That includes here in Orange County. High-paying and rewarding clean tech jobs are a great incentive for local students at the University of California, Irvine and California State University, Fullerton’s leading clean tech programs to stay in this vibrant region after graduation.

While climate goals are extremely important, it is ultimately the economics of an electrified economy run by clean energy that will be the driving force behind the transition for the next few years.