Hillary Clinton announced two bold national goals that she will set as president to combat climate change, create jobs, protect the health of American families and communities, and make the United States the world’s clean energy superpower:
2) The United States will generate enough clean renewable energy to power every home in America within ten years of Hillary Clinton taking office.
The next decade will be decisive for our transition to a clean energy economy and our ability to meet the global climate crisis. The two goals Clinton announced are part of a comprehensive energy and climate agenda that she will lay out over the coming months.
By achieving these goals we will:
• Expand the amount of installed solar capacity to 140 gigawatts by the end of 2020, a 700% increase from current levels. That is the equivalent of having rooftop solar systems on over 25 million homes.
• Add more power generation capacity to the grid than during any decade in American history, from a combination of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and other forms of renewable electricity.
• Prevent thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year, meet our national and international climate targets, and move our economy along a path towards deep decarbonization by 2050.
How will we achieve these goals? Through a clean energy challenge to unleash American innovation.
First, Hillary Clinton will make it a top priority to fight efforts to roll back the Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power Plan is a crucial tool in our national strategy to reduce carbon pollution, level the playing field for and increase the deployment of renewable energy, and build a clean energy future. In the face of attacks from climate change deniers, we will need a champion in the White House to defend it and implement it effectively.
But smart federal standards set the floor, not the ceiling. We can and must go further.
Hillary Clinton will launch a Clean Energy Challenge that forms a new partnership with states, cities, and rural communities that are ready to lead on clean energy. She will outline this Challenge in detail in the coming weeks, and it will include:
2) Solar X-‐Prize: Awards for communities that successfully cut the red tape that slows rooftop solar installation times and increases costs for businesses and consumers.
3) Transforming the Grid: Work with states, cities and rural communities to strengthen grid reliability and resilience, increase consumer choice and improve customer value.
4) Rural Leadership: Expand the Rural Utilities Service and other successful USDA programs to help provide clean, reliable, and affordable energy, not just to rural Americans but to the rest of the country as well.
As part of the Clean Energy Challenge, Clinton will ensure that every part of the federal government is working in concert to help Americans build a clean energy future. This includes:
2) Solar Access: Overcome barriers that prevent low-‐income and other households from using solar energy to reduce their monthly energy bills.
3) Tax Incentives: Fight to extend federal clean energy incentives and make them more cost effective both for taxpayers and clean energy producers.
4) Public Lands and Infrastructure: Expand renewable energy on public lands, federal buildings, and federally-‐funded infrastructure, including an initiative to significantly increase hydropower generation from existing dams across the US.
5) Innovation: Increase public investment in clean energy R&D, including in storage technology, designed materials, advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and sequestration. Expand successful innovation initiatives, like ARPA-‐e, and cut those that fail to deliver results.
But this is only part of a comprehensive energy and climate agenda.
This is just the beginning of the energy and climate strategy that Hillary will present over the coming months, including ways in which the Clean Energy Challenge will improve the efficiency of our buildings and modernize our transportation system, as well as major initiatives in the following areas:
2) Modernizing North American Infrastructure: Improve the safety and security of existing energy infrastructure and align new infrastructure we build with the clean energy economy we are seeking to create.
3) Safe and Responsible Production: Ensure that fossil fuel production taking place today is safe and responsible, that taxpayers get a fair deal for development on public lands, and that areas that are too sensitive for energy production are taken off the table.
4) Coal Communities: Protect the health and retirement security of coalfield workers and their families and provide economic opportunities for those that kept the lights on and factories running for more than a century.
5) Collaborative Stewardship: Renew our shared commitment to the conservation of our disappearing lands, waters, and wildlife, to the preservation of our history and culture, and to expanding access to the outdoors for all Americans.
Hillary Clinton is a proven fighter against the threat of climate change.
As Secretary of State, Clinton built an unprecedented global effort to combat climate change, making it a key U.S. foreign policy priority. She appointed the first Special Envoy for Climate Change to make the issue a top priority in U.S. diplomacy. She led the creation of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition global initiative and with President Obama achieved the key diplomatic breakthrough that yielded the 2009 UN Copenhagen Accord, the first international climate agreement in which major developing countries like China, India, and Brazil committed to reduce their GHG pollution.
As Senator, Clinton advanced initiatives to protect the American people from the threat of climate change and unleash the full potential of America’s clean energy economy. She introduced the Strategic Energy Fund Act and co-‐sponsored and supported legislation to extend the Wind, Solar and Ethanol Tax Credits. She championed the Clean Power Act to reduce harmful industrial pollutants and was part of a bipartisan coalition to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling.
