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We Need a Clean Energy Bank

By Scott Jorgensen, Solarsa
March 2, 2009 | 9 Comments

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Dear President Obama: Do you want full transparency to ensure citizen oversight of fund allocation of our economic stimulus billions? Do you want public-private partnerships to support innovation?

Citizens are the answer to fixing our economy and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

There are 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 9/11, our country had an opportunity to call the American people to war against oil... not for oil.

Today, we have had enough finger pointing; Americans are ready to take responsibility for 9/11, 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-loans. Job losses... Not exciting things to be remembered by.

Call on Americans to help, to innovate, 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"! Put citizens and small business as "drivers" of our new economy... Not big business, not big oil and not big utilities.

From Democrats to Republicans, both parties have changed because of us, the voters. I call on you and Congress to create a Clean Energy Bank that will immediately replace purchases of fossil fuels with manufacturing, finance, engineering, installation and maintenance and repair jobs. A Clean Energy Bank can be created through the enactment of a combination of Senate bills S. 3233, the 21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act authored by Senator Bingaman, and S. 2730, the Clean Energy Investment Bank Act of 2008 authored by Senator Domenici. These two bills were debated in the Senate during a Full Committee Hearing (SD-366) Tuesday, July 15, 2008, received bipartisan support and have been endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce, Google.org and SEIA (Solar Energy Industry Association).

I believe you can turn this economic crisis into an extraordinary opportunity to achieve far-reaching benefits for our country. I wish my voice to be heard in strong support for you and Congress to combine rapidly S. 3233, the 21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act, and S. 2730, the Clean Energy Investment Bank Act of 2008 and make the combined act a key component to upcoming legislation on the advancement of green technology.

The Senate bills I referred to above, S. 3233 and S. 2730, create a federal funding entity (Clean Energy Bank) 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.

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. A Clean Energy Bank will 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.

States could participate in the federal funding entity (Clean Energy Bank) through Intergovernmental Agreements with risks sharing for the deployment of energy efficiency and solar thermal technologies.

I recently spoke at the second annual "Serve to Preserve Summit on Global Climate Change" in Miami hosted by Florida's Governor Charlie Crist. During my session titled "Going Green Makes Economic Sense," I proposed a US $1 billion dollar loan guarantee program to put solar thermal cooling, heating and hot water into Florida's government buildings. (Watch a video of my presentation, here.)

This US $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

I am your foot soldier in our "war against unsustainable living."

With a back ground in accounting and finance, over 25 years of running my own small 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 and ‘pay the price' for "Energy Independence".
Provide immediate emergency funding of $10 billion for a Clean Energy Bank (as identified in Senate bills S. 3233 and S. 2730)
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.

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.

Scott Jorgensen is President & CEO of Solarsa. His background is diverse and includes working for Price Waterhouse in New York City, trucking/logistics/warehousing in Charleston, South Carolina, commercial accounting software development and restaurant/franchising in Tampa Bay. Jorgensen has operated his own businesses for the past twenty-five years and understands how rising and unpredictable energy costs impact a business and our Nation's economy. Jorgensen started Solarsa with a "vision" that our Nation's energy future must include on-site, distributed and renewable energy systems. Solarsa provides reduced and predictable energy prices to customers for heating, cooling and hot water. Click here to watch a two minute video of his plan.

Solar Energy

The information and views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on its Web site and other publications.

9 Reader Comments

Comment
1 of 9

dominic-jermano-62365

March 4, 2009

Pete Domenici is and always has been a advocate for Nuclear Energy Plants......you mean to tell me he is supporting Solar Initiatives now ....and not sneaking in a Nuclear Program in the package? I would be very wary of that; just like the reminder of Phil Grams Enron Loophole scam....to the American People.

So the idea of a Clean Energy Bank....will get its money from who? The Banks that are Nationalized now from the 700b? or from the 789b stimulus Obama engineered by not bringing justice to Bush and Cheney for War Crimes?

But hey we American people have been duped twice...why not a third time, with even more debt.!! Seems to me if Obama brought the troops home and stopped playing Super Cop all over the world killing millions of innocent people and getting the rest of the World more angry, so they increase their defense spending, we would have money to use for Clean Energy. A 1/4 of the military budget would be more than enough...........but NOoooooooooooo.

You really think Obama listens to the People? or gets his orders still from the Secret Government of GW Bush & Co.? I really think its the later!

Comment
2 of 9

russell-bradford-155487

March 4, 2009

This is better than nothing, but it still allows politics to play a major role in where the money goes. We'd be far better off with a plan that allows individuals to invest directly in large scale energy projects, fully burdened with both their up-front costs as well as carbon and cleanup and security and whatever other costs. Such a plan would demand that government NOT SUBSIDIZE any form of energy, renewable, fossil or otherwise. Not a dime. By allowing investors to invest directly in large-scale energy projects and to receive electricity as their ROI similar to investing in solar panels on your roof but gaining the economy of scale of large scale deployment, then the consumer can decide what makes the most economic sense and once you work the numbers, it turns out there is no need for subsidies of any kind saving trillions in taxpayer dollars over the next 30 years or so.

Using this approach there are immense savings in costs by eliminating the financier and the mark-ups along the way. If nuclear with the costs for reprocessing and 100,000 year storage makes sense, thats where people will put their money. If "clean coal" makes sense after Cap and Trade, fine. What we'll see is that with such a plan, wind, solar, biomass, ocean all come out on top and every single consumer, business or residential, has the opportunity to invest and save, and save big. This plan exists but getting anyone to hear about it or act on it is the achilles heel. We're stuck in the mindset that government must do all, be all, and solve all; yet that simply does not need to be the case. Government is wasteful and corrupt and we all know it. We know we'll spend billions on clean coal just as we spent billions on ethanol knowing it was 98% political and 2% solution and we'll continue to spend money where we know it is the wrong place to spend it. With this plan, if someone wants to invest in a technology and receive less energy for more money, that's their choice.

Comment
3 of 9

marcusmaedl

March 4, 2009

Good idea. Let's expand it to financing (or loan guarantees) of other kinds of renewables.
Together with a feed in tariff, this is what created such a grass roots movement in Germany. If a finance entity is comfortable financing projects based on a technology it understands, it is that much easier for potential system owners to move forward with system deployments.

The feed in tariffs guarantee the revenue to pay for the loan, the manufacturers guarantee the generation of energy as a basis for the revenue. Simple, easy and cost effective.

Comment
4 of 9

b-nicholson-160206

March 4, 2009

You have a second.

Comment
5 of 9

dominic-jermano-62365

March 4, 2009

We need jobs to be able to make income to have investments.
No jobs no investments. First order of busniess should be to
make unemployment Illegal. It will be against the Law to Fire or Lay off people. It forces companies to change in a positive direction, while protecting human rights..... I just love hearing America is for Human Rights yet it has more unemployment than many third world countries. What a fiasco... Companies should be helping people find work....not kicking them out the door because of some bottom line by a greedy CEO.....who sits home on his a$$ doing nothing.... The clowns running the show are going to find its curtains for them....because we just ain't goin to your circus anymore.

OutLaw UnEmployment.....and make unemployed Insurance a revenue source for creating new jobs....

Then we can get the money for investments.

Comment
6 of 9

thomas-schmidt-36371

March 5, 2009

Ask the American people to work hard and 'pay the price' for "Energy Independence".

Why don't you ask us yourself? It would seem that renewable energies would go to any extreme, except the one that would lower consumer pricing and make renewable energy products more affordable to the average and below average income households in America. Instead its affordable only to the average and above. Financing adds cost to an already premium priced product.

Provide immediate emergency funding of $10 billion for a Clean Energy Bank (as identified in Senate bills S. 3233 and S. 2730)

Whats the emergency? It not as if, a one world government that will reside in an orbiting space city, safe from any resistance, printing its one world currency, is going to happen tommorow. RE has plenty of time to make its billions before then.

Provide loan guarantees for large and small energy efficiency and solar thermal projects.

RE products are already premium priced and now you want to add intrest to that? How does that benefit Americans? Seems to me that benefits only RE product producers the banks and dealerdhips. As usual, the consumer carrys the greatest burden.

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.

Make RE products affordable to average, and below, income families not just average, and above. It would seem to me that RE is no different than any other industry that every was. Where RE product pricing is concerned It rewards gluttony and punishes conservatism.

I'd have more PV modules for my family home but can't afford them. What makes you think that I can afford interest on a loan for more PV modules as well?

Comment
7 of 9

thomas-schmidt-36371

March 5, 2009

Total retail revenues collected for the sale of electricity in America last year reached $343.7 billion dollars.
What was RE's take on that? 20%? 10%?
Lets assume that was only 2%.
Thats only $7 billion dollars in one year.
Tisk, tisk. My, aren't we the poor cousin? No wonder RE is having such a hard time getting into bed with the pollitcians and the established electric power providers.
And you want the congress of the United States government to tell the citizens of this American nation to help you and your kind?
Why should we?
To be independent of the natural resources from this or that nation? Why stop there? We can be independent of manmade energies altogether, including RE.

Mankind thrived for thousands of years on Earth without all of these energies we take for granted today. Its only been in that last 200 years that we have begun to believe that we would all die without them. In that same 200 years population rate of growth has exploded, not like a fire cracker, no, more like Big Boy over Hiroshima.

Pity about Earth.

Comment
8 of 9

scott-jorgensen-20121

March 5, 2009

"Provide loan guarantees for large and small energy efficiency and solar thermal projects." Solar electric was specifically not mentioned in my article.

For every bad mortgage, there are hundred of good mortgages with people that made the right decidsion within their means. For the millions that live within their means, making energy efficiency improvement and installing solar hot water would be another intellegent decision that is well documented with payback in single digit years.

I am not asking our government to lend money to people that cannot afford to make payments, but to provide financing for those that install EE and solar thermal systems that save more than they costs.

Comment
9 of 9

scott-jorgensen-20121

March 27, 2009

Congress is listening. See recent House bill on Green Bank and Senate bill on Clean Energy Deployment Administration.

Thank you!!!

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