Former President Bill Clinton capped the fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, sponsored by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), with Clintonian observations on the state of greentech.
Renewable energy is vital, President Clinton said. But “it always begins with efficiency,” because that is where the biggest jobs benefit is.
“A billion dollars invested in a coal plant generates 870 jobs,” he explained. “The same billion dollars used to build wind can generate 3,300 jobs. But a billion dollars invested in building retrofits,” he said, “creates 7,800 jobs.”
To drive the growth of efficiency and distributed generation, Mr. Clinton insisted, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) should get out of the way of property-assessed clean energy (PACE) programs that allow repayment for such work through homeowners’ property tax assessments.