How to create family-wage jobs in alternative energy
Apollo Alliance maps strategy for ‘09 Legislature
Members of the Oregon Apollo Al-
liance met Jan. 22 to plan strategy for
the 2009 Oregon Legislature. The
Apollo Alliance is a coalition of union,
business and environmental groups
that is calling for major government
investment in alternative energy as a
way to create new high-paying jobs for
American workers. The group’s Ore-
gon chapter was formed last year.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski will
be proposing to enact major legislation
next year to reduce the state’s contri-
bution to global warming. Kulongoski
is taking part in the Western Climate
Initiative, in which six Western states
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and two Canadian provinces are devis-
ing a regional approach to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. And Ore-
gon House and Senate committees are
meeting this year with business and
environmental groups to draft bills that
will be introduced when the Legisla-
ture returns for its regular biennial ses-
sion in January 2009.
Oregon Apollo, chaired by Oregon
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Barbara
Byrd, wants to ensure that organized
labor is at the table during those dis-
cussions.
“If we’re not at the table raising the
issue of jobs,” Byrd told the Labor
Press, “it doesn’t get raised.”
By way of example, Byrd points to
major legislation the Oregon Legisla-
ture passed last year on renewable en-
ergy, including a big increase in a tax
credit and new mandates for utilities to
meet. Labor came late to the discus-
sion, and had little success getting job
standards into those laws. As a result,
there’s no assurance that the invest-
ments sparked by those laws will em-
ploy local skilled workers at a living
wage.
“We don’t want to see a lot of
money thrown at this problem with no
economic impact in this state,” Byrd
said. “We can’t afford to waste this op-
portunity.”
At the Jan. 22 Apollo Alliance
meeting, Jeremiah Baumann from the
group Environment Oregon gave
union attendees an intro to “cap-and-
trade.” Cap-and-trade is the regulatory
model that’s most likely to win ap-
proval next year in the Oregon Legis-
lature. A version of it is already up and
running in the European Union, and
another is about to begin New Eng-
land, which has a multi-state climate
change compact similar to the one the
Western Climate Initiative is working
to create.
The way cap-and-trade works, gov-
ernment sets a maximum level of
greenhouse gases and then issues per-
mits to emitters. About 80 percent of
the greenhouse gas emissions Orego-
nians are responsible for come from
transportation and electricity genera-
tion. So in the most likely scenario,
electric utilities and gas companies
would be the ones required to hold
permits for greenhouse gas emissions.
The allowable limit would go down
every year, so that utilities and gas
companies would have to do some-
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cause efficiency improvements would
reduce the amount of electricity used.
The Oregon Legislature begins a
special session Feb. 4. While it’s a
short session that won’t take up major
legislation, at least two bills will ad-
dress climate change. One, sponsored
by House Rep. Brad Witt (D-
Clatskanie) would retrofit state build-
ings to improve energy efficiency. The
other would spell out more details
about a new Climate Change Commis-
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thing to reduce fossil fuel use. But the
permits could be traded, so that a mar-
ket system would determine the
cheapest way to achieve the reduc-
tions. If government auctions the per-
mits, that could generate resources that
can also be used to fund energy effi-
ciency improvements or other priori-
ties.
On the whole, Baumann said, the
cost per kilowatt hour would go up un-
der a cap-and-trade system of green-
house gas reduction, but electricity
users’ bills would stay the same be-
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