By Kevin McCarty
October 13, 2008

Former President Bill Clinton joined with more than 50 U.S. mayors and other participants October 2 at the closing session of the ’08 Mayors Forum on Environment and Energy in Miami, sharing his perspectives on key energy and climate challenges before the nation during a lengthy dialogue with mayors.

“I think energy is the answer to America’s economic problem,” Clinton said, explaining that the U.S. in the past decade had focused its economic growth strategy largely based on housing and consumer spending. “The alternative strategy is energy, and we walked away from it.” To support his case, he described how other nations, notably United Kingdom and Denmark, have derived significant economic benefits by making energy a priority and “have invested in a radically different future.”

Citing the Conference’s new Green Jobs report, Clinton said, “You have done a very good thing with your jobs projections.” He renewed his challenge to the Conference and the mayors to make the economic case for energy efficiency and climate actions, an issue he discussed at length during his remarks to the 2007 Mayors Climate Protection Summit in Seattle.

“The central idea is that, while we have largely made the sale, there are still people who persist in the notion that you can’t grow any economy past a certain point without putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This jobs report that you are issuing today is very, very important to that,” he said.

Clinton identified several actions to help the U.S. seize the economic opportunity that will result by moving to alternative energy resources and increased energy efficiency. Specifically, he affirmed key elements of the mayors’ action agenda, such as modernizing the grid to promote renewable energy supplies and decoupling of electricity rates from use, that were discussed previously during the Miami and New York City Forums.

“We have refused to modernize our electric grid so that we can put in windmills and the large-scale solar projects in the places where they are most efficient and into the electrical grid to give it to the rest of us at an efficient price. One of the things you should insist on in federal policy is modernizing the grid,” he said.

He amplified another element of the mayors’ agenda, specifically the need to “decouple” electric utility rates from electricity use. “The second thing that will help you more than anything else in the cities is if every state in the country, by federal legislation, would follow the lead of California and decouple electricity rates from electricity usage,” he said.

Decoupling, he explained, would prompt utilities throughout the nation to undertake and finance broad-scale energy efficiency improvements in homes as well as commercial and governmental buildings, much like his Clinton Climate Initiative partnership with the Conference of Mayors focuses on retrofits of government building through energy service contracting. “If you decouple, then you can make it just as profitable to finance every home in your cities and finance energy efficiency as it is to build a new power plant. The low-hanging fruit is still in energy efficiency,” he said.

In several instances during his dialogue with the mayors, Clinton acknowledged the importance of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, which was enacted late 2007 in the larger energy legislation, stating at one point that, “You need the block grant to do some of the things you do.”

Clinton also engaged the mayors in a lengthy discussion of prospects for Congressional action on federal “cap and trade” legislation, explaining the potential benefits of a national cap and trade structure to set a price and limit carbon emissions. “That (cap and trade legislation) will create a market, which is bigger than the one that exists today, to do what you and the private sector will have to figure what to do as quickly, as efficiently and as intelligently as possible.” During discussion, he expressed confidence that given the positions of the two Presidential candidates and changes in the Congress that “a reasonable federal bill” will be enacted.

In concluding his remarks, he emphasized the need for mayors, other government leaders and the private sector to make the retrofitting of homes and businesses more user friendly. “Do we need federal cap and trade legislation? Yes. Do we need federal legislation to modernize the grid? Absolutely. But, there are a lot of things that the rest of us can do, and I would urge all of you to make this user friendly so the people we represent just have to say yes. If we do this right, we can cut their bills if they will just say yes. And, this is key to the next formal progress.”