Page 6 - AsiaElec Week 14 2021

AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec

Energy Secretary Granholm:

Focus on renewables will help US

manufacturing catch up with China

CHINA THE focus of the administration of US President bowed to [the] altar of low-cost globally. And
Joe Biden on renewable energy can help America when we do that, we give away our manufac-
catch up with China’s dominance in the sector. turing backbone. So, we used to manufacture
This is according to Biden’s Energy Secretary solar panels in this country. We don’t anymore,
Jennifer Granholm in a recent interview with the because China came in, [and] had as a strategy
public affairs TV programme PBS Newshour. that it was going to get the global economic cor-
Biden’s focus can also help bolster America’s ner on making solar panels.”
“manufacturing backbone,” she told host Judy She added: “And what this president is saying
Woodruff. is, no more. That is not going to happen. We’re
Biden’s ground-breaking $2 trillion infra- going to manufacture the means to our energy
structure plan, announced last week, includes security in this country; to our national security
$100bn for upgrading America’s electric grid in this country. We’re going to make things in
and making it resilient to climate change, as well America.”
as all-important renewable energy tax credit Trump had an America First strategy, but it
extensions and a novel clean energy standard, a amounted to political isolationism and high tar-
device that many states have implemented. The iffs on imports of key goods – leading to trade
latter requires that utilities purchase a certain wars with China and the EU – and with no atten-
proportion of their electricity from clean-energy tion paid to human rights.
sources. Biden’s, however, includes nuclear. “Why should we be putting out all this effort
In fact, analysts have called the entire infra- to have clean energy but buy our windmills from
structure plan as something akin to a climate Denmark?” continued Granholm. “Why should
plan, so prominent is energy and electricity. we be buying the means to put solar panels on
The plan, for example, also would end all fed- our roofs from a country that [has] human rights
eral fossil fuel subsidies, which in the US remain violations?
massive and which is unlikely to gain passage “It’s just – it’s not an economic strategy that
in Congress, and it includes major spending for is a winning strategy for our people, or our
electric vehicles (EVs). nation or our security. And that’s what this bill
Biden has cannily positioned his fight against addresses.”
climate change as a jobs plan, realising that he When asked how Biden’s emphasis on green
cannot get support for the strategy without jobs is compatible with the loss of employment in
support from ‘rust belt’ lawmakers whose con- sectors such as fossil fuel, Granholm said: “There
stituents were key voters in helping elect his pre- are many more jobs in this clean energy realm
decessor Donald Trump and then, late last year, than there have been in the fossil fuel industry
Biden. and it is so true that we don’t want to see people
hurt, people who have built this nation and pow-
Interview ered our nation.
Granholm’s interview is especially important “What this bill does is allow us to manage our
because it highlights, on a flagship and highly carbon dioxide emissions. So, the president has
respected daily news programme on public tel- a goal of getting to net-zero CO2 for this country
evision, just how important renewable energy by 2050. And that means that we have got to fig-
is to the new Biden administration. Granholm’s ure out ways to clean up our fossil fuel industry.
interview was almost solely about renewable “And even the fossil fuel industry itself is
energy. Biden came into office for a four-year doing [cleaning itself up].”
term in January and has not even completed his She concluded: “This bill allows us to begin to
symbolic first 100 days. put people to work in making sure we have clean
The Energy Secretary, the former governor of power in this country.”
a rust belt state, has previously said: “Our eco- Granholm noted the importance of upgrad-
nomic competitors are eating us for lunch.” ing the grid because it is so old. “Much of it was
She told Newshour: “We, as a nation, have built in the 1950s,” she observed. “The grid in

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 14 07•April•2021