How Can We Achieve Energy Independence?

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Written by Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director


The best way to recover our economy is by becoming energy independent in ways that create new American jobs.  This will require a massive undertaking to make America’s energy supply cleaner and America’s energy use more efficient – an undertaking that will create millions of jobs and a new economic engine for the 21st century.   

By retrofitting buildings to increase energy efficiency, expanding mass transit, constructing “smart” grid transmission systems, and expanding clean energy such as wind, solar and biofuels. We could create millions of new jobs and would yield a total economic return much greater than a comparable investment in the oil industry.

Both presidential candidates talk about energy independence – but only Barack Obama’s plan has the right policies and smart investments--$150 billion for clean energy—to actually put us on the road to energy independence.  McCain merely offers more oil, more nuclear power, and more coal—the same energy mix that has left us dependent on hostile regimes and put our economy at risk.   

Instead of bailing out Wall Street’s recklessness, these investments will pay for themselves, put Main Street back to work and America back on the path to prosperity.  Repowering America will allow us to spend hundreds of billions a year on homegrown, job-creating clean energy, energy efficiency, and the efficient vehicles of the future here in the U.S. instead of sending it overseas to buy oil.