Vote Solar Joins the Newly Formed Alliance for a Clean Economy

A broad and diverse coalition of organizations including clean energy businesses, trade groups and environmental advocates including Vote Solar came together over the past six weeks to urge California policy makers to support a sustainable, resilient and inclusive economic recovery from the losses resulting from the pandemic.

The coalition, calling itself the Alliance for a Clean Economy (ACE), developed a detailed set of policy recommendations that they sent to Governor Gavin Newsom and the leaders of the California Assembly and Senate.

Since the economic crisis resulting from the pandemic California has lost nearly 90,000 clean energy jobs representing 16% of its workforce.  Clean energy jobs in 2019 accounted for 30% of statewide construction jobs.  ACE called on the Governor to make a renewed commitment to California’s landmark clean energy objectives to decarbonize the economy as quickly as possible.

A key recommendation to the Governor was the formation of a Clean Energy Action Team that would coordinate activities across all state agencies to deploy “shovel-ready” clean energy projects.  A similar inter-agency working group was formed during the 2007-2009 Great Recession which drove billions of dollars of new investment in California.

Vote Solar is committed to working with this coalition and others to ensure that clean energy and clean transportation will be the underpinnings of California’s economic recovery.