The Art of Organizing Clean Businesses with Bob Keefe

What happens when clean energy jobs face a political headwind—and how can business leaders fight back? In this episode of The Campaign Strategist, Bob Keefe of E2 joins Pete for a two-part conversation. First, they discuss how the Trump administration’s attacks on clean energy are stalling billions in investment and job creation. Then, they rewind to Bob’s original interview about the strategies E2 uses to mobilize unexpected messengers—businesspeople—for climate advocacy. If you want to understand how economic arguments win policy fights, this one’s for you.

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Transcript

The Art of Organizing Clean Business Voices with Bob Keefe

and Why Clean Energy Investments and Jobs are at Risk

bob: [00:00:00] Look, businesses depend on market clarity to make decisions, and right now we're get what we're getting outta. Washington is about as clear as a blizzard at midnight.   

Peter: Hello. Welcome back to the Campaign strategist. today's episode is, a little unusual 'cause when Bob Ke and I first spoke. It was shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, uh, but before he took office. And then we had some technical difficulties with the episode, which delayed getting it posted.

And in the meantime, a lot has changed. Trump has been aggressively attacking clean energy, cutting nearly all federal funding, blocking new projects, launching a tariff war that's disrupting supply chains. With so much shifting under our feet, I asked Bob to come back for a quick update on where things stand now.

So in this episode, we're gonna start. With my latest conversation with Bob, and then we'll share the parts of the original interview that are still just as relevant [00:01:00] today. So thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and like, and share, and let's get to it.

bob: Tell me how you wanna do this. What's the plan here?

Peter: okay, so I know I said 10 minutes and then I thought of a few questions. So how much time do you actually have?

I've got maybe 20 minutes I gotta get on the road to a,

Perfect.

bob: lawmaker meeting in Orange County.

Peter: Okay. So I'll just run through the questions. , what, what are the policies that have changed, since. Trump took office that is creating essentially the turmoil and putting a bunch of projects into question.

bob: It's so much of the economy, I think Pete and maybe society as a whole these days it's the general chaos. It's the market uncertainty and, as we've seen in our 4 0 1 Ks and in the stock market recently, and reaction to tariffs on tariffs off tariffs, maybe there's [00:02:00] nothing worse than uncertainty to royal. , stock markets and our economy in general. Look, businesses depend on market clarity to make decisions, and right now we're get what we're getting outta. Washington is about as clear as a blizzard at midnight. , and dead center in this is, yes, tariffs are one thing, but looming just as large as tax policy. Congress

Peter: Yeah.

bob: inching toward repealing clean energy tax policies that, that businesses were counting on to be in place for 10 years. , and we're investing because they thought those were gonna be in place for 10 years now. In the next, , in the weeks and the months ahead, Congress is gonna reconsider repealing those. And if they do, it's going to throw even more market uncertainty, into our economy.

Peter: And tariffs affect things because even if there's a manufacturer here in the US, they are still sourcing some stuff from [00:03:00] overseas, right? And so that, that makes it harder to. Get stuff in at the right price that you need to build your product with.

bob: And of course it's not just clean energy products we're talking about, it's everything,

Peter: Yeah.

bob: about everything we build in America. Whether it's a house or it's an airplane, a lot of the parts come from other parts of of the world. I. And to increase the prices on those is certainly going to impact the production of those in America.

But you're right, look at the we, we've got more than 150 EV related factories that have been announced in the past. Two and a half years, all of those are going yes, we're gonna build this stuff here in America, but the parts that they need don't necessarily all come

Peter: Yeah.

bob: Solar panels, we've got more than 50 solar panel related factories that have been announced in the past two and a half years.

Yes, they are creating jobs in places like Dalton, Georgia, and Arizona, and Louisiana, where some of these companies are building plants that [00:04:00] are employing hundreds, if not thousands of employees. But they're not making every single part that goes into that solar panel

Peter: Right.

bob: the it's next to impossible to do that in any country. So yes, tariffs are a huge

Peter: Yeah. Even for simple products, I, somebody recirculated the Milton Friedman example of global sourcing, just using a pencil and talking about the wood comes from one place, rubber comes from another, the graphite from another. So what are the most immediate consequences that you've been hearing from E two members on the ground?

bob: Look from, not just from E two members, but from the clean energy. writ large, they're worried and they're uncertain of what to expect out of Washington these days. And especially again, around surrounding clean energy tax credits that Congress is going to have to decide, what they're going to do with them in the next several months to to meet the budget constraints that are being created to pay for some of the policies that the [00:05:00] president wants to see happen. We've, my organization E two, has been tracking,, clean energy projects for over three years now. And what we've seen in the past few months is a precipitous and worrisome decline in the number of investments that are. Coming to America and an increase in cancellations. We've seen more than $6 billion worth of projects canceled clean energy projects canceled since January. Dozens of factories that are being delayed or scaled back, and that's not hurting folks in Washington DC although Washington DC has had a lot of pain lately too, of course.

But this

Peter: Yeah.

bob: hurting working class people in rural. Georgia and Kentucky and Tennessee and Michigan, where these projects were planned and local communities were counting on them and expecting them to come.

Peter: These are in places where a lot of people felt left behind by globalization

bob: I.

Peter: [00:06:00] and clean energy. Manufacturing and and development was one of the great strategies to give them new opportunities to revitalize these communities and to put thousands of people back to work. And it seems like that's all at risk.

bob: Absolutely. A lot of

Peter: Yeah.

bob: places were frankly, areas that were passed over by previous economic transitions, whether it was the dotcom boom or the computer age or even before then the advent of oil and gas for that matter. These are areas that. We're attractive to companies for a lot of reasons.

One of 'em is the availability of the workforce

Peter: Yeah.

bob: Because of high unemployment in some of these areas, and now they're going to essentially get the rug pulled out from underneath them that they were expecting. That was their their avenue toward jobs of the future.

Peter: So is all this causing you to rethink or evolve e two's advocacy strategies? Or does it [00:07:00] just make it even more imperative to get more voices engaged and, and talk more to members of Congress?

bob: absolutely. Like I mentioned later today, I'm

Peter: I.

bob: with a Republican member of Congress in district in, in, in California who has a lot of ri at risk of losing jobs and investments in her district for instance. But it's really about making sure that the lawmakers who are gonna be deciding this policy the tax credit policy, and that's. Essentially house Republicans understand what is at risk understand the jobs that are at risk, the investments are risk. And very importantly, Pete, understand the American competitiveness that is at risk. Look we all want more manufacturing in America. We want America to be more competitive with China and every other country.

That's leading the world in a lot of these areas right now. And if we roll these tax policies back and we throw more uncertainty into the marketplace, that's not gonna happen. And lawmakers need to understand that. Fortunately, they're starting to, we [00:08:00] saw just last week, four Republican senators sign a letter saying, we can't just cut these tax credits willy-nilly. We can't just kill this stuff because it's creating too many jobs. Bringing too many investments to America. Before that, we had 21 House Republicans sign a letter saying essentially the same thing. Don't kill this policy because it'll kill jobs and investments in my state and my district. So they're starting to understand the message. They're starting to understand what's at risk. And we just gotta make sure that they don't go backward with a call from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or something like that.

Peter: Yeah, any indications whether that message is getting through? At that particular address, the with more and more Republicans siding with, Hey, we need to keep these tax policies in place.

bob: I sure hope so, because if the president wants to create manufacturing jobs, if he wants to. keep America competitive on the global marketplace. If he [00:09:00] wants to create the energy production resources that we need to meet the energy emergency that he says we have, and that

Peter: Yeah.

bob: driving up the cost of electricity, then we need to produce of the products as we can to address those things. wind batteries is the cheapest power available. It's the easiest and quickest to deploy right now. Why would we do anything to put the brakes on that industry? This solar power, solar, wind and batteries added 93% of all electricity to the grid last year. Why would we

Peter: Wow.

bob: continue that if in fact we're trying to address a shortage of electricity and to bring down energy prices in America?

Peter: Wow. That is a massive contribution. I didn't realize that. That's great. Anything else you want to add?

bob: Just hopefully that, that members of Congress are hearing [00:10:00] from business people, members of Congress are hearing from your listeners about the importance of these policies, just from an environmental perspective, but from an economic perspective.

Peter: Yeah.

bob: and that's just important that we all talk to our lawmakers about that.

Peter: Terrific. 

And now the original interview with Bob.  

Pete Altman: Welcome to the campaign strategist today's guest is bob kief Bob is an author advocate journalist and the executive director of e2 environmental entrepreneurs A national organization representing more than 10, 000 business leaders, investors, and professionals from diverse sectors of the economy. Under Bob's leadership, E2 has been a powerful voice in advancing smart policies that benefit both the economy and the environment. Through his work, Bob has helped elevate the perspectives of business leaders and professionals in the push for clean energy and sustainable environmental practices. As an author, Bob has reshaped the narrative around climate action, highlighting the economic opportunities and value created by clean technologies and environmental innovation. [00:11:00] Bob, welcome. It is great to have you joining us here

today. 

Bob Keefe: Pete it's great to be with you, and thanks for that flattering intro. I don't know if I can live up to that, but grateful for it. We're all just Trying to do some good in the world, right?

Pete Altman: Absolutely. thank you for taking the time. you didn't start out as an environmental activist. So just tell us how you got to be doing what you're doing.

Bob Keefe: I got to be doing what I'm doing in the most roundabout way that you could probably get here, Pete. I spent, 20 plus years as a journalist and I covered everything from technology and business to, environmental issues a little bit and ultimately covered Congress and the White House for the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper.

What? I learned, I think, crossing all those different paths is how often and how, frequently they intersect between policy between business between our environment. and I was fortunate and lucky to be a journalist all over the country from the east to I was the national correspondent covering the West for a chain of [00:12:00] newspapers for a while.

And, every place from Florida to Texas to the Carolinas to Washington D. C. and the story was always the same. Businesses can make a difference in policy for good, for bad, for indifferent. if you harness that power, if you will, and you realize that and you meet people where they are, you can actually do some good.

I think With policy and with our society.

 I would say one of the first, times I really grasped the. clean tech or the opportunities in clean tech is when I was for a while covering the semiconductor industry, which of course is big in Austin, but I was actually in Silicon Valley at the time.

And this was just at the, as the internet Getting big. That's how old I am. a lot of these, internet companies were starting to realize, wow, we're using a lot of servers to do this internet stuff. Wow. These servers are using a lot of powers and boy, what are we going to do to get all of this?

And how do we address that? I remember meeting with the Intel's and A. M. D. S. And and the Cisco's and so forth that were really starting to get concerned with how much energy [00:13:00] usage That these big server farms were starting to create. Now guess what, with AI and everything else we're starting to realize this issue in spades when it comes to energy.

Pete Altman: So how did you go from journalism and writing about tech and other business topics to running E2?

Bob Keefe: I honestly got into journalism trying to do just a little bit of public good with the very limited skills that I have. I can't do a lot of things, but occasionally I can string a couple words together. but I felt like I did everything I could journalism, and I still wanted to do something, And I realized that the world I was leaving, my daughter's, was going to be one wasn't as comfortable as the one I grew up with. So when you ask me why I do what I do, I say there's three simple reasons. Delaney, Grace and Carly, my three daughters.

Pete Altman: You manage a special group of advocates called environmental entrepreneurs. Tell us about the group.

and what it does.

Bob Keefe: So he too got its start 25 years ago, Pete, California. And at the time, California was [00:14:00] considering the first greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles in the entire world. the California clean car standards. And at the time, car makers, oil and gas companies and others were pouring into Sacramento and saying, Hey, you crazy Californians, if you do this if you pass these laws that are going to.

the pollution that our cars are producing, it's going to ruin our companies. It's going to kill the auto industry. It's gonna eviscerate America's economy. California is going to fall into the sea and the world is going to catch on fire and it's going to be the end of the American way of life.

Pete, the usual arguments we hear from incumbent industries a lot of time.

Pete Altman: Yeah, i've heard it a few

Bob Keefe: Yeah, but our founders were Silicon Valley folks, they had a different take. They had a different business take what they said was, Look, we don't know anything about cars. We don't really know anything about oil and gas.

What we do know about is innovation. And we know that with the right market signals from government through policy, we can drive innovation. We can create jobs. we can help with [00:15:00] economic growth and maybe we can help with the environment as well, again, this was 25 years ago. And what they said was, maybe these Prius thingies that we're just starting to see around town, maybe with the right market signals, those will become more commonplace.

And who knows, maybe even electric vehicles someday, but we've got to get. the signal from government and that investors like us, that businesses like ours can start to, plan and move in the direction where the economy is going. that bill passed fortunately, and now the California clean car standards have been adopted by, I think, 17 other states and served as the foundation for our federal.

clean car standards as well. fast forward 25 years and E2 now has 10, 000 members and supporters who are business people who. really work or do business in just about every state and across every sector of the economy. And, they and we make the business and economic case for smart climate and clean energy policies.

We do it through our research. We do it through communications, and we do it through Direct and indirect advocacy, with [00:16:00] lawmakers, with the public and policymakers.

Pete Altman: This is a show about the art and science of advocacy. So I like to dig into sort of the mechanics of how things work and how you do it. and hopefully others who are listening will be able to hear about that and go, Oh, I could use some of that in, the approach that I'm, I'm taking, or particularly in this case, Business leaders are what we used to refer to as unusual, right?

Our allies or partners, even though it's getting less and less unusual, because many of them have vested interests in the policies that are good for our air and water and climate. I do have some questions about sort of like how it works. tell me about the value add in terms of being able to talk about environmental policy from an economic perspective, like how that lands with policymakers, why that's a helpful thing to be doing.

Bob Keefe: as we are a small part of the environmental ecosystem, if you will, but we are a business organization. We're an organization of business people. we don't usually talk about parts per [00:17:00] million or polar bears global warming.

We talk about the economic costs of climate change and the economic benefits of climate action. Our goal is to have a better environment, but also a better economy. And there's no reason those things we, the world have learned there's no reason that those two things have to be in conflict and, frankly, it's getting an easy, easier story to tell Pete, Every year now we're dealing with something like a hundred billion dollars a year in damage climate related weather disasters.

We're all seeing our homeowners insurance rates go up. We're all seeing the cost, as taxpayers to fighting wildfires in the west or cleaning up after hurricanes in the east or dealing with lost crops from drought and flooding in our nation's heartland. economic costs of climate change have become real and they've become tangible to all of us, but so have the economic benefits of climate action.

Right now, we have more than 3. 3 million people who work in clean energy and clean energy related [00:18:00] occupations around the country since the passage of the biggest. Climate, but also I would suggest the biggest economic policy that we've seen in this country's recent history. We have more than 300 major clean energy related factories and projects coming out of the ground all over the country.

130 billion in private sector investments. And what we're talking about is everything from solar panel factories to electric vehicle factories, to battery factories, to hydrogen hubs, etcetera, 120, 000 jobs announced just in the past 2. 5 years alone. That's huge. That's a big deal. that's bringing opportunities.

It's bringing investments. It's bringing, jobs to places that, frankly, a lot of them have been bypassed by previous economic transitions. When I was covering the tech, industry and you and I were in Austin, the tech industry reached, a lot of parts of the country, but it was primarily places like Austin and Silicon Valley and maybe, a few other parts around the country.

[00:19:00] Sixty percent of these projects that I've been talking about and now since the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act have been in Republican congressional districts in red states. When you look at the dollar value of those investments, it's closer to 70%. When you look at the jobs, it's closer to 80%. I was literally just.

Yesterday in Silicon Valley with a group of 50 clean energy execs and others from the state of Georgia who were visiting companies like Waymo and Form Energy. We took a ride on a hydrogen powered ferry rode around in electric school buses at the Oakland School District, which is the biggest deployment of electric school buses in the world.

Pete Altman: you get to see a lot of neat toys in the course of this,

Bob Keefe: Good to see a lot of new tools. 

Pete Altman: That must be pretty cool. 

Bob Keefe: fun part. But these folks from Georgia were there to learn from happening California and taking some of that home, they're not going to talk about those crazy Californians, but they're going to talk about what they saw out here.

And it's [00:20:00] a good thing because Georgia is now one of the leading states for clean energy projects and electric vehicle production in the country. So this is really transformative. we can bring people on board to doing good things for the environment and helping, advance cleaner air and cleaner water in a planet that, isn't on fire by talking about jobs and economic growth.

And making the business case for it at the same time. That's to me, an important thing to do.

Pete Altman: How do you find and recruit members to E2?

Bob Keefe: so we have a, network of nine chapters around the country stretching from, the Northeast to, now the Southeast to the Pacific Northwest, to Southern California, where I happen to be, and,, we do a lot of member events for our members, whether it's, monthly webinars on important topics, at the intersection of economy and environment or, in state chapter. Events that could range anything from, speakers from local government or federal government or just having beers [00:21:00] and appetizers at a happy hour where people can share ideas.

lot of people come to us those ways. But again, an appetite business people who care about the environment to gauge in these issues. Like never before. And frankly, their voices are more important than ever before as well. And hopefully we, create a conduit if you will.

And and a network to let them do that together.

Pete Altman: What are some of the sort of. Particular approaches that you take in order to engage with and mobilize these kinds of folks

that may be different from a typical sort of advocate's experience.

Bob Keefe: yeah, that's a great question. I appreciate that. First of all, when it comes to business people, lot of business people and investors and others for that matter. Think about short term gains, and they're incredibly busy just running their companies, as you can imagine, and dealing with everything comes with that.

So 1 of the 1st things we have to do is. Make sure that policy is even on their radar to begin with, companies can grow go out of business relatively quickly without [00:22:00] ever realizing the impacts of what happens with laws in Washington or what happens with the laws in the state house and how that's going to filter down to their industry and to their businesses for better, worse or indifferent.

they go through daily operation of their companies without stopping to think about, wow, why is my insurance rate going up so much, or wow, why am I having to pay out so much for energy, because it's coming from the most expensive energy there is, whether it's coal or gas or what have you, why are we spending so much money on electricity?

Maybe energy efficiency, energy efficiency might not even enter their mind, things like that. So the first thing like with any kind of organizing, I think or campaigns, you gotta meet people where they are and you got to understand what they care about and their issues. And you've got to show them that they can actually make a difference.

if they don't other people will, and it might be adverse to their goals and their future. Really, we take business leaders, our members and [00:23:00] supporters to Washington frequently. We take him to their state houses frequently as well. And I can tell you that every time we do always hear from folks saying, man, I didn't know I could actually sit down with my member of Congress and talk about these issues.

Or, Whenever you see a member of Congress on the campaign trail or out in their district, Those small business, those medium sized businesses that really the large businesses, those voices matter a lot the important thing is that unlike traditional environmental organizations, I think just the ability to bring business voices to the table, in support of environmental and climate and clean energy policies.

just the mere fact that these folks are in business, that they're creating jobs, that they're investing in these congressional districts or whatever, that opens a lot of doors that, quite frankly, closed environmentalists from San Francisco or New York or Washington DC.

So let's talk about the IRA. This is the biggest climate bill that we've ever passed. It's got hundreds of billions of dollars That have already been distributed. I forgot what the latest [00:24:00] numbers are. There's still a lot to go, but a huge, huge investment in clean energy and related sectors.

E2 was very active in advocating for the bill and probably for, specific parts of the bill that are really good. I want to hear that, but I also want to hear about how did you go about planning your advocacy strategy like identifying, okay, there's all these other groups that are going to be doing X, Y, and Z on the IRA.

How did you decide how to focus your energies and who were the types of targets that you felt? All right. This group is like the best suited to go and and and work on sort of the behind the scenes thinking of how you decided, where to focus and how and everyone else is right in calling this the biggest climate policy we've ever passed in this country but Remember the underlying framing of this whole thing.

It's the inflation reduction act. It's the bipartisan infrastructure app. It's the chips and science sessions. Really? There's three policies, right? those are all [00:25:00] economic policies. And you know, we've been talking about how making the jobs, the economic is going to appeal to Republicans, but it appeals to Republicans and Democrats alike.

You know, as you know, E2 has been tracking clean energy job growth around the country, and we've got data now. Down to the state level, to the congressional district level, to the county level for everybody that works in renewable energy, solar and wind, but also energy efficiency, also clean vehicles, also manufacturing of energy efficient equipment, for instance, those sort of things.

So we have, we have that data. I believe ever since we started doing that probably 10, 12 years ago, we, we've started to, we've had a small, maybe a small part, I don't know, in shifting kind of the way people are thinking about clean energy and, underlying that climate action. Right. And of course that's appealing to Republicans, but I can tell you when I, when I really felt like we were making a difference, Pete.

It's when the president, when Joe Biden stood up at his first address to Congress and said, when I think of [00:26:00] climate change, I think of jobs. And no president ever said that before. No president ever thought in that, in that framework, and I'd like to think that at least we had some role in helping shape the way the White House was thinking, and others were thinking about that, from then on out.

As far as how, you know, our, our thinking, our strategy and our work around the IRA, again, it was making that jobs, that economic case where, where it mattered most. And during the heat of the discussions around the IRA, you remember this, but the most important person in the room was, was Joe Manchin, Senator Joe Manchin from, from West Virginia.

Yep. A Democrat who's now an independent, I guess, who's going to be retiring soon, I guess, but. Down to his last 30 days or so. Yeah. At the time of this recording. Yeah. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Senator Manchin was on the fence and he was going back and forth and Keeping the world on pins and needles as to whether this thing was was getting passed and at the time E2 was in the middle of a national [00:27:00] radio tour where we were going on the radio and in markets and around the country both me and and others on my team, but also our business members and talking about the advantage of Passing this huge policy and what it would mean economically and I told our radio booker at the time I said man, you got to get me on on the air You In West Virginia, you've got to get me On WV Metro News, which was the Hoppy Kerchival show, which is anybody in West Virginia knows he's the most important voice in media in the state of West Virginia and someone that Joe Manchin is very close to and, and listens to.

so in the middle of all of this, I went on the, I went on the Hoppy show and I was talking to him about all of our data and everything. And of course he was saying, no, Bob, you can't just come in here and talk about how We're going to turn coal miners into solar panel makers and wind turbine people because we've all heard that before and we just don't believe it anymore.

And I said, you know what, Hoppy, you're exactly right. West Virginia has been sold a [00:28:00] bill of goods over the years. People have said we're going to bring back coal. We're going to do all this stuff. don't think that's going to happen. But I want you to also think about the housing stock, for instance, in West Virginia.

I want you to think about the fact that West Virginia has the most energy inefficient homes in the country and some of the oldest homes in the country. And we might be able to, through some of these policies, improve the energy efficiency and save West Virginians some money and put people to work doing that, for instance, including coal miners.

You know, there's a company called form energy that does battery work. That's thinking about moving to West Virginia. If we can pass these policies and things like that, and it was a great discussion and I'm not going to take any credit at all for, for what Senator Manchin did, but few days after that happened, The senator came back to the bargaining table and said, okay, we're gonna make a deal.

And that's what happened with the ira. And that was just one example of how we took our message about jobs and [00:29:00] economic growth. Into specific areas specific states where we knew people would be listening and hope people would be listening including the people that were plotting this policy.

That's a great story Now you also mentioned something that got me really curious because this is one of those kinds of pieces of information That's really valuable for an advocacy campaign and that is how did you know? That mansion listens to hoppy's show was pretty widely known information at that time.

Because whenever mansion wanted to make an announcement about something, he would go on that show to do he wouldn't go to. CNN or fox or anybody else he would go to west virginia metro news and the hoppy show So one lesson is pay attention to how the decision maker you're focused on gets the word out and that's probably a channel or a medium that they You Listen to or watch themselves. Peter [00:30:00] not to not to drag this on but you know somebody you and I used to work I think really well and he said, you know When when politicians are in office letters to the local newspaper, you know, interviews on local media.

Those are like letters to soldiers when they're off at war from the folks back home. sometimes we think about these big in campaigns. We think about these big social media, national campaigns and you know, buying TV ads and all that stuff, which is all very important. But sometimes you, can make great strides by focusing in, of course, on the, the.

The targets you are trying to reach and the people you're trying to reach doing it through the outlets they care most about, even if it's some small radio show or the local hometown newspaper. Well, at the end of the day, most of them need to pay attention to what their constituents want. So it makes a lot more sense if you're trying to reach somebody to go through [00:31:00] hometown media, Or work with constituents to raise up their voices. So they get heard. there was a lot in the IRA. And I think this is not an un, I mean, it's scale is uncommon, but the idea that one bill may contain parts that someone really likes, and then maybe it's got some bits that maybe someone doesn't like so much, how do you navigate something like that with the E2 network where you've got a lot of members, you want to get people rolling and mobilized to advocate.

Were there sort of. Policy things you had to kind of navigate around because maybe there was some stuff in there that wasn't all that popular. And how do you handle that kind of a situation? you know, a lot of clean energy companies especially in renewable energy or dependent on things like the production tax credit, the investment tax credit.

For solar, for wind that were traditionally things that, because of pressure from the oil and gas industry primarily, things that expired on a annual [00:32:00] basis, or maybe they did get extended for two years or maybe three years, you know when we have oil and gas subsidies that have been around for over a century.

I remember all those wind PTC fights over and over again. Yeah. Every year it was something and, and, and it's mighty hard to plan a business and, and make investments millions of dollars in investments when you only have the visibility around that for a year or two years. You know, you and I don't buy a house if we only know where we're going to be for a year So what the, what, one of the biggest things that the IRA did was solidify those credits for 10 years for both of them. So finally businesses got some visibility and could start investing. And guess what? Certainty. They could be so sure that those credits would be in place for an extended period of time.

Businesses love certainty. Exactly. And, and uncertainty is the worst thing there is for business. So so finally people could start investing in things like solar panel [00:33:00] factories and with the direction that the electric vehicle market was going and the certainty, around not just tax credits for buying electric vehicles, but for investing in the factories to build those electric vehicles.

They could start making investments and guess what since that since the IRA was passed We have now more than 50 battery factories coming out of the ground in America We have more than 60 solar panel factories or solar panel related factories Coming out of the ground in America before then we had zero We had out war next to zero.

We had very few, if any and yet we're supposed to compete with a country like China that now has 90 percent of the solar industry as 85 percent of the battery industry. And we're worried about that, but we're not going to invest in those things. Finally, finally, finally, the IRA through those tax credits and through the extension of those tax credits gave companies the impetus to start investing in these things [00:34:00] and getting us in the game that we frankly didn't have a dog in the fight with previously.

speaking of uncertainty with Donald Trump coming into the white house, he has talked about repealing the IRA or cutting out parts of it. I've already seen that there's some business interests that have already spoken up and said, Hey, Hey, hands off. Trump's perspective on a lot of issues that we care about and that he too has been interested in how do you think your strategies might shift or how are you going to thinking about adapting to a Donald Trump? Washington. first of all, I think it's important to recognize that the clean economy of today is not the clean economy that.

 We had when Donald Trump was president eight years ago, you know, the technology has caught up with the issues., the momentum has caught up importantly, because of the technology and the momentum, [00:35:00] solar and wind is now the cheapest power you can buy any place in the country.

It's obviously clear that incentivizing industries to build factories in places like Georgia and North Carolina and Kentucky and Ohio and just about every other state in the country to build these projects to compete with the global marketplace is working. So we have to keep that in mind, and it's going to be mighty hard for, any politician who says that they care about their constituents to vote against or to rescind or roll back policies that are creating jobs, driving economic growth in their states.

So, so there's that. incoming president Trump and, and many of the members of the new Congress are vehemently against some of the clean energy advances that we've been making. They will try to roll things back. There's already been more than 50 attempts in the current Congress to roll back [00:36:00] or, or rescind parts of the IRA.

And that'll only, I believe, strengthen 

Once the president and his party have control of both, all three branches of government, really. know that they'll slow things down or I'm pretty certain that they'll slow things down. I don't think that they'll stop this. only way that they'll be able to stop things is if The businesses, the states, the constituencies, the people stand up and say, Hey, this is a good thing.

It's working. Why would we ever shoot ourselves in the foot like this? And you've already seen 18 Republican members of Congress send a letter recently to, to speaker Johnson saying, please hands off the IRA. Because it's working we, we need more people to stand up for that and, and to show that it's working and to make sure that the people who are going to be making these decisions don't make bad decisions.

E2 has been non partisan organization and has really pried itself and tried very hard to remain a non [00:37:00] partisan organization ever since it got started 25 years ago.

it's why we're able to talk to either side of the aisle and why either side of the aisle wants to listen to us and, our members. And that's not going to change. regardless of who's in the White House or who's in Congress. This isn't political. This isn't partisan. There should be nothing political or partisan about creating jobs, driving economic growth, making America competitive against China and the rest of the world and the fastest growing sectors of the global economy.

We just have to make sure people understand that. We just have to make sure that people realize what happens when One of the biggest solar panel factories in the Western Hemisphere is being built in Dalton, Georgia, the home of Marjorie Taylor Greene. We need to make sure people understand that Panasonic's building one of the biggest battery factories in the little town of DeSoto, Kansas.

That has been left behind by previous economic transitions. We need to make sure that people understand that producing lithium [00:38:00] in this country rather than environmentally sensitive places with questionable labor practices in China or, or, or South America is better.

And bringing opportunities to area this of this country that you wouldn't naturally think of as a, as a high tech community or state and things like that. And if we make those, if we do our job and if people in these states, as in the lawmakers from those states, the governors from those states, the businesses of those states.

Make this known to the people in Washington that are going to be making the decisions. I believe that, you know, we'll still continue to make progress. I'm hopeful that we will anyway. you rattled off some great, Statistics and facts. So that stuff's on the website, right?

It's in the website and it's in the book I released in April, clean economy, now the stories from the front lines of an American business revolution. You know, I was fortunate to travel the country for a while and. Talk to people who are benefiting [00:39:00] from the ira and other policies that we passed And kind of see some of this on the ground some of these places that I just mentioned and others the website is et.

org Yep, i'll put that in show notes as well. What's advice that you got from a mentor or colleague that influenced you and that you'd like to pass along?

Sometimes you have to look beyond what you think is right and what you will work to find solutions that maybe you didn't think about before.

 How do you do that? Well, you get it, you get out of your mindset that this is about whatever you believe it is about, and you get into a broader mindset. That says how can you know, we talk about inclusive inclusivity in a lot of ways, but how How can we be more inclusive?

And bring everybody who has something at stake here and recognize what they might bring to a solution and and and [00:40:00] leverage that They have kids they drink water they breathe the same air as us and a lot of them care about the future of this planet.

But if we just tune them out and focus on what we think is the right thing in our minds, and we don't consider other perspectives, then we miss a tremendous opportunity to engage more people everybody brings different skill sets not everybody works The way you work.

That's a good one. Yeah. I'm still working on learning that.

Well, Bob, thank you so much for your time. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time And it's great to see you. Likewise, Pete, same. And this is a really cool program that you're putting together. And I'm grateful to be a guest.[00:41:00]