For Post-COVID Recovery
Jim Madej is the CEO of Franklin Energy and AM Conservation Group. With more than 1,100 employees and 60 utility partners across the U.S., the company’s turnkey energy efficiency and productivity solutions include building decarbonization programs, EV infrastructure pilots, energy optimization for telecoms, indoor ag, and much more.
The U.S. energy industry is entering a period of transition unlike anything ever experienced before. Energy policymakers must take on our nation's climate change objectives — perhaps the greatest challenge of our lifetime — and convert to a net-zero carbon economy in just a few decades. The real measure of our success will be ensuring no working families or communities are left behind.
As a leader of a company focused on the clean energy transition, I have seen firsthand how energy efficiency and grid optimization help do more than reduce customers' energy use and their bills. It also helps reduce carbon emissions and creates jobs that build stronger local economies and healthier communities.
At the start of the pandemic, the U.S. economy lost more than twenty-two million jobs, nearly triple the number lost in the Great Recession of 2008 to 2010. The deep and sustained economic pain that many Americans experienced in 2020 won't find easy relief.
With Biden's proposed legislation, the two trillion dollar American Jobs Plan, and the potential for infrastructure investment just around the corner, policymakers must connect the dots of opportunity that exist between that federal legislation and local, on-the-ground policymaking.