News roundup, congressional edition: Wind helps fight climate change

Last night, leaders in the U.S. Senate urged action on climate change by hosting an all-night discussion on its impacts and the tools needed to help solve this global challenge. Clean and renewable wind power, a proven contributor to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, featured prominently throughout the evening.

We’ve collected some of the highlights, along with their video clips, of how wind power will continue to help reshape America’s energy future.

Virginia’s Tim Kaine wants solutions to climate change to start here, with “American innovation.”

We’ve got to reduce pollution. We need to create jobs. Instead of arguing which is more important, let’s figure out how we can use American innovation to do both.

We’ve got to do everything cleaner tomorrow than we do today.

Such a strategy to reduce [carbon dioxide] emissions does mean everything, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, advanced biofuels…

Ed Markey of Massachusetts argued for extending important tax incentives for renewables, such as the PTC. The senator took some of his time to read from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax as part of his call to “care a whole awful lot.”

There are now 80,000 people in the wind industry in the United States… this is a revolution, a job-creating revolution.

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders made the economic case for a transformed energy system, including creating jobs and promoting innovation:

And the good news here, is that the transformation of our energy system, is going to be less expensive than doing nothing.

Technology costs continue to plummet…The cost of wind energy is also comparable to or even less than the cost of other more traditional energy sources. The average cost of wind power coming online between now and 2018 is estimated to be 8.65 cents per kilowatt-hour, even not including the value of the Production Tax Credit.

Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also emphasized the power of American innovation, pointing out that Renewable Electricity Standards help promote development of clean energy technologies, like wind power, and that climate change is a global phenomenon, affecting us all.

By working together, we can get more wind and solar energy onto the grid in a way that provides reliable service and keeps prices low for our consumers.

We’re connected by the impact of global climate change.

The all-night event used the Twitter hashtag #Up4Climate, and the social networking site catalogued input from legislators and stakeholders throughout the evening and into the early morning hours.

With Congress making a sincere push to fight the effects of climate change, wind power will continue to provide a product that does just that, reducing our carbon dioxide emissions while keeping the lights on for millions of Americans.

 

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