This past Friday, I was honored with a Champions of Change award, allowing me to join a conversation between Administration officials and community leaders from around the country to discuss new solutions we are implementing toward a new clean energy economy.
As I heard from the incredible pioneers around me, two things were resoundingly clear:
First, the clean energy economy has extraordinary potential to bring new opportunity and prosperity to America. Second, this new wave of innovation, just as the major economic transformations the United States of the past, is going to be driven by the home-grown ingenuity and entrepreneurship of our local communities.
The organization I helped to found a few years ago, The DC Project, was built to realize this vision of a bottom up transformation of the clean economy. By working alongside communities to make sensible energy choices, we help everyday people to improve their own lives while also ramping up demand for clean energy services. Harnessing the power of community in this way, we not only unlock the local clean energy marketplace, but also ensure that its benefits, especially new jobs, are tied to the community.
Here in DC we’ve applied this model around building energy retrofits through our WeatherizeDC program, and we’ve seen an incredible transformation – creating living-wage jobs for local residents, sweeping energy savings, and local green business growth.
Fonte: White House