Thank you so much for that gracious and accurate introduction, in terms of the challenges that we are facing.
I’m delighted to be here at the National Press Club.
So, let me just cut to the chase and start with a number or two.
14.8 million jobs since January 2021.
The greatest number of jobs ever created under any president in American history—under any term of any president in American history.
353,000 jobs just last month.
The longest continuous stretch of unemployment under four percent in 50 years.
More people working than at any point in American history.
The strongest economic recovery of all major advanced economies.
Why is this happening?
It is not coincidence. It is not luck.
It’s the result of a focused, strategic plan.
The Biden administration is using a 21st-century industrial strategy to bring manufacturing back to America after years of offshoring…to lift bruised communities from their knees….and to bring future-facing, good jobs to workers.
It’s a strategy to invest in America. All of America.
So, our industrial strategy for clean energy starts with a recognition of two facts:
First, that clean energy represents a $23 trillion global economic opportunity—essentially a new industrial revolution, as all of these countries strive to address climate change.
And second, our past economic policies have failed us—in many cases, tragically.
From before the start of this century, so-called “free” trade and trickle-down economics have ushered in the losses of millions of jobs and tens of thousands of factories across the nation. Policies of administrations past effectively encouraged manufacturers to go abroad. Factories that had anchored entire communities, [ripped] from their moorings, had been sucked overseas.
It’s not an abstraction. I know this from thedepths of my soul.
The loss of manufacturing jobs was the most sickening, despairing part of my eight years as governor of Michigan.
A little town called Greenville, Michigan. My first year in office. A refrigerator factory owned by Electrolux was threatening to go to Mexico.
Greenville was essentially a one-company town. Eight thousand people live there, almost 3,000 people working at the factory. They proudly call themselves the “Refrigerator Capital of North America.”
And I remember the meeting where we made our plea to the Electrolux executives. We put every incentive we had on the table—state, local, labor. We just wanted to keep the factory there.
And the company, at the meeting, they took our list of incentives and they went outside the room for 17 minutes. And they came back in, and they said, “This is the most generous any community's ever been to try to keep jobs. But there is nothing you can do to compensate for the fact that we can pay $1.57 an hour in Juarez, Mexico.”
And so they left, and it was like a nuclear bomb went off in little Greenville.
When the last refrigerator came off the assembly line, the workers had a gathering that they called “The Last Supper.” It was atKlackle Orchards Pavilion. And I went. It was a community wake—[a] community grieving not just the loss of jobs, but the loss of their identity.
And one father’s words seared my soul. He said, “Gov, I’ve worked at that factory for 30 years. I went from high school to factory,” he said.
“My father worked at that factory. My grandfather worked at that factory. All I know is how to make refrigerators. So, tell me, who is ever going to hire me? Who’s ever going to hire me?”
That question was asked by everybody at Klackle Orchards Pavilion that day, and it’s been asked by workers in every one of the 60,000 factories lost during the first part of this century.
And that Greenville story happened over and over again in Michigan and across the industrial Midwest. Scores of companies moving offshore. Michigan’s proud industrial base—we had such a concentration in manufacturing—meant that we were hit harder than any state in the country.
No matter how many incentives a state offers, no state has the resources to compete with the industrial policies of China, or the low wages in Mexico.
I mean, really, is it any wonder that I and other Michigan politicians used to campaign on “NAFTA and CAFTA have given us the‘shafta’”?
For governors, with no federal partner? Honestly, it was like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
But we sure tried.
We, for example, incentivized a solar factory to come to Greenville. United Solar Ovonic. Great fanfare. It would employ Electrolux workers. There were three factory buildings built on the site where the Electrolux factory previously stood. You know, the workers were hired…
…and then, because of cheap solar panels from China flooding the market, United Solar Ovonic went bankrupt in 2012 and the remnants were sold to a Chinese company.
And the plants shut down.
Greenville, hit again.
Jack Welch, you know, the iconic CEO of General Electric, famously said that he wished he could put his factories on a barge and float them to wherever costs were lowest.
Manufacturing is the backbone of a nation’s economy.
But we just watched as other nations stepped [stomps foot] on our weak spine and poached our IP and our jobs. And CEOs, global CEOs and economic elites—they justified the losses by invoking so-called “free” trade and trickle-down economics. And they glossed over the fact that other countries were not abiding by the same rules.
When I was done being governor, I actually, with a group, visited China, to see how China was crafting its industrial strategy for the energy sector. And at one event where mayors of Chinese towns were showcasing their technologies and their strategies, one mayor leans over to me and he says, “So, when do you think the United States is going to get national energy policy?”
I hemmed and hawed, I lamented Congress and gridlock. And the mayor just grinned at me and he said, “Take your time.”
“Take your time.” Because of course they saw our passivity as their opportunity.
Enter Joe Biden. Joe from Scranton, PA. Amtrak Joe. He saw—he felt—what was happening across the country, and he tasked his Cabinet with developinga policy to bring jobs and businesses back home to America.
An industrial strategy for the 21st century, based in part upon clean energy. A future of manufacturing revival, thriving businesses, good jobs for our kids, energy independence, products made in America.
And you know what?
The president’s strategy is working, folks!
Did I mention, 353,000 new jobs last month?
We now have the most significant clean energy and climate strategy in the nation’s history, arguably in the world.
[This] strategy for building clean energy—a clean energy future—in the United States rests on four legs.
First, making the United States theirresistible nation for investing in clean energy.
Second, ensuring that those investments provide economic and clean energy benefits in the communities that have been left behind.
Third, strengthening America’s workforce so that our workers have the skills they need to compete in this global clean energy market.
And fourth, with cutting-edge R&D, supporting industry so that each future generation of clean energy technology will be more innovative than the last.
So, to carry out this industrial strategy, I’m so proud—and some of our team are here!—that we have extensively reorganized the Department of Energy.
DOE is now investing over $100 billion into clean energy demonstration and deployment, through grants and loans and rebates and other public tools. We actually have 60 new programs under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. We’ve stood up new offices to focus on demonstration, clean energy supply chains, the electricity grid, community engagement, and more. We’ve hired 780 talented experts. We’ve recruited heavily from the private sector to serve this expanded mission.
Our motto is “Deploy, Deploy, Deploy.”
And this restructured organization has, as of January, launched 100 percent of these new programs.
So, as I said, the first pillar of this Biden-Harris [industrial] strategy is making America irresistible for investment and growth...
[Phone rings]
Answer the call!
[Laughter]
...Irresistible for investment and growth.
The irresistible nation.
We’re providing lots of carrots to incentivize businesses to invest in America again. And as we say at DOE, the clean energy revolution is government-enabled, but it’s private sector-led.
So, we got busy.
With our National Laboratories and input from industry, we’ve developed Commercial Liftoff Reports. Vanessa Chan is here, having guided our efforts on this. And these Commercial Liftoff Reports are outlining the roadmaps for key technologies like next-generation nuclear, like virtual power plants, carbon management, long-duration energy storage, industrial decarbonization, and clean hydrogen.
And then we identified the gaps in the supply chains that we needed to fill.
In the industries where there is a supply-demand mismatch that might make investors nervous, we’re providing the demand signal, with tools like the Defense Production Act, and pay-for-difference contracts, and federal procurement.
If you just take clean hydrogen, for example, we developed, first of all, a technology liftoff pathway to commercialize clean hydrogen. And then we developed a clean hydrogen Earthshot—Energy Earthshot—that’s our big, hairy, audacious goal [to] bring down the cost to $1 for one kilogram within one decade.
And then we announced seven Hubs, Hydrogen Hubs, coast to coast, to link producers and consumers and infrastructure. We are building entire ecosystems: supply chains, workforce training, supply and demand for hydrogen, financing.
Our upfront public investments are going to crowd in billions of private-sector dollars, laying the foundation for this thriving commodity market—and help create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.
That’s just one example of the industrial strategy in one area. We’re developing—and we have developed—analogous strategies with batteries, with electric vehicles, with carbon dioxide removal, with offshore wind, and so much more.
And now, as we do this, we are open-eyed about it.
We know we’ve got gaps in our supply chains. China, for example, has adopted 14 five-year plans that are focused on dominating supply chains and manufacturing products that we used to excel in. China already controls so much, like critical minerals and processing for batteries. And they’re producing huge volumes of low-cost solar and EVs. They’re hoping to bigfoot the global market. And, as we saw with the solar company in Greenville, they’ve been successful.
But...
[Bangs gavel]
...We are fighting back!
We’re being deliberate about building up these supply chains, both inside the U.S. and with our allies.
We understand that energy is a national security imperative. We cannot depend upon countries that have orchestrated monopolies on key technologies, whose values we don’t share.
We’ve seen how Europe’s dependence on Russia for natural gas allowed Putin to weaponize energy, and we are not going to do that. And our allies, by the way, they don’t want to be captive to unfriendly nations either.
So, we have to create markets with trusted allies. And we are building at home.
So, the results of the President’s approach?
It’s still early, but since President Biden took office, private companies have announced $650 billion in investments in semiconductors, clean energy technologies, and other 21st century industries.
In the energy space alone, $400 billion.
And I know that's just dollars. It sounds, you know, it’s just hard to grapple [with] that kind of amount. But what it means, really, is [more] than 500—so far, more than 500 new or expanded manufacturing facilities in clean energy alone! And that’s just less than three years from the passage of the President’s agenda.
Think about it. Five hundred communities that are seeing future-facing industries hiring their people.
We are bringingmanufacturing home.
Instead of importing battery components from Nanjing, China, we’re going to build anodes in Washington, we’re going to build cathodes in Tennessee, separator material in Indiana, electrolytes in Texas.
In a closed-down factory in Hamtramck, Michigan, we’re building electric vehicles.In a formerly shuttered plant in Lordstown, Ohio, we're building EV batteries.
Instead of importing solar panels from Xinjiang, we’re going to manufacture our own in Georgia and Alabama and Ohio.
Investments and factories and jobs are growing in every pocket of America—from Alaska to Atlanta, from the West Coast to Weirton, West Virginia.
I visited Weirton a few months ago. Weirton, West Virginia was once a thriving steel town. The steel mill used to employ 12,000 people.
Until other nations dumped cheap steel and forced the mill into bankruptcy...and the plant closed down...and the sidewalks in Weirton rolled up...and the downtown shops closed...and so many people moved away.
And then last year, a company called Form Energy decided to start their business in Weirton—incentivized in large part by the federal tax credits.
Form makes utility-scale iron air batteries, and they located their plant on the site of the old steel mill. At a recent job fair, I think last month, hundreds of people were lined up—this living symbol of the hope that Form is bringing to Weirton.
And at Form’s ribbon-cutting, one of the city council was there, one of the city councilmembers. This burly, white-haired guy, white-bearded guy named Tim Connell, and he told me this familiar story.
He said, “I worked at that steel mill. My father worked at that steel mill. I thought my kids were going to work here too, but they moved away when the plant closed.”
But here’s where the story diverges from Greenville: “Now,” Tim exclaimed, “we have new life.”
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Weirton is rising.
But, not so fast.
Cleveland-Cliffs steel company long ago bought a unit of the bankrupt Weirton steel tinplate factory, still in Weirton. And last week, as I was thinking about these remarks, the workers at the tinplate facility were notified that they were going to be laid off too. And the factory was going to be idled, largely because of more cheap steel flooding the market from competitor nations.
This transition is not a straight line. This is a global battle.
But we are on offense.
And in our tool shed, trade policy is the backhoe that moves the earth, as we strive to level the global playing field.
And we will not relent.
So, as we fully deploy our tax credits and the grants and the loans to boost domestic production of these technologies, we’re also working hand-in-hand with our colleagues at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, and Treasury, and Commerce, and State, of course, the White House.
Let me be clear: Trade and international finance and national security are a foundational part of a holistic, coherent, sustainable industrial strategy. And without getting over my skis, more is going to come on that.
Done right—and it will be done right—it will be a win for U.S. companies and workers...and a win for our allies...and a win for our partners...a win for diversifying this global supply chain...and a win for urgently reducing global carbon pollution.
So, the thing about empowering American businesses to invest, is that success builds upon success, and growth builds on growth.
But of course, injustice can also build upon injustice.
So, the second tenet of our industrial strategy for clean energy is to put the people and communities who have historically been last, at the forefront of this new clean energy economy.
I mean, in the 20th century—I know many of you know this—as America’s industrial might grew, we made choices that harmed poor Americans, that harmed Tribal nations, communities of color.
We built coal plants and oil refineries in the heart of poor neighborhoods—often the very communities powering our country’s prosperity. And it was those families that bore the brunt of the resulting pollution.
I recently visited Louisiana’s River Parishes along the Mississippi River—an area known as “Cancer Alley.” Refineries and chemical plants have sprouted up over the back fences of poor citizens, causing folks to breathe in cancer-causing particulates. Everybody there, it seems, is related to somebody who died of cancer.
Mr. Robert Taylor, who is a gentle, 83-year-old resident, showed me his family’s graveyard, where a refinery has literally sprouted up and surrounded and confined the small cemetery, which is so hemmed in now that graves are stacked neatly on top of one another. Loved ones on top of loved ones. Mr. Taylor is trying to decide whether his grave will be stacked on top of his father’s or his grandfather’s.
The President’s Investing in America agenda flips the script on this history of energy injustice.
President Biden has announced the most ambitious climate and clean energy environmental justice agenda ever taken.
From Day One, he’s directed us to “leave no one behind” in this energy transition, from communities like the River Parishes to the coal and steel and power plant communities who drove the firstindustrial revolution—and who will be central to the next one.
It is the president’s core belief that every person deserves—so basic!—to breathe clean air, to drink clean water, to live in a healthy community. Right? And a critical part of that work is the Justice40 Initiative, which sets this goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits of these investments will flow to disadvantaged communities.
Our laws—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act—they offer extra incentives to locate clean energy projects in disadvantaged communities.
For example, if there’s a solar developer who wants to build a community solar project, they get five times the base credit amount if they meet prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements. And they get an additional 10 percent tax credit for locating it in an energy community. And if they meet domestic content standards, they can get another 10 percent. All stackable! And if they do all of those things, that tax credit is worth 50 percent of the cost of their investment.
A 50 percent tax credit to build promising new projects, if they do it in a way that helps those whom the economy of yesterday left behind.
That is irresistible.
And further, companies that want DOE loans—so those were tax incentives, right?—so if you want loans or grants, in your competition to achieve those from DOE, from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, they have to explain, the companies have to explain, how they will ensure that the project directly benefits the communities that they’ll be based in, through a Community Benefits Plan.
They’ve got to demonstrate how they’re going to create quality jobs and opportunities for local workers and generate equitable benefits for residents—including reducing energy costs and reducing exposure to pollution. We score the competitive applications based on upon the strength of these plans, and we’re holding companies accountable to them.
The President’s strategy prioritizes this, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it’s the onlyway to make sure that this clean energy transition will succeed.
Because when people are part of deciding their future, the path for siting and permitting and growing these projects will result in fewer lawsuits, and less friction, and more certainty, and better results.
And here again, it’s working—incentivizing investment in these communities. Recent studies have shown that because of this prong of the industrial strategy, challenged communities under the Biden administration are receiving 2x the investments relative to their population, as compared to other regions.
It’s working.
Now, maybe you’ve heard that the President is a pro-labor guy. There is nothing more important to him than creating a middle class through investing in skilled workers. He is grateful to the labor movement for creating the middle class in America. You may have heard that the President’s strategy is really to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, and labor is an important part of that.
And that’s why the third part of this holistic strategy is focusing on the workforce that will build pioneering clean energy technologies—and ensuring workers make fair wages that they can raise a family on.
Workers are not incidental to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda—they are central to it.
And for the clean energy transition to endure, we have to plan to have the right mix of skills available today...and in five years...and 10 years...and 20 years. And it’s why our strategy prioritizes above-average pay and benefits. For example, we see prevailing wages under the Davis-Bacon Act as a floor, not a ceiling.
We also prioritize apprenticeships and pathways to unionization, to create jobs that people will want to grow in...where communities can have a shot at keeping their young people at home...where the sidewalks don’t roll up.
In visiting towns with industrial losses, which I have seen a lot of, you might guess: what are people’s deepest fears? Their deepest fear is that their kids are going to be forced to move away to find a job, and that the community will be hollowed out, and it will hollow out their family.
In Schenectady, New York, the administration’s incentives are supporting a manufacturing line for wind turbine components. And one handler, Eric Romero, Sr., described how proud he was, after years of offshoring and layoffs, to have his son join him on the manufacturing line.
His son, Eric Romero, Jr., said the clean energy investments in his community have “created opportunities for young people like me that we never thought would come our way.”
And Eric’s father said, “It gives me hope.”
Hope.
I know, hope is not a strategy.
So, fourth, the fourth tenet: We can’t just think about the present. We have to be planning the future.
We are Americans, as the President would say. We’re great at this! Which is why, you know, we landed first on the moon...we invented the iPhone...we lead the world in pathbreaking R&D through our 17 National Laboratories.
So today, thanks to the President’s strategy, we’re making R&D more purposeful, by infusing it with the insight of businesses that are bringing clean energy technologies to market.
For example, I referred to [the] Department’s “Energy Earthshots.” They challenge our scientists and industry to lower the costs by 80 to 90 percent [for] eight pivotal technologies, like floating offshore wind platforms, enhanced geothermal—my personal favorite—long duration batteries that store renewable energy.
And, importantly, in addition to that—I mean, we’re doing so much in R&D! But we are working to end the practice of “invent it here, make it there.”
If you’re using taxpayer money to develop a technology, you’ll be expected to manufacture it right here in America.
Our strategy looks with clear eyes into the future. But it is rooted in the proudest moments of our past.
Eighty years ago, as World War II tore Europe apart, our country used the might of American industry to tackle the struggle between democracy and fascism.
And long after the Allies won the war, the investments that we made in our industries and workers helped to power a 20th century manufacturing juggernaut.
But, along the way, we lost our way. We lost our mojo. We lost the manufacturing that was our economy’s spine.
Today, we are changing that.
We’re doing what America has always done, which is capitalizing on this opportunity to lead the world.
The U.S. is back, baby!
We are the envy of the world.
I just came back from an international gathering of energy ministers, and every country there is tracking what we are doing.Every minister I spoke to wanted to emulate our aggressiveness in their own way.
Our success at home is giving a jolt to clean energy investment around the world.
Policy works. Who knew?
[laughter]
So don’t underestimate Joe Biden, folks. The man with a plan.
And thanks to that plan, America has begun one of the most significant economic transformations we’ll see in our lifetimes: a shift toward a future powered by clean energy, with advanced products stamped “Made in America,” built and installed by American workers, in proud American communities.
A transformation in which innovation is inevitable…investment in America is irresistible…and no American feels invisible.
This is our America.
It’s our time to soar.
God, I love this country. Don’t you?
Thanks.
[Applause]
