The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) has released a list of participants and the formal agenda for the National Clean Energy Project: Building the New Economy, which will be held Feb. 23 at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is honorary chair.
Participants include Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. Themes of the forum include overcoming clean energy infrastructure challenges and reducing America's dependence on foreign oil.
A roundtable discussion will focus on guiding the transformation of U.S. energy policy, with particular attention to modernizing the electricity grid, integrating energy efficiency and distributed generation into its operation and regulation, rapidly increasing transmission capacity for renewable energy and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
The National Clean Energy Project builds on the August 2008 National Clean Energy Summit sponsored by Reid, CAPAF and the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The participants in the summit concluded that inadequate access to transmission was one of the most significant barriers to widespread development of renewable energy.
The goal of this forum will be to discuss the best, most cost-effective options to green the grid and lay the groundwork for a broad national consensus among as many key stakeholders as possible on a clean energy agenda that will reduce emissions, increase reliability and affordability, and make the country more secure and competitive.
SOURCE: Center for American Progress Action Fund