Political Quotes

“I thank Senator Sanders. I wish to go back to this question of the jobs and the economic value we get from clean energy. The Department of Energy reports that the clean energy sector alone directly employs nearly 1.6 million people in the United States. So nearly 1.6 million families are depending on the paychecks they get from the clean energy sector. Within that, it is growing. The United States has created over 100,000 solar-focused jobs--100,000 solar-focused jobs--and at least 75,000 jobs related to wind energy installation in 2010. In Rhode Island, we are seeing that coming on. The newspaper today, the Providence Journal, reported on a permit application for the cable that will connect an offshore wind facility that is going in off Block Island back to the grid onshore to bring the power from that installation back and into the New England energy grid. But when it gets going, think of the jobs that are going to be involved in that. Senator Reed and I worked very hard to shore up--get money to shore up the waterside, the side of the pier at Quonset so it would be capable of dealing with very heavy-duty installation barges and things such as that. So the Quonset Point facility is now ready for this construction. We have the trains and new highways that bring in the pieces of those big turbines. The turbines are so big you cannot build them in China, in Europe. We have to assemble them onshore and put them right on the barge.…”