Electrify Our Future
Dear Friend,
We all know that we need to confront the climate crisis that is already causing catastrophic disasters. Thanks to decades of work by researchers and scientists, we know exactly what we need to do. That’s why I am leading the introduction of the Electrifying America’s Future Resolution to say loud and clear that our climate challenge is a solvable problem.
VIDEO: U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich joins Senate Democratic colleagues and advocates to announce the introduction of the Electrifying America’s Future Resolution, May 18, 2021.
We already have all the technologies we need to meet our climate goals and emissions reduction requirements. What we need are the right policies and incentives to transition toward a 100 percent clean and carbon pollution-free future. The key is to electrify nearly every machine and appliance in our homes, in our garages, and in our businesses that currently use fossil combustion. To power these new electrified machines, we must also modernize our electricity grid, build much more clean energy generation, and continue on the path towards decarbonizing the entire electricity sector by 2035.
Widespread electrification will dramatically reduce our carbon pollution, create millions of new, good-paying jobs, save lives and money, and secure a better, more equitable future. The Electrifying America’s Future Resolution lays out a clear vision for how we can achieve all of this. I like to think of this as an engineer’s approach to climate action that America can and should implement right now.
When I think about this, I always remember my father, who worked as an IBEW utility lineman. The wages and benefits he earned by maintaining power lines and keeping our community’s lights on provided our whole family with a ticket to the middle class. Millions of tradesmen and women like my dad will install, maintain, and manufacture all these new electrified solutions right here in America.
As President Biden put it during his joint address to Congress last month, when he thinks of climate action, he thinks jobs, jobs, jobs. My resolution lays out what those jobs will be and how we can prepare our workforce and our communities for all of these new opportunities. I am hopeful that we can advance many of these policies as part of the president’s American Jobs Plan that we are negotiating right now.
We need to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to move the needle on climate change by modernizing our electrical grid and powering our homes and businesses with cheaper, cleaner electricity.
Sincerely,
MARTIN HEINRICH
United States Senator
