After President Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, an interesting trend emerged. A variety of state and city governments pledged to meet the standards of the Paris accord, with or without the government’s help. The United States Climate Alliance, led by Michael Bloomberg, is coordinating a massive effort to “do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed”. In keeping with those goals, New York is pushing forward a huge clean energy initiative.
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— Archive: Governor Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 2, 2017
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last Friday that $1.5 billion would be committed to renewable energy projects like solar, wind, hydropower and fuel cells with the goal of achieving 50% of electricity for the state from renewable resources by 2030.
“The 1.6 billion dollars is going to accelerate our move towards renewable sources, which is how we will have the most aggressive renewable standard in the nation, and comply with the Paris Accords,” says Cuomo.
Cuomo went on to say that the investment will result in 40,000 clean energy jobs by 2020.
“The types of jobs that will be created include engineers, architects, construction, operating and maintenance jobs for new power plants, along with the distributed energy such as the solar panels that will be included on rooftops. There’ll be new education jobs in order to train the workforce of this clean energy system,” Cuomo explained.
Cuomo is not alone in his efforts to focus on renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. More than 30 mayors of cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta, a handful of other governors, 80 university presidents and 100 companies like Mars and Hewlett-Packard have also pledged their support for the tenants of the Paris accord.
