FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
PROGRESS REPORT: President Obama’s Climate Action Plan
Today – one year after the President laid out his comprehensive Climate Action Plan – the White House released a new report detailing progress towards cutting carbon pollution and protecting our communities and public health.
In the year since the President’s speech at Georgetown University, the Administration has announced new efficiency standards, permitted renewable energy projects on public lands, and proposed carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants. Alongside state, tribal, local, and private sector partners, the Administration is taking steps to make our communities more resilient to the effects of severe weather and is working with other countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases internationally. In fact, when fully implemented, the policies put forward just in the past year since the President’s Plan was released will:
- Cut nearly 3 billion tons of carbon pollution between 2020 and 2025, an amount equivalent to taking more than 600 million cars off the road for a year;
- Enable the development of 8,100 megawatts of wind, solar, and geothermal energy, enough to power nearly 2 million homes;
- Train more than 50,000 workers to enter the solar industry;
- Save consumers more than $60 billion on their energy bills through 2030;
- Improve the energy efficiency of more than 1 billion square feet of city buildings, schools, multifamily housing complexes, and business across the country, an area the size of 17,000 football fields; and
- Protect the health of vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly, by preventing 150,000 asthma attacks and up to 3,300 heart attacks.
