Not everyone has the ear of the leader of the free world. General Electric’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt, a self-professed Republican, is one such person. Instead of distilling advice to President Obama, Immelt shared his views with the 2,400 attendees at Net Impact’s 2009 conference on the future of clean energy as the opening keynote speaker on clean-energy and the government.

“About 10 million clean-energy jobs will be created in the next 10 years, and the only question is where they will be created.” - Jeffrey Immelt

He describes a mix of excitement and uncertainty with the future. When hearing “10 million new jobs,” I think about how the United States could potentially replace the lost manufacturing and finance jobs with these new clean energy jobs. However the uncertainty arrives from thinking back to a NY Times article by Thomas Friedman on clean energy. There are no guarantees about how many of the 10 million jobs will be in the United States. According to Friedman, China is surpassing the United States in clean energy, much like the USSR did when it launched the first space satellite Sputnik.

What can the United States do now to increase the number of potential new clean energy jobs in the United States? One suggestion Immelt made was to address cheap oil through public policy. Renewable energy investments are impractical if the price of oil is $10 a barrel, like it was in the late 1990s. I inferred that the public policy Immelt suggested was establish a price floor for oil. Companies would know the minimum substitute price point and would increase their renewable energy investments as more would have the potential to become profitable.

-Mike