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President Biden’s Clean Energy Vision Soon to Come to Life

President Joe Biden’s vision for a future filled with clean Energy is not only about spending billions on wind farms and solar panels. The White House wants to hire numerous people to clean up the relics of the nation’s fossil fuels past. On Wednesday, President Biden pitched the American Jobs Plan in a powerful speech in Pittsburgh.

The American Jobs Plan calls for a $16 billion investment to plug countless defunct gas and oil wells and reclaim abandoned coal mines. The administration says that the program will put thousands of people to work in union jobs, including many skilled workers who have been derailed from their livelihoods.

Simultaneously, the investment will be addressing all the safety and environmental threats posed by the facilities to the soil, air, and water supply. Significantly, several of these wells exist in Appalachia and other communities decimated by the demise of coal and the rise of renewable Energy. Andrew Logan, Director of the oil and gas program at sustainability non-profit Ceres, said, “This is a win-win. We can address dangerous issues, while also putting people back to work — with dignity.”

West Virginia, in particular, would benefit from the federal investment. The collapse of the coal industry left countless people out of work. The state also has a significant number of uncapped wells. Logan said, “This is like an economic gift being presented to West Virginia, in a positive way.”

The proposal could have been an added political benefit of making the overall $2 trillion packages more palatable to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

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