Remarks for Guilford Technical Community College, As Prepared for Delivery
Michael Regan
Guilford Technical Community College, NC
Thank you, Governor Cooper – it’s always good to be with you. Washington, D.C. is great, but there’s nowhere that compares to North Carolina.
Thank you for your exceptional leadership, your tireless work on behalf of the people of our state, and the strong partnership we now have between your administration and EPA.
It’s an honor to join Vice President Harris here at Guilford Technical Community College – one of the premiere community colleges in the United States and just around the corner from my alma mater – the premiere university – North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University.
Thank you, President Clarke, for hosting us today and for your service to Guilford County and your community.
Congresswoman Manning, it’s a pleasure to be with you in your district. Thank you for all your efforts to bolster renewable energy and to prioritize the communities who’ve been hardest hit by climate change.
It’s great to be here with all of our elected officials, or as I like to call them, North Carolina’s finest.
In North Carolina, we have proven time and again – that environmental protection and economic prosperity are not mutually exclusive, but they actually go hand-in-hand.
That’s the mentality we’re leading with at EPA. And that’s the same mentality President Biden and Vice President Harris are leading with in the White House. We are moving beyond the old argument that we must pit creating jobs against protecting the environment.
The American Jobs Plan recognizes that addressing the climate crisis also creates a huge economic opportunity. We can create good-paying jobs by powering our future with clean energy and rebuilding our nation’s aging infrastructure.
And as we build new infrastructure, we need to make sure it’s resilient to the impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events. As with many states, North Carolina is on the frontlines of climate-fueled disasters, like in 2018, when Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina, leading to 42 deaths and causing more than $16 billion in damage to homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure.
The American Jobs Plan would invest $50 billion to better prepare communities for these extreme events and make essential services more resilient, including the electric grid, food systems, community health and hospitals, and our roads and other transportation assets.
And as North Carolinians know all too well, climate stress is often experienced as water stress – drought, flooding, sea level rise. The water sector is central to managing these climate stresses, but America’s aging water infrastructure is not up to the task. Over the next 20 years, North Carolina’s drinking water infrastructure will require $17 billion in additional funding – and nationwide, the needs are $743 billion.
That’s why the American Jobs Plan includes an unprecedented commitment to building modern, climate-resilient water infrastructure – a $111 billion investment to revitalize drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems; tackle new contaminants; and support clean water infrastructure across rural America. An investment of this scale and scope would create nearly two million good-paying jobs across the country.
The Biden-Harris Administration is also making children’s health a top priority. The American Jobs Plan calls for replacing 100% of the lead pipes that plague too many American communities, many of which are communities of color and low-income. This is a win-win-win: we can put Americans to work while eliminating a pernicious public health threat and delivering environmental justice to the communities that have borne the brunt of pollution for far too long.
At the heart of the American Jobs Plan is an understanding that people in this country are hurting – now more than ever. They’re having to make tough choices between paying energy bills and buying food and medicine. Those are choices no one should have to make. On average, a low-income family in North Carolina spends between 8-10% of their income on home energy costs.
The American Jobs Plan would cut energy bills for these families by making their homes more energy efficient through investments in the Weatherization Assistance Program, a new Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator to finance building improvements, and expanded tax credits to support home energy upgrades.
Another key plank of the plan includes investing in a cleaner transportation system. Later this afternoon, Vice President Harris and I are taking a tour of Thomas Built Buses – the motherland of the great American yellow school bus. As a child, I’m not sure I would have been as excited to tour the school bus headquarters, but today, I am really looking forward to it – and I know Vice President Harris is too.
As a member of the U.S. Senate, Vice President Harris led the push to spur adoption of electric school buses. This is an issue that’s near and dear to her, and it’s also near and dear to us at EPA.
That’s why I’m so proud the American Jobs Plan would invest $20 billion to transition at least 20 percent of our yellow school bus fleet to electric through a new Clean Buses for Kids Program at EPA. These investments would put the United States on a path to achieve 100 percent clean school buses. That means cleaner, healthier air for our kids on their way to and from school, and good-paying jobs in bus manufacturing and assembly.
The American Jobs Plan is a historic investment in American ingenuity, in the hardworking women and men who built this great country, and in a robust clean energy economy. It will make for healthier, more equitable communities right here in Greensboro and across the country.
Madame Vice President, from one HBCU grad to another, I’m grateful to be on your team and even more so for your leadership.
Thank you.