On August 3, president Obama unveiled the Clean Power Plan, calling it “the most important step America has taken in the fight against global climate change.” The Clean Power Plan sets achievable standards to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. In only a few hours, the video went viral (check it out if you haven’t already) and #actonclimate was one of the hottest Tweets on Twitter. We found this enthusiasm from people particularly interesting to analyze. Were people waiting for such a commitment? Are people ready to change and switch to cleaner alternatives?

Of course, a lot of medias commented the program: is it realistic? How will this shift happen and when? This announcement for sure raised a lot of questions, and several of them remain to be answered, but for those who are interested in getting a better grasp of what it means for the Cleantech industry, we found this video: What Obama’s Climate Rule Means for Cleantech pretty nice to watch. The great idea behind the Clean Power Plan is that it is flexible to each state. This means that states can switch from coal fire power to natural gas, set up programs to boost efficiency, enact cap and trade systems, etc. States have to come up with a plan by 2018 and start making cuts by 2022, but creates an incentive program for States who start early.

Obama’s Clean Power Plan is not viewed as highly by everyone, as electric companies and coal companies have started to see a decline in business as solar panels and other means of clean energy start to emerge. As Malcolm Woolf, senior vice president of policy and government affairs at Advanced Energy Economy, said, “Fixed charges and the net metering debate with solar are going to be increasingly large issues in the electric industry and the micro-spec is they (electric companies) are a symptom of the evolving business model and utilities are going to get less and less of their revenues involving metric sales and more from providing a service (solar panel installation) and this is the evolution of the system we have to go through.”