How deep is America's energy issue? (Image: Thinkstock)

President Barack Obama defended his administration’s energy policy last Friday, citing that last year U.S. oil production reached its highest level since 2003 and the amount of oil and gas imported accounted for less than half of what the nation consumed–a trend that hasn’t occurred in more than a decade.

House Speaker John Boehner, however, accuses the Obama administration of being responsible for rising energy costs. “The Obama administration has consistently blocked American energy production that would lower costs and create jobs in our country,” the Ohio Republican told reporters at his weekly press conference. “They’ve canceled new leases for exploration, jeopardized our nuclear energy industry, and imposed a de facto moratorium on future drilling in our country.”

At Friday’s news conference, Obama shot back at Boehner, stating that “any notion that my administration has shut oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality.” He maintained that his administration is encouraging offshore exploration and production but doing so responsibly, and has approved more than 35 new offshore drilling permits that meet improved safety and environmental standards.

Obama also pointed to new national fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks established last year that will save consumers money and conserve more than one billion barrels of oil. In addition, he said, people are working in green industry jobs that didn’t exist a couple of years ago, manufacturing wind turbines, solar panels and electrical car batteries.

Today the average cost of a gallon of gas is more than $3.50 and a recent Pew Research Center poll shows that the 90% of Americans say the news they’re hearing about gas prices is “mostly bad,” compared to 77% in February. That’s the kind of news that always makes politicians nervous, but Obama suggested it should be used to change course.

“Every few years, gas prices go up; politicians pull out the same old political playbook, and then nothing changes. And when prices go back down, we slip back into a trance. And then when prices go up, suddenly we’re shocked,” he said. “American people are tired of that. We’ve got to work together—Democrats, Republicans, and everybody in between—to finally secure America’s energy future.”

BP workers cleaning up oil after the oil rig explosion off of the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo Courtesy of BP)

As soon as they are broadcast over the news or blasted to our smart phones, headlines linked to negative environmental issues like the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill cause public stocks or financial interests in a company to immediately plummet.  Now, more than ever, corporate social responsibility is directly tied to a company’s bottom-line, and most people would not choose to invest in, or even partner with, any entity having questionable practices that negatively affect the environment or the community in which it operates. The energy industry, because it primarily relies on the earth’s resources (i.e., natural gas, oil, coal, etc), draws considerably more attention to its accountability measures and standards.  Environmental advocates across the globe are pressing nations to raise standards that will help reduce or mitigate the negative impacts we experience as it pertains to current energy production methods.

• SEE ALSO – Green Insider: Energy Security Can Prevent $12-Per-Gallon Gas Prices

Responsible energy production will become crucial to the advancement of our economy, but how we reduce our consumption of energy should also provide an important catalyst for our progress.  Presently, America holds less than 5% of the world’s population, but we consume more than 25% of the world’s oil.  As the world’s population increases, Americans will have to take greater initiative in energy consumption as other developing nations seek larger shares of the world’s energy resources.  The future of our nation’s energy infrastructure will be driven by notions of how we view energy responsibility and the actions we are willing to take that support progressive changes in how we produce and consume energy.  This week in the Green Insider, we present three ways businesses or individuals can practice energy responsibility.

•    Ensure that energy production in your community is closely monitored.
The average oil refinery, petrochemical company, or power grid is placed within close proximity of a minority neighborhood.  These “fence line communities” welcome the job opportunities these industries bring but many environmentalists warn of the long-term health-related issues associated with living and working near and in these facilities.  Visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ECHO (Enforcement & Compliance History Online) website to check air and water quality or other information and regulation standards near energy producing facilities in your community.

•    Know your impact by understanding your energy consumption and carbon footprint. Energy responsibility begins by understanding how you or your business consumes energy.  By estimating your emissions, you can see what various actions you can take to conserve energy and reduce your environmental impact or carbon footprint.

•    Take advantage of incentives that encourage responsible energy consumption. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) enables low-income families to permanently reduce their energy bills by making their homes more energy efficient.  Since the program was implemented, more than 200,000 homes have been weatherized.

Join us Nov. 8, 2010 as Black Enterprise and Shell invite you to participate in a forum that will focus on energy security and responsibility. You can also join in on the conversation at the Black Enterprise + Shell Energy Forum Web site, and register for a chance to attend this exclusive event.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities is an initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Sustainable communities” is a trendy term not often bandied about in urban neighborhoods where residents are worried about finding jobs, adequate housing, and in some cases, easy access to basic services like a local supermarket. But the Obama administration hopes to change that through its Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an initiative established by the Department of Housing and Development, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. The $200 million grant program aims to redevelop urban centers and small cities around the nation so they can provide affordable, energy-efficient housing near employment opportunities, better public transportation options and green spaces.

In a conference call with reporters, HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims maintains that grant applications must include detailed plans, policies and implementation strategies to accomplish those goals and include evidence of input from the people who would be most directly impacted. Grants will not be awarded to any applicant that does not address all of those issues, Sims said. Before publishing a notice of fund availability the agencies sought input from state and local governments that were asked to identify how they would reallocate existing resources to complement a grant award. So far, 1,400 jurisdictions have expressed interest. Applications must be submitted by August 23, at 11:59:59 p.m., EDT.

“We see these grants as being very transformative,” Sims says. “It’s important to see job and economic growth in every one of the communities. We want communities to be viable in the long run.”

HUD has established two funding categories. Category 1 will support preparation of regional development plans while Category 2 will bring them in line with the partnership’s livability principles.

A fact sheet on the program can be viewed here.

In a letter to Hayward dated July 8, NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, said “Workers of color tend to be assigned the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins, while white workers tend to be in supervisory, less strenuous positions.” He urged BP to establish monitoring mechanisms to make sure that workers of color were given better paying jobs.

•Related reading: How to File a Claim Against BP for Oil Spill Damages

The storied civil rights organization, which is holding its 101st annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri, this weekend, is also demanding equal opportunity in hiring, contracting, health protections for worker, and more help for affected communities.

In a press conference slated for Saturday, Jealous, NAACP board chairman Roslyn M. Brock, and EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson will all discuss a new EPA and NAACP collaboration on the ongoing response to the Gulf oil spill.

BP declined to comment because it hadn’t reviewed the letter.

Separately, the NAACP convention will also focus on education, unemployment and other issues that have disproportionately affected minorities. First Lady Michelle Obama and the Revs. Jesse L. Jackson and Al Sharpton are scheduled to address the convention.

Speaking of dirty and slick: Be on guard against oil spill cons

Whenever there’s an opportunity, scammers often find a way to use their dirty little tricks to get into your pocket. Unfortunately, two scams related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have recently cropped up.

Stock Scams

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority recently notified the public about oil spill stock scams, which promise financial gains from investments in companies that say they’re  involved in the cleanup. For example, last month, the SEC noted that it temporarily suspended trading in shares of Huntington, California-based ACT Clean Technologies Incorporated. The company claimed that BP was interested in using technology licensed to its wholly-owned subsidiary that could be used in the cleanup operation. ACT Clean Technologies Inc. also claimed that tests were done proving that their technology was effective for the oil cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico. The SEC says it moved forward with the suspension because it had questions about the accuracy and adequacy of this information.

Bogus Training

Know that you don’t have to pay to get training or a job to help with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Despite that fact, there are fake employment companies that are charging a fee for training and job opportunities. If you’re interested in getting involved with the cleanup, you can find legitimate opportunities by visiting the Deepwater Horizon Response Website or calling 866-448-5816.

How You Can Protect Yourself

You can protect yourself from falling victim to these types of scams. The SEC and FINRA offer the tips below on detecting oil spill investment scams. They say that a company might send out a press release, fax, or e-mail that might make the following claims:

• They have products or technologies that are effective in cleaning up oil spills or restoring the eco-system
• They advertise contracts with BP that will assist with the cleanup effort
• They claim the company is providing assistance or expertise to BP or U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency
• The company predicts rapid sales growth
• You must invest immediately

Furthermore, you can shield yourself from oil spill employment scams by calling BP directly and verifying the relationship between them and any employment company that claims to be offering jobs with BP.

Sheiresa Ngo is the consumer affairs editor at Black Enterprise.

Visualize with me for a second.

Imagine finally getting out of the military. You have your GI Bill in your left hand and the world in your right.

What would you do?

For Roderick Rickman, the question wasn’t what to do, but how to do it. As the founder and chairman of MPS Group, the parent company of MPS Trading LLC (No. 37 on the B.E. Industrial/Service list with $118 million in sales), his dream started with the purchase of a truck in the 1980s. From there, Rickman began removing used oil and scrap metal from automotive repair shops, establishing the foundation for MPS, founded in 1994. Rickman grew is one-man-band into an empire, raking in $150 million in revenue annually.

Roderick Rickman

The event was co-sponsored by the New York Empire State Development Corporation’s Division of Minority and Women’s Business Development and the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA).

MPS, a waste management and environmental consultant firm, which also specializes in greening brownfields, continues to expand, despite a troubled economy. Rickman recently made headway in Brazil taking advantage of the growing green movement. Check out how:

BlackEnterprise.com: What propelled you to begin work in the environmental industry?

Roderick Rickman: I got my official environmental training in the military, specifically in nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare. When I got out of the military I used my environmental training and my GI money and bought a truck. I started servicing Midas, Jiffy, Quickie Lube, and other automotive repair companies. I removed the old oil from vehicle oil changes and gathered scrap metal auto parts to salvage. I also recycled the old oil, converting and selling it as cutting oil (lubricant for cutting machines).

MPS is based in Detroit, how has it been impacted by Chrysler and General Motors’ financial woes?

We, like most suppliers, had job cuts and layoffs. We’re looking to diversify our services into new emerging industries like alternative energies, utilities, healthcare, education institutions, and city and state governments.

Detroit needs to continue to diversify itself and continue to be on the cutting edge of technology with smart vehicles, smart fuels smart batteries, as well as understanding from a political standpoint what we need to do to make sure that [Capitol Hill] understands our needs and keeps us on their agenda.

Your company has grown exponentially since its inception in 1994, how can black entrepreneurs overcome economic odds?

Service is key. Entrepreneurs need to hire employees with experience in working with large cooperate customers. The also need to diversify geographically. We recently opened an office, Rickman Enterprise Group LLC, in Sao Paulo, Brazil because a lot of our customers were in Brazil. We had clients in Brazil so we followed our clients. Businesses need to follow their clients.

Also, don’t change your service often to areas you’re unfamiliar with; stick to what you know.

Renita Burns is the editorial assistant at BlackEnterprise.com

In addition to safeguarding air, water, and land,  Jackson is responsible for more than $7 billion in funding from the Recovery Act to invest in environmental protection and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits.

In honor of Earth Day, Jackson, the first African American administrator for the EPA, discusses how blacks and minority businesses can ride the green wave.

BlackEnterprise.com: As the EPA’s first African-American administrator do you feel it’s important for more African-Americans to get involved with the environment and embrace the clean energy future? Do you think it’s a bit of a struggle with African-Americans to get on board with that?

Lisa Jackson: I think energy is easier for people to embrace, for African-Americans to embrace, than the environment. We falsely kind of believe that the environment is something out there that we didn’t worry about too much and I think that the environmental justice movement should be credited for making it clear that anything that impacts the environment tends to impact people of color potentially more and certainly low income people.

The president is meeting a great need. We have to follow him and realize that he is calling on Americans to embrace a completely different future. It will be a new economy and the best thing about a new economy is that it wipes the board clean and away and allows us an opportunity to get in at the ground floor and we should not miss that opportunity.

Air quality and protecting America’s water are some of your top priorities. Why?

Literally we need clean air to live, to be healthy, and we’ve had a series of setbacks in court decisions what I think are regulations that were either on the wrong track with respect to air. Although it has gotten cleaner, we’ve sort of stalled in our efforts to fight pollution as we move forward.

On water quality — we take water for granted. So we at the EPA, we really have only one mission, and that is to protect the environment. And there are only three big parts of the environment: air, water and the land. If the EPA is not out there doing its job for the American people, then they would have the right to question why we are here at all. We have to get to work.

How do you plan to attract and encourage small business owners and corporations to get on board with the green economy? What type of incentives will there be?

The Recovery Act will include both outright grants, and it will include loans and loan guarantees, and tax credits all in those clean energy and renewable energy fields.
We’re already seeing political and local leaders be very thoughtful about ways to really be transformative. Obviously the job part of it we touch, but we’re not leading. The White House has hired Van Jones from Green for All [to be the special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the Council on Environmental Quality].

EPA Programs Receiving Funding Under the Recovery Act

Please give us some examples of the types of shovel ready jobs that are available to help reduce the unemployment rate?

The shovel-ready jobs under the Recovery Act are mainly bread-and-butter, wastewater, and gentle-water operations. You can think about new pipes in the ground; you can think about the 20-year local wastewater treatment plant.

You’ll see renewable energy, solar, and wind projects starting to come to life with the recovery logo and you’ll see lots and lots of opportunities for energy efficiency, retrofitting schools, retrofitting churches, retrofitting homes in our communities. All of those are opportunities for new jobs. They might not need shovels, but [they’re] hammer and nail ready.

President Obama’s Green Job Act aims to create three million new jobs. In the green collar job market, what will employers want to see in terms of experience?

In certain jobs people will need a high level of skill, so obviously technical training. There is a need for engineers of many different kinds. I read an article the other day that mechanical and civil engineers, a lot of disciplines like that are seeing upticks. Nuclear engineers. There’s lots of talk about how we don’t actually have nuclear engineers being trained in this country right now.

When you’re getting that training and somebody is paying money and getting training, you should be asking how does this relate to the green economy?

Will the EPA support minority involvement in trends in green practices? Will there be a push to encourage minorities to study environmentalism?

Absolutely. I certainly hope that if nothing else my being here shows minority students that there is an unlimited future for them in the environmental movement. It is an incredible opportunity in terms of building a career and one that makes you feel good every day about the work you are doing.

I would certainly hope that one of the legacies in my time here at EPA is that we literally changed the face of the environmental movement as people see it in this country. Environmentalism is not something that [is just for] the people with money, although we certainly appreciate the leadership of folks who support environmental causes. But for anyone who cares about the air that their children breathe and anybody who cares about pollution in their community, the right to a clean environment is almost as basic a right as any other that we have.

How will the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor be held accountable for making certain that small, disadvantaged, or minority owned businesses or low income residents will get a fair share of green contracts?

The president has made it clear that he intends to hold each agency accountable for opening up these historic opportunities to people of color and small businesses. The challenge here is that people are losing jobs as we speak, so people keep talking about new jobs. I think the president has said we also have to count all the jobs that will have been lost and that is a hard number to measure.

I think that means there will be changes across every single sector. Not in one sector. We will know we [have achieved that goal when we see] real integration of black owned businesses and women owned businesses.

More on Earth Day
On April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans gathered together to participate the environmental demonstration known as “Earth Day.” There were rallies, teach-ins, speeches, and publicity ploys all designed to raise awareness of the environmental problems facing the U.S. In the more than 30 years since that first celebration, times have certainly changed. Earth Day is now celebrated by more than 500 million people and in 175 countries.

The government and the EPA are still touting recycling and energy efficiency, and targeting pollution, but there is also a strong push for green jobs, retrofitting outdated fixtures and upgrading infrastructure under Obama’s ambition to create a clean energy economy that can serve as a pillar of our recovery.

Further Reading:

Obama’s Plan for a Green Economy

Earth Day Proclamtion

How You Can Help:
Pick 5 for the Environment

Sierra Club Tips