focused on pursuing its climate-related agenda items. this week jennifer granholm toured cities across the northeast highlighting the white house s unprecedented investment in fighting climate change. i caught up with her on one leg of her trip at the port of providence, rhode island, where she made clear that this country s clean energy future will not only provide our children with a better world, but one with a much greater economic opportunity. i don t think people understand that because they haven t seen it here, the amazing amount of jobs that will be created in this energy sector. when you think about how broad it is. yes, it s offshore wind. it s onshore wind. it is the vehicles. it s the solar panels. it is the stuff that goes around the solar panels which are the racks and the trackers. it is the geothermal, it s the hydro power. it s the nuclear and the whole ball of wax. so many jobs and all of the supply chain that could be made in the united states and you re
reliable is to build out a clean energy future and that means wind and solar. it means batteries to make sure you can store that and it is the whole ball of wax. right now it is cheaper. wind and solar in most places are cheaper than fossil fuels because we ve already got enough supply out there. we ve done the technological advances to reduce the cost. the department of energy, we are focused on how do we bring down costs further, and we want to look at new forms of clean technology like hydrogen, clean hydrogen from renewable sources, for example, could be the answer to dispatchable clean base load power, but weir not there yet. this is why the technology solutions are very important at these early stages. we haven t had new nuclear power generation in the united states for a long time. is that going to play a part in this future? one, nuclear now provides 50% of our clean energy in this country. 20% of our only energy.
to the pandemic. are we, as a nation, going to invest in systems capable of detecting this variant, these viruses quickly and are we going to follow that early warning with action and equity to get the vaccines and vaccinations around the world and in the unvaccinated population in our country, or are we going to allow this virus to continue to dictate how we live our lives? this is a decision point, omicron is getting the opportunity. we should act now. rick, thanks as always for making time for us so early in the morning. we really need the information and the analysis that people like you have. dr. rick bright, senior at the rockefeller foundation. conversation with energy secretary jennifer granholm. the white house s historic investment to fight climate change and the future of clean energy but before that, inflation, a term with ominous overtones but why knowing that history may calm some of your fears. g that history may calm some of your fears.
how do you address those criticisms? you know what? democrat states and republican states are all in on building out clean. i was recently in north dakota. they are that governor, he is all about building out the clean energy economy even though they have a lot of fossil fuel investments because he sees it as growing the pie. texas is, like, number one in wind, number two in solar. they have built out the whole infrastructure and have put thousands and thousands of people to work. so that may be what politicians are saying, but who happening on the ground is that the private sector and government are partnering to make sure that people have the opportunity to get jobs in this sector. people need to understand this is a transition. we re not going to flip a switch and be off of fossil fuels tomorrow. what we want to do is grow the pie and build out this clean energy side so that the people who have been working in oil and gasser in mining for coal, we want them to see themselves as
building out energy 2.0 which is this clean energy future. what will be the thing that moves the needle? we had to release oil from the strategic reserves. how do you square the incentives to keep gas prices low with the need to move on with non-fossil fuels. this president feels strongly that everyday citizens should not be hurting by prices at the pump and that s why he s hurting with this. this is a transition. we don t want people hurting and we want to build out clean and eventually we ll be at a place where most people will be driving electric vehicles, but we re not there today. you are on the cusp of new forms of energy and some that are cheaper than they are and some that are quite affordable right now. the danger is you don t want to tip us over into an inflationary era. first of all, long term, the best strategy for energy prices to be stable and low and