This blog was written by Jennifer Rennicks, former Senior Director of Policy & Communications at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Guest Blog | September 28, 2010 | Elections, Energy Policy

This blog was written by Jennifer Rennicks, former Senior Director of Policy & Communications at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.Despite a promising start (Congress allocated $80 billion of the 2009 Recovery Act funding for clean energy & efficiency programs), our country’s work on much-needed energy policy reform has barely begun. The list of pending energy policies is extensive, and the looming midterm elections mean that substantive work at the national level will not resume until December at the very earliest:

•  a Gulf Oil spill response
•  Homestar and other energy and fuel efficiency programs
•  creation of a national renewable energy standard
•  firm limits on carbon pollution and
•  defense of the Clean Air Act’s authority to regulate air pollutants (including carbon dioxide) that threaten human health.

With so many pieces of the energy-policy landscape still pending, the importance of the upcoming elections cannot be over-stressed. Supporting clean energy candidates is one way to ensure that enough champions will return in the 112th Congress to meaningfully address the range of needed energy reforms.

In order to support clean energy candidates, you must first educate yourself about the candidates and their positions with a variety of tools (candidate endorsements, questionnaires published in local newspapers or annual issue-based scorecards) and ensure your voter registration is up to date – particularly if you have moved to a new address or changed your name within the last 2 years.

NonProfitVote.org has a helpful, voter-resource website with state specific pages for each Southeastern state: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

It’s very important to note that the deadline for voter registration in most Southeastern states (Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee) is Monday, October 4, 2010, so please check with your Secretary of State’s office to ensure you are registered to vote in time for the upcoming election.