Ideas change everything

Enough red tape — we need to say yes to clean energy

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Rich Powell |

TED Countdown Summit

• July 2023

Climate innovation leader Rich Powell dives into the bureaucracy, bottlenecks and not-in-my-backyard attitude preventing the US from achieving its green energy goals, warning that we need about 10,000 new clean energy projects to be built in the US this decade if we're to reach net zero by 2050. Learn more about what's needed to fight NIMBYism, get serious about the energy transition — and get out of our own way.

Climate innovation leader Rich Powell dives into the bureaucracy, bottlenecks and not-in-my-backyard attitude preventing the US from achieving its green energy goals, warning that we need about 10,000 new clean energy projects to be built in the US this decade if we're to reach net zero by 2050. Learn more about what's needed to fight NIMBYism, get serious about the energy transition — and get out of our own way.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.

Modernizing the permitting process in the US means Congress must update existing laws that are outdated. It's important for federal lawmakers to hear from constituents on the need to expedite more clean energy project development and improve the burdensome judicial review process. If you need to know what to say, here's some helpful words to advocate for "Three Fixes to Build Energy Projects Cleaner and Faster."

About the speaker

Climate innovation leader

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As CEO of ClearPath and ClearPath Action, Rich Powell advocates for private-sector innovations to reduce emissions in the energy and industrial sectors.

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Countdown: A global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis

Learn how you can help cut the world's emissions in half by 2030, in the race to a zero-carbon world.

null - Countdown: A global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.

Modernizing the permitting process in the US means Congress must update existing laws that are outdated. It's important for federal lawmakers to hear from constituents on the need to expedite more clean energy project development and improve the burdensome judicial review process. If you need to know what to say, here's some helpful words to advocate for "Three Fixes to Build Energy Projects Cleaner and Faster."