We Can't Wait is a policy initiative launched by the U.S. President Barack Obama's administration in October 2011 to institute policies by executive orders, administrative rulemaking, and recess appointments. [1] The initiative was developed in response to the United States Congress' unwillingness to pass economic legislation proposed by Obama, and conflicts in Congress during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis. [2]
The following is a list of actions conducted by Barack Obama's administration as part of the We Can't Wait program, along with the brief description, and the date issued.
Some Republicans have criticized the We Can't Wait campaign as a threat to Congress's oversight authority. John Boehner, the then House Speaker, stated that Obama's executive orders will be reviewed to ensure that they do not conflict with the Constitution or federal law. [15]
In the United States, a recess appointment is an appointment by the president of a federal official when the U.S. Senate is in recess. Under the U.S. Constitution's Appointments Clause, the president is empowered to nominate, and with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the Senate, make appointments to high-level policy-making positions in federal departments, agencies, boards, and commissions, as well as to the federal judiciary. A recess appointment under Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution is an alternative method of appointing officials that allows the temporary filling of offices during periods when the Senate is not in session. It was anticipated that the Senate would be away for months at a time, so the ability to fill vacancies in important positions when the Senate is in recess and unavailable to provide advice and consent was deemed essential to maintain government function, as described by Alexander Hamilton in No. 67 of The Federalist Papers.
Richard Adams Cordray is an American lawyer and politician who served from 2021 to 2024 as COO of Federal Student Aid in the United States Department of Education. From 2012 to 2017, he served as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Before that, Cordray variously served as Ohio's attorney general, solicitor general, and treasurer. He was the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio in 2018. In April 2024, the Biden administration announced Cordray's departure after a chaotic rollout of changes to the FAFSA student aid application form.
According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for 8.4% of total primary energy production and 21% of total utility-scale electricity generation in the United States in 2022.
Green jobs are, according to the United Nations Environment Program, "work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and service activities that contribute(s) substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials, and water consumption through high efficiency strategies; de-carbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution." The environmental sector has the dual benefit of mitigating environmental challenges as well as helping economic growth.
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2023, utility-scale solar power generated 164.5 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 3.9% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 238 TWh.
New Energy for America was a plan led by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden beginning in 2008 to invest in renewable energy sources, reduce reliance on foreign oil, address global warming issues, and create jobs for Americans. The main objective of the New Energy for America plan was to implement clean energy sources in the United States to switch from nonrenewable resources to renewable resources. The plan led by the Obama Administration aimed to implement short-term solutions to provide immediate relief from pain at the pump, and mid- to- long-term solutions to provide a New Energy for America plan. The goals of the clean energy plan hoped to: invest in renewable technologies that will boost domestic manufacturing and increase homegrown energy, invest in training for workers of clean technologies, strengthen the middle class, and help the economy.
The DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center is a photovoltaic power station in Arcadia, DeSoto County, in the U.S. state of Florida, owned by Florida Power & Light (FPL). President Barack Obama attended the plant's commissioning on October 27, 2009. It has a nameplate capacity of 25 megawatts (MW), and produces an estimated 42,000 megawatt hours (MW·h) of electricity per year.
Harold Craig Becker, known professionally as Craig Becker, is an American labor attorney, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board, and currently the Senior Counsel to the AFL–CIO.
The energy policy of the Obama administration was defined by an "all-of-the-above" approach which offered federal support for renewable energy deployment, increased domestic oil and gas extraction, and export of crude oil and natural gas. His presidency's first term was shaped by the failure of his signature climate legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, to pass, and then climate and energy disasters including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 and then Hurricane Sandy, which took place during the 2012 election. In his second term, Obama lifted the ban on crude oil exports and approved liquified natural gas exports; his planned regulatory approach to reducing greenhouse pollution in the electricity sector, the Clean Power Plan, was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Blythe Mesa Solar Power Project, also known as the Blythe Solar Energy Center, is a 235 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power plant near the city of Blythe in Riverside County, California. It occupies about 2,000 acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the Mojave Desert. The construction uses CdTe thin film panels from the U.S. firm First Solar, and the majority of the output is being sold to Kaiser Permanente and Southern California Edison under 20-year power purchase agreements.
The Copper Mountain Solar Facility is a 802 megawatt (MWAC) solar photovoltaic power plant in Boulder City, Nevada, United States. The plant was developed by Sempra Generation. When the first unit of the facility entered service on December 1, 2010, it was the largest photovoltaic plant in the U.S. at 58 MW. With the opening of Copper Mountain V in March 2021, it again became the largest in the United States. It is co-located with the 64 MW Nevada Solar One, 150 MW Boulder Solar, and 300 MW Techren Solar projects in the Eldorado Valley, thus forming a more than 1 gigawatt (GW) solar generating complex. By comparison, generating capacity at the nearby Hoover Dam is about 2 GW.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, and other financial companies operating in the United States. Since its founding, the CFPB has used technology tools to monitor how financial entities used social media and algorithms to target consumers.
Kathryn H. Ruemmler is an attorney who formerly served as principal deputy White House counsel and then White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Previously a partner at Latham and Watkins co-chairing its white-collar defense group, Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs in 2020 as a Partner and Global Head of Regulatory Affairs. In 2021, she was promoted to Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel.
Solar power is an important contributor to electricity generation in Italy, accounting for 11.8% of total generation in 2023, up from 0.6% in 2010 and less than 0.1% in 2000.
The American Jobs Act and was the informal name for a pair of bills recommended by U.S. President Barack Obama in a nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress on September 8, 2011. He characterized the proposal as a collection of non-controversial measures designed to get Americans back to work, and he repeatedly urged Congress to pass it "right away"; he also said that the bills would not add to the national deficit and would be fully paid for.
Solar power has been increasing rapidly in the U.S. state of North Carolina, from less than 1 MW (megawatts) in 2007 to 6,152 MW in 2019, when it had the second-largest installed PV capacity of all states.
National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that the President of the United States cannot use his authority under the Recess Appointment Clause of the United States Constitution to appoint public officials unless the United States Senate is in recess and not able to transact Senate business. The Court held that the clause allows the president to make appointments during both intra-session and inter-session recesses but only if the recess is of sufficient length, and if the Senate is actually unavailable for deliberation, thereby limiting future recess appointments. The Court also ruled that any office vacancy can be filled during the recess, regardless of when it arose. The case arose out of President Barack Obama's appointments of Sharon Block, Richard Griffin, and Terence Flynn to the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Three Cedars Solar Project is a 210 MWAC (265 MWp) photovoltaic power station consisting of three units extending about 15 miles northwest of Cedar City, Utah. The project was developed by SunEdison, built with its global team of partners, and commissioned in September 2016. The electricity and renewable energy credits are being sold to Rocky Mountain Power under three separate 20-year power purchase agreements.