By week's end, we should have important new federal legislation -- the American Clean Energy and Security ACT (ACESA). It puts a price on carbon emissions, a cap for creating them, and a mechanism for trading credits for reducing them. Money talks, and now the real change begins!

The Center for American Progress this week published an economic assessment of how ACESA and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will impact the U.S. economy. The authors, Robert Polin, James Heintz, and Heidi Garrett-Peltier, of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, forecas $150B per year in new investment, including 1.7M net new jobs per year over the life of ARRA. Their detailed analysis also includes the following investment forecasts by energy area:
1. Energy efficiency: $80B/year
2. Smart Grid: $44B/year
3. Public Transportation: $5B per year
4. Cogeneration: $5B/year
5.Renewable Energy:
   On-Grid: $30B/year
   Off-Grid: $8B/year over 20 years
   Nonelectric renewable energy: $3B/year
   Alternative motor vehicle fuels: $5B year

View a copy of the report here.