Oct 30, 2025

Bob Keefe

Executive director, E2

Bob Keefe

Photo-Illustration by TIME (Courtesy Photo)

Bob Keefe is the executive director of E2, a national, nonpartisan group of more than 11,000 business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs advocating for smart policies that protect the environment and aid the clean energy transition. Keefe has played a key role in the passage of important climate and clean energy policies like the California Clean Car Standards, the nation’s first legislation to limit global warming emissions, and the Cap & Trade Program. Under his leadership, E2 has also changed the conversation about the economic benefits of clean energy with the public-facing Clean Jobs report.

What is the single most important action you think the public, or a specific company or government, needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda?

Climate change is an environmental issue. It's a health issue. It's a social justice issue. But it's also increasingly an economic issue. A pocketbook issue. And once something becomes a pocketbook issue, people start paying attention.

We all need to do a better job of understanding and communicating the economic costs of climate inaction and the economic benefits of climate action. And we need to make sure we hold our elected officials accountable to do something about it.

Climate-related disasters now regularly cost the United States $150 billion each year. Homeowners insurance rates are up 40 percent over the past six years. In some parts of the country, it's almost impossible to get insurance. Electricity rates are up more than 20 percent over the past five years, and will continue to rise with the advent of AI, the growth of data centers and the increasing number of gadgets we all plug into the wall.

On the other side of the coin, the cheapest power we can now produce comes from solar, wind and batteries. Electric vehicles are faster, less expensive to operate and safer and more fun to drive than gas-powered vehicles. Advances in energy efficiency, from Energy Star appliances to programmable thermostats and better insulation in our attics is saving homeowners money by reducing the electricity they have to buy.

Because of these technological advances, clean energy has quietly become a huge and important part of our economy. More than 3.5 million Americans now get up every day and go to work in clean energy occupations. More people now work in clean energy occupations than work as lawyers or bankers or real estate agents in America. More than 80 percent of all new energy jobs last year were in clean energy fields, and today, three times as many people work in clean energy today than work in fossil fuels.

And if Washington doesn't stop us, the clean economy is just getting started. In the past three years, companies have announced plans to invest more than $130 billion in 400 major clean energy related factories and other projects in America. Together, they're expected to create 123,000 new jobs. When's the last time we've seen that sort of investment in American manufacturing? Not in our lifetimes.

What’s one sustainability effort you personally will try to adopt in the next year?

My mission is simple: To make clean energy and climate action nonpartisan again. In these politically fraught times, that may seem impossible. But I truly believe if we focus on the economics of clean energy and climate change, it will happen. There should be nothing partisan or political about creating jobs, driving economic growth, making America more competitive and cutting costs for consumers and businesses.

That's what we can do - and are doing - with clean energy in America. When I first started working on these issues, clean energy was something for California and a few other liberal states. Not today.

Texas is now the biggest state for wind energy, followed by Iowa and Oklahoma. My home state of North Carolina for years has been one of the top states for solar. Georgia's Republican governor has pledged to make his state the "electric mobility capital of the country"—if South Carolina and Tennessee don't beat him to it with dozens of EV and battery factories flocking to those states—he might just do it.

Republican congressional districts are now home to more clean energy jobs than Democratic districts. More than 80 percent of all new major clean energy-related factories announced in recent years have been in Red states. And unless you live in one of a handful of states, you probably don't know a coal miner or an oilfield worker, but you probably know somebody who works in solar or energy efficiency. That's because 42 of our 50 states now have more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs.

Remember, it was Richard Nixon who signed the Clean Air Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency. It was George H.W. Bush who enacted our most important energy efficiency laws, and his son George W. who declared America needed to kick its addiction to oil. Our greatest conservationist president, of course, was Republican Theodore Roosevelt.

Clean energy and climate action used to be bipartisan issues—as they should be. The only reason these issues have become partisan is because we let politicians make them partisan. We let them divide us, split us and obfuscate the fact that we all want clean air and water, we all want cleaner energy and we all want to leave a better place for our children.

We need to change the narrative. That's my goal.

What gives you hope about the future of the planet?

Innovation.

Innovation is the reason why solar panels, batteries and wind turbines cost a fraction of what they did a decade ago, and are now the cheapest sources of power available. Innovation is transforming the auto industry, making electric vehicles the new standard in many countries. It's because of innovation that your refrigerator uses one-fourth of the power than the one you probably grew up with, and your television is now thinner than a book and can use less power than your toaster.

And innovation just keeps going, thanks to passionate and undaunted clean energy entrepreneurs and investors across the country who are devoted to the fact that we can do good for our environment while also doing good for our economy.

If you could stand up and talk to world leaders at the next COP, what would you say?

Washington is not America, and America is not the world. In this time when the United States is going backward on climate and clean energy, the rest of the world can - and must - continue to lead.

As a friend of mine likes to say, what's happening in America will pass. Maybe like a gallstone, but it will pass. Until then, it's up to the rest of the world to keep progress going on building a cleaner economy and a better environment.