Clean and Strong

Small-business owners back alternative-energy efforts.

Image: iStockphoto

Cleaner energy means a stronger economy, a majority of small-business owners tell pollsters.

Sixty-one percent, a solid majority of those surveyed by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and American Viewpoint, agreed that a move to clean energy will help restart the economy and lead to job creation by small businesses. Fifty-eight percent say such a move will transform the economy, and they want their businesses in on the change.

The poll comes out as President Barack Obama and his Congressional allies push for a bill that would put a cap on carbon emissions from large sources like power stations, and that would funnel more money into clean-energy development.

A bill sponsored by John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent, is currently before the Senate. The House has already passed its own bill cutting carbon emissions and encouraging clean energy.

The Kerry-Lieberman effort seemed dead on arrival in this election year, but has been given new life by public outrage over the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher. Obama will hold a summit Wednesday with Congressional leaders of both parties to try to hammer out a clean-energy agreement—something he pushed for in a speech last week about the Gulf disaster.

Pollsters talked with 800 owners of businesses with 100 or fewer employees, and their findings directly contradict an argument from those opposed to the legislation—that it would be a costly tax on energy that would damage the American economy.

“The research shows that small-business owners want action on clean energy, which they believe will strengthen the economy,” John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority, a sponsor of the survey, told Environment News Service.

And the small-business owners surveyed aren’t blind to the argument from those opposed to new clean-energy rules.

"One of the most surprising findings of the survey is that despite the fact that nearly two thirds of business owners believe it would increase costs for their businesses, a majority still want to move forward on clean energy and climate policy," Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research senior vice president and principal Anna Greenberg said.