Evoking Joe the Plumber from the 2008 presidential race, Gov. Bill Ritter challenged the audience gathered today at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Denver attending the Clean Energy Efficiency Financial Summit to keep Middle America in mind.

“In order to build out a clean energy economy, if we want people to participate in that, we want middle-income America; we want … Joe the Plumber, for lack of a better example,” Ritter said. “We want common people to understand that this is not just executives and utility companies or people that run energy offices.  We want everybody to be able to participate.”

The event, hosted by Ritter and the Colorado Retrofit Working Group, brought together a diverse mix of individuals including representatives from banking, investors, business leaders, labor unions, environmental groups and community organizers.   The agenda for the morning-long summit zeroed in on identifying ways to leverage private capital, drive innovation, create affordable financing for programs, create jobs, and expand home weatherization within a clean energy economy.  Capital, said Ritter, is essential to realizing a robust clean energy economy.

“Finance will be absolutely critical to our efforts,” Ritter said.

Also delivering remarks to the summit attendees was Gil Sperling, a senior advisor with the U.S. Department of Energy, who said the private sector needs to partner with government to give fuel to what the government has essentially jump-started.

“The American Recovery Act and Reinvestment Act provided the down payment for our nation’s transition to a clean energy economy, but we need to leverage the combined resources of local and state governments and the private sector through partnerships like we’re building here today to get the best return on these investments,” said Sperling.

Earlier this year, the DOE awarded a $25 million grant to Denver, Boulder, and Garfield counties to retrofit homes and commercial buildings for energy efficiency.  The DOE estimates that retrofitting energy-inefficient homes will save families an average of $140 to $600 a year, with the added benefits of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil and reducing carbon emissions.