Obama’s Energy Plan Shows Little Progress in the First 90 Days
By: Allison Quering
With President Barack Obama’s presidency nearing the 90-day mark, politicians, experts, and the American people have begun to evaluate his progress on energy conservation and improvement. The comparison and contrast of suggestions and developments that have been made to Obama’s early plans show both how the country has already progressed with new energy plans in his first few months as president, and can show how the progress will shape the country’s future with energy.
The Plan:
On June 24, 2008, Obama spoke at Springs Preserve in Nevada to discuss his plans to improve the country’s use and production of energy, if he were elected president. The opening lines of his speech demonstrated his dedication to the development of better energy efficiency:
“A green, renewable energy economy is not some pie-in-the-sky, far off future; it is now. It is creating jobs now. It is providing cheap alternatives to $140 dollar per barrel of oil now.”
Taken from Obama’s official website, the Obama-Biden “New Energy for America” plan will do the following:
• Provide short-term relief to American families facing pain at the pump
• Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
• Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
• Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars — cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon — on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
• Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
• Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
Obama’s short-term solutions to relieving “pain at the pump” included up to a $1000 rebate for families, closing the loopholes on fuel price increases, and use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The long-term solutions involved tackling climate change, investments to reduce dependence on foreign oil such as the production of more hybrid cars and other “clean” technology, the promotion of U.S. oil and gas production as well as lifestyle changes to become a more energy efficient country.
The Progress
On April 8, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar spoke at a panel on energy development at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Salazar explained the continuing plan for offshore development in federal waters, or the Outer Continental Shelf, by researching available resources and then issuing regulations for offshore windmills and deep-sea turbines.
“We are going to transform our energy economy from a oil-based, carbon-based economy over to a new energy economy of renewables and vast technologies.”
Additionally, Salazar expressed to the panel the concerns of the expansion of land for drilling, stressing that there are plenty of available places to drill without expanding to land that has been off limits, much to oil companies’ disagreement.
Recently, Obama backed up Salazar’s idea of the importance of these developments. “This is going to be a big, big project and a very difficult one and a very costly one. If you say to a power plant you have to produce energy in a different way, and that costs them money, then they want to pass that cost on to consumers, which means everybody’s electricity prices go up, and that is something that is not very popular. I do believe in climate change. I think it’s important.”
Unfortunately, in Obama’s first 90 days, not much more than further planning has developed in any of the areas about which he spoke in June.
At a press conference for a recent United Nations meeting, some officials expressed their impatience with the lack of action so far.
“We are still waiting for the U.S. to put its position on the table,” Michael Zammit-Cutajar, an official of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told the NYTimes.
Obama hopes to have worked out his policies by this coming June.
Obama’s speech on energy.
