Obama Seeks $2 Billion in Research on Cleaner Fuels

[IDemo]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — With few options available for financing his clean-energy ambitions, President Obama on Friday will propose diverting $2 billion in revenue from federal oil and gas leases over the next decade to pay for research on advanced vehicles, White House officials said.

Mr. Obama will visit the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago to tour its state-of-the-art research facilities and to promote his idea, first proposed in last month’s State of the Union address, to use oil and gas money to find ways to replace hydrocarbons as the primary fuel for the nation’s cars, trucks and buses.

The idea enjoys some bipartisan and business support, but is likely to encounter strong resistance from Congressional Republicans, who will portray it as a tax on energy producers. The White House says the money will come from growth in drilling revenue from leases on public lands and waters over the next decade and is not a new tax.

Officials said Mr. Obama will present the proposal as part of his “all-of-the-above energy strategy,” which includes an increase in oil and gas development; support for nonpolluting sources like wind, solar and geothermal energy; loan guarantees for new nuclear plants; and research into long-term alternatives to fossil fuels.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/us/politics/obamas-2-billion-plan-to-replace-fossil-fuels-in-cars.html?_r=0

[snappyturtle]

1. From the article:

Mr. Obama has given up on moving comprehensive climate change legislation through Congress and has ruled out a carbon tax as a way to finance the development of alternative energy sources, so he is pursuing smaller-scale projects that do not require new sources of revenue. The Energy Security Trust, as he calls his proposal to shift oil and gas royalties to alternative energy research, is one of those projects.

I'm so sorry but this effort of President Obama seems like a waste of the treasury. It allows business as usual and ???research. I hope I'm missing something here. Don't we have alternative energy sources to utilize....more fully, at hand?

[sangsaran]

5. He needs to look like he's doing something about our fuel problems.

He isn't actually trying to do anything about them.

[Iliyah]

2. Congress holds the purse or wallet

GOPpers refuse to commit anything to climate change efforts because basically they don't believe that the climate screwing up is man made. They also believe that their GAWD will rectify and cure the earth. It will also create jobs as well, another subject that the other side absolutely DON'T want to do.

[Earth_First]

3. What a joke...

The oil and gas industries are greenwashing their effort to comply, however their reluctance to make positive realistic initiatives is what's holding us back. Their effort is as hollow as an old oak tree.

Tell them that their windfalls will fund this, and watch them squirm, that is the litmus test on how committed they are to this initiative.

There should be not a single dime of this proposed $2B on any fossil fuel/combustible technology. It should be 100% alternative energy source production.

The Obama administration should be ashamed.

[SamKnause]

4. Research

2 Billion for research ?

WTF

[KurtNYC]

8. It advances the idea that 'further study is needed'

We have had alternative fuel sources for 40 years but it seems they won't be significantly deployed until every last drop of oil is extracted and burned.

And the first step in producing less carbon would be to improve efficiency; not "research" things at taxpayer expense for some un-named entity to exploit on some unspecified timeline. Ugh.

[xtraxritical]

10. "...drilling leases on public lands", wtf?

[blm]

6. Hate to say, but, looks like he's preparing for public announcement of Keystone deal that

we know was already made two years ago by Hillary. I guess she thinks enough time has passed and she's had a stack of good press exaggerating her Sec of State 'accomplishments' lately, so she can distance herself from the deal she left already made.

Kerry (anti-Keystone) will end up taking the hits for Hillary's deal and will probably take some of the heat for Obama, too.

[uh clem]

7. The part I wonder about.

The article says "the money will come from growth in drilling revenue from leases on public lands". What public lands? Are they talking about opening the National Parks to drilling?

[Cha]

9. Good for the President.. I know he's actually trying to do something about our

Climate Change.

Now, it is facing reductions under the mandatory budget cuts known as the sequester. The laboratory’s director, Eric D. Isaacs, who will greet the president on Friday, warned this week that the spending cuts would have a devastating impact as “the nation begins to feel the loss of important new scientific ideas that now will not be explored, and of brilliant young scientists who now will take their talents overseas or perhaps even abandon research entirely.”

In an article in The Atlantic written with the directors of two other Department of Energy labs, Dr. Isaacs said that the sequester cuts would force all new programs and research initiatives to be canceled, probably for at least two years.

White House officials said the president hoped to use some of the added revenue from the nation’s oil and gas boom to replace basic research money lost by the mandatory budget cuts and the expiration of the stimulus funds.

thanks IDemo