Obama: Energy key to his economic plan

The heart of Sen. Barack Obama's economic plan is to spend $15 billion a year for 10 years on energy technology, according to an interview he gave the Wall Street Journal today. That technology would focus on wind, solar, and nuclear energy.

That $15 billion "would be funded by revenue collected from a separate Obama proposal to cap greenhouse emissions through a system of trading pollution permits," the Journal reports. "Sen. Obama would auction those permits to producers of carbon dioxide, such as electric utilities, and figures the sales would yield about $100 billion a year. Most of that would go to consumers as rebates on utility bills, he said."

In addition, the Democratic presidential candidate told the Journal, he would set up an "infrastructure reinvestment bank" that "would finance $60 billion in high-speed railways, improved energy grids and other projects over a decade."

The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, is less enamored of government intervention in the energy market. He has taken to saying Sen. Obama would represent "Jimmy Carter's second term," says the Journal. But Obama told the Journal that large-scale government intervention in the energy market is necessary. While McCain argues that venture funds are investing heavily in energy technology, Obama contends there is a gap in funding between innovation and commercialization that should be filled by Washington.

"You have this point in time when things haven't quite taken off yet and still entail huge risks," he said.

[Photo: Getty Images]

--Craig Pittman

Comments

[DELdaBULL]

Alternative Energy source is very important. People like Exxon/Ford/Chevy/Chevron et al could/would probably make more if they invested in alt energy. Alas, we are USA-ans and we are addicted to oil.

[Eric]

Letting the feds take the risk of commercializing alternative energy via low interest loans would be the best way to go. CO2 permit, carbon taxes or any other cap and trade program will only result in greater costs to consumers, or a reduction in supply by producers. Obama's plan will cause huge energy price increases and make an already shaky economy spin out of control. Jimmy Carter did it in the '70s and it was a disaster. Obama want's gas lines again.

[Tom]

I have been hearing about all this alternative energy stuff since I was in college in the early 70's. The technology has been just around the corner for the last 50 years, but we never seem to get there. This is more snake oil and platitudes, but the Obama worshipers just lap it up.

[Lou]

I hope there is more to the Obama energy plan than $15 billion a year in research subsidies. In the US economy that sum won't produce much benefit unless it primes the pump for corporate investment. The carbon trading plan sounds like financial flim-flammery. And pity the poor birds as wind power expands!

[RJ]

Some people are so clueless. The advances in the technology over the past few years have been revolutionary. And whats currently in R&D will change life as we know it.
Adding some funding to get the ball moving is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

[KC]

"The technology has been just around the corner for the last 50 years, but we never seem to get there. This is more snake oil and platitudes... "

Hmmm...could that be due to the fact that we've had Republican presidents for the last 36 out of 50 years?

[Tino]

The most disturbing thing about Obama's energy positions are the sheer lack of knowledge about economics and the energy industry.

It is reasons like this that presidential candidates get well-versed advisors to coach them on the topics. Unfortunately, his blind idealism makes him look completely ignorant of how energy is explored, produced, transported and sold.

The claim that reducing supply and adding taxes and other costs to energy producers will LOWER prices to consumers would be comical if it wasn't such a sad scenario for lower income Americans. I am sure that as prices will continue to rise, the real problems will continue to be avoided.

Instead, invisible boogeymen (speculators! hedge funds! pension funds! those dirty foreigners!) will be blamed.

That is why I have been buying energy company stocks for years and will continue to do so. Don't believe the hype - profit from others' stupidity.

[Tino]

Someone needs to ask Obama and the rest of his Congressional henchmen what they have done with the hundreds of billions of *additional* tax dollars that they are receiving from the oil companies every year due to the run up in oil prices. Instead of creating new taxes, how about spending a few of the bucks you are already siphoning off the top?

The tax bill just for Exxon has gone up by over $20 billion a year in the past three years. Somehow this fact doesn't make it into the economic-and-energy-ignorant press.