Hoping to increase support in the Senate for his stalled energy bill, President Barack Obama on Wednesday outlined a new strategy to boost biofuels production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions with “clean coal” technology.
Obama met Wednesday with a bipartisan group of governors to discuss energy policy and how to switch to cleaner sources of energy. “I am convinced that whoever builds a clean energy economy, whoever is at the forefront of that, is going to own the 21st-century global economy,” Obama told the governors at the White House.
But he said that China and other countries are moving even faster to make sure these “green jobs” are formed there. “We can’t afford to spin our wheels while the rest of the world speeds ahead,” Obama said.
Obama announced a carbon capture-and-storage task force to figure out how to deploy “clean coal” technology on a wide scale in the next 10 years. He called for five to 10 commercial demonstration projects to be up and running by 2016.
Boosting ethanol production could increase support in rural states, where production of the fuel has helped create new jobs. It could also help increase GOP support in the Senate for an energy bill.
The 2007 energy bill mandated that the United States produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022 — a goal the country remains far from reaching. Currently, the U.S. produces 12 billion gallons per year of the fuels.
A report from a biofuels working group laid out ways to speed up production to meet the goal, including finding ways to move ethanol from Midwest producers to population centers on the East and West coasts.
The meeting included Republican Govs. Jim Douglas of Vermont, chairman of the National Governors Association; Bob Riley of Alabama; and Mike Rounds of South Dakota. Democrats present included Govs. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming, Brian Schweitzer of Montana and a half-dozen others.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32501.html#ixzz0eaI4pAge
7 Comments
mulligan
Pure BS and will accomplish and solve nothing. Except waste a lot of money.
derryl
The energy cost of producing and distributing biofuels is almost as much as the energy you get by burning them so that's a very inefficient solution. I think clean coal has a lot of potential though. Coal can be liquefied and used as diesel, or gasified and used like natural gas. Still, plain old coal-fired electricity generating plants are probably the most efficient use of coal. The AGW crowd hates coal due to its CO2 output, but if we relocate all the Warmists to the Greenland ice sheet where it's still nice and cold, just the way they like it, then we can proceed unimpeded with coal burning and clean coal initiatives. The most climate-friendly, carbon neutral way to get all those Warmists to Greenland is with giant catapults. And I don't have to point out to the astute readers of RD that the catapult innovation and construction industry, as well as the catapult travel industry, could be a major driver of economic stimulus. I get quite stimulated just thinking about it.
rennerstump
It is wasted energy when would be leaders lag the global cooling facts. Our antiquated fiat federal reserve has bankrupted itself in 2008, but refuses to abdicate it's power over our credit. The global leader in money energy will be China's golden yuan. Our "leaders"? should be discussing how to indict the "international controllers" of the federal reserve's "fractional-rubber-money+ annual interest" SYSTEM, that threw all their unconstitutional profits away by blowing a gigantic CREDIT BUBBLE in the last few years of their 97 year old PONZI SCHEME! Our "leaders" are OATH bound to hold state and national hearings on the federal reserve OFFICERS unlawful conspiracy to control all of our national ENERGY and Power out side our Constitution and Laws for 97 years?? RS