President Obama will give a major energy speech on Monday that will frame the successes of his administration in advancing renewable and clean energy, while playing up the idea that facing down climate change will boost the economy, not hurt it.
The speech will be the keynote address at Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s eighth annual National Clean Energy Summit, which has become a touchstone event for Democrats to lay out key policy goals with the clean energy industry and its advocates.
This year’s summit will begin with a debate on the future of rooftop solar power, which Reid’s state of Nevada is heavily invested in, as it plans to transition away from fossil fuels. A Bloomberg article called Nevada a “green oasis” in the president’s fight with the GOP over his climate change agenda.
President Obama “will discuss topics such as securing greater energy independence, empowering Americans to develop existing clean energy resources and job creation through renewable energy initiatives,” Taylor Fisher, a spokesman for the summit, said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
The White House has been quiet on what the president will say, while Obama himself has said it will generally have to do with using renewable energy to expand the U.S. economy and add jobs.
Many of the same points have been made by the Environmental Protection Agency in support of its Clean Power Plan, which the president undoubtedly will address during his speech. The plan, which was finalized Aug. 3, places states on the hook to reduce greenhouse emissions one-third by 2030 and is the centerpiece of the president’s climate agenda. Most climate scientists blame greenhouse gases, through burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, for driving manmade climate change.
Demonstrating how the Clean Power Plan will benefit states in terms of lower electric bills and jobs will likely be the president’s message in Monday’s speech. The plan helps to incentivize the use of more solar and wind, which the White House says will add tens of thousands of jobs and reduce energy costs by billions of dollars in a decade.
Republicans and many states don’t buy that argument and are opposed to the plan as an illegal power grab, which they say will drive up electricity prices and cause power outages. A cadre of 15 states is preparing to sue the EPA over the climate plan as soon as it is published in the Federal Register. But the administration points out that there are just as many states supporting the new regulations. These states, including New York, California and others, plan to support EPA in the pending litigation.
The administration says the plan will encourage investment in renewable energy that will create new jobs and expand the economy, not harm it. Coal states see things differently. They argue that the plan will result in thousands of lost jobs.
When the Clean Power Plan was finalized, Obama was adamant that the regulations would not harm the economy and anyone who says any different is invested in scare tactics.
“They’ll claim this plan is a ‘war on coal,’ to scare up votes — even as they ignore my plan to actually invest in revitalizing coal country, and supporting health care and retirement for coal miners and their families, and retraining those workers for better-paying jobs and healthier jobs,” he said. The president is trying to get legislation through that would help workers affected by industry layoffs.
The administration argues that coal is in decline as a result of a switch to low-cost natural gas, not strong environmental regulations. The industry says there are a host of EPA rules to blame and the Clean Power Plan will make the situation worse.
The White House says jobs will increase by “tens of thousands” as a result of adding 30 percent more wind and solar to the grid. It says the Clean Power Plan will save consumers $155 billion from the time it is instituted early next decade to the time it ends in 2030.
After appearing in Las Vegas, the president will make a speech on climate change in Alaska on Aug. 31. Obama will join the foreign ministers of the Arctic countries to discuss the effects of climate change on the icy north. The State Department says the conference is meant to build support for reaching an international agreement on emission reductions in Paris at the end of year.
