Energy In Tonight’s State Of The Union

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Pres­i­dent Obama deliv­ers his State of the Union Address

Pres­i­dent Obama had a lot to say about energy pol­icy dur­ing tonight’s State of the Union. Here’s the full sec­tion, as pre­pared for deliv­ery. It touched on nat­ural gas pro­duc­tion, oil sub­si­dies, off­shore drilling and energy efficiency.

Nowhere is the promise of inno­va­tion greater than in American-made energy.  Over the last three years, we’ve opened mil­lions of new acres for oil and gas explo­ration, and tonight, I’m direct­ing my Admin­is­tra­tion to open more than 75 per­cent of our poten­tial off­shore oil and gas resources.  Right now, Amer­i­can oil pro­duc­tion is the high­est that it’s been in eight years.  That’s right – eight years.  Not only that – last year, we relied less on for­eign oil than in any of the past six­teen years.

But with only 2 per­cent of the world’s oil reserves, oil isn’t enough.  This coun­try needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strat­egy that devel­ops every avail­able source of Amer­i­can energy – a strat­egy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

We have a sup­ply of nat­ural gas that can last Amer­ica nearly one hun­dred years, and my Admin­is­tra­tion will take every pos­si­ble action to safely develop this energy.  Experts believe this will sup­port more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.  And I’m requir­ing all com­pa­nies that drill for gas on pub­lic lands to dis­close the chem­i­cals they use.  Amer­ica will develop this resource with­out putting the health and safety of our cit­i­zens at risk.

The devel­op­ment of nat­ural gas will cre­ate jobs and power trucks and fac­to­ries that are cleaner and cheaper, prov­ing that we don’t have to choose between our envi­ron­ment and our econ­omy.  And by the way, it was pub­lic research dol­lars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the tech­nolo­gies to extract all this nat­ural gas out of shale rock – remind­ing us that Gov­ern­ment sup­port is crit­i­cal in help­ing busi­nesses get new energy ideas off the ground.

What’s true for nat­ural gas is true for clean energy.  In three years, our part­ner­ship with the pri­vate sec­tor has already posi­tioned Amer­ica to be the world’s lead­ing man­u­fac­turer of high-tech bat­ter­ies.  Because of fed­eral invest­ments, renew­able energy use has nearly dou­bled.  And thou­sands of Amer­i­cans have jobs because of it.

When Bryan Rit­terby was laid off from his job mak­ing fur­ni­ture, he said he wor­ried that at 55, no one would give him a sec­ond chance.  But he found work at Ener­getx, a wind tur­bine man­u­fac­turer in Michi­gan.  Before the reces­sion, the fac­tory only made lux­ury yachts.  Today, it’s hir­ing work­ers like Bryan, who said, “I’m proud to be work­ing in the indus­try of the future.”

Our expe­ri­ence with shale gas shows us that the pay­offs on these pub­lic invest­ments don’t always come right away.  Some tech­nolo­gies don’t pan out; some com­pa­nies fail.  But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.  I will not walk away from work­ers like Bryan.  I will not cede the wind or solar or bat­tery indus­try to China or Ger­many because we refuse to make the same com­mit­ment here.  We have sub­si­dized oil com­pa­nies for a cen­tury.  That’s long enough.  It’s time to end the tax­payer give­aways to an indus­try that’s rarely been more prof­itable, and double-down on a clean energy indus­try that’s never been more promis­ing.   Pass clean energy tax cred­its and cre­ate these jobs.

We can also spur energy inno­va­tion with new incen­tives.  The dif­fer­ences in this cham­ber may be too deep right now to pass a com­pre­hen­sive plan to fight cli­mate change.  But there’s no rea­son why Con­gress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy stan­dard that cre­ates a mar­ket for inno­va­tion.  So far, you haven’t acted.  Well tonight, I will.  I’m direct­ing my Admin­is­tra­tion to allow the devel­op­ment of clean energy on enough pub­lic land to power three mil­lion homes.  And I’m proud to announce that the Depart­ment of Defense, the world’s largest con­sumer of energy, will make one of the largest com­mit­ments to clean energy in his­tory – with the Navy pur­chas­ing enough capac­ity to power a quar­ter of a mil­lion homes a year.

Of course, the eas­i­est way to save money is to waste less energy.  So here’s another pro­posal:  Help man­u­fac­tur­ers elim­i­nate energy waste in their fac­to­ries and give busi­nesses incen­tives to upgrade their build­ings.  Their energy bills will be $100 bil­lion lower over the next decade, and Amer­ica will have less pol­lu­tion, more man­u­fac­tur­ing, and more jobs for con­struc­tion work­ers who need them.  Send me a bill that cre­ates these jobs.