How Energy Fits Into Mitt Romney's Campaign Platform

Background

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Republican Mitt Romney campaigns in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has called President Obama “an anti-energy president.” His justification for the claim: the Democrat has increased federal regulation of natural gas drilling, blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline, and overseen EPA regulations that have forced coal-fired power plants to shut down.

Romney says he would speed up the federal approval process for energy projects as president, and expand domestic oil and gas drilling. The Republican wants to green-light nuclear power plants, and promises to “prevent overregulation” of natural gas drilling. That means scaling back the EPA, Department of Energy and other federal agencies’ involvement in drilling regulation and oversight.

Like opponent Rick Santorum, Romney is skeptical of wind and solar power, and would eliminate federal support for the alternative energy industry.

You can read every story StateImpact Pennsylvania has published about the Romney campaign below:

Latest Posts

Follow this topic

November 5, 2012

The Alternative Energy Sector Awaits Tuesday’s Results

The folks at FuelFix point out alternative energy may have more riding on tomorrow’s presidential results than any other sector: No other industry outside Detroit has been as closely aligned with President Obama’s policies. Obama touted green jobs as the key to America’s economic revival and showered $90 billion in stimulus funding on makers of [...]

October 26, 2012

Why Climate Change Melted Away As A Campaign Issue

What happened to climate change? Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates fielded at least one debate question about global warming from 1988 through 2008. And during that time span, both Republicans and Democrats acknowledged it as a serious issue. “The greenhouse effect is an important environmental issue,” then-Senator Dan Quayle said in 1988. “Global warming needs to [...]

October 22, 2012

A Look At Who Might Be Setting Federal Energy Policy Next Year

Energy policy came up during both presidential debates, and Republican Mitt Romney has been using his stump speech to blast the Obama Administration’s support for renewable energy – and as he frames it, its opposition to the coal industry – for most of the year. So it’s clear a Romney White House would take a [...]

October 5, 2012

FuelFix Digs In On Romney’s Green Energy Claim

A bit more from FuelFix on Governor Romney’s claim that half of the green energy companies benefiting from federal grants, loan guarantees or other perks have gone out of business: Since Solyndra’s bankruptcy, most Republican criticism of the Obama’s green-jobs spending has focused on the loan programs run by the Department of Energy, programs that awarded [...]

October 4, 2012

What Obama And Romney Said About Energy During Last Night’s Debate

Both President Obama and Governor Romney tackled energy policy during the first half of last night’s presidential debate. Romney said the White House has spent $90 billion supporting alternative energy programs. Where did that figure come from? The Washington Post broke the numbers down earlier this year: The Energy Department put $90 billion worth of [...]

August 27, 2012

Environmental Advocates Want Climate Change Questions In Presidential Debates

The Hill reports on environmental advocates’ efforts to work climate change questions into this fall’s presidential debates: The League of Conservation Voters has launched a petition drive pressing the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer of PBS, to ask about the topic. The first debate is Oct. 3. “We urge you to ask President Obama [...]

August 15, 2012

In Ohio Campaign Swing, Romney Focuses On Coal Policy

Coal was front and center on the campaign trail yesterday, as Mitt Romney visited eastern Ohio to blast President Obama for stifling the coal industry through increased environmental regulation. Cheap, readily available natural gas has played a major role in the coal industry’s recent contractions, too, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from focusing on regulations [...]

June 21, 2012

Pennsylvania’s Energy Sector Booms, Despite GOP Warnings

Bashing President Barack Obama’s energy policies has become a stable of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s stump speech. The Republican regularly calls Obama an “anti-energy president,” and warns the Democrats policies are stifling oil and gas extraction. The New York Times traveled to western Pennsylvania, though, and didn’t find much evidence of federal guidelines slowing [...]

June 20, 2012

Mitt Romney, WaWa, And Pennsylvania Gas Prices

This weekend, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney took some heat for using WaWa’s “amazing” touch-screen ordering system as a symbol of private sector creativity. (The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also solicited heckles from the crowd for praising WaWa while deep in the territory of its archrival, Sheetz, which also uses touch-screens for food orders.) But as the Washington [...]

May 30, 2012

How Coal Will Factor Into The 2012 Campaign

Earlier today, we linked to a story detailing the coal industry’s precarious position. Here’s one more coal story for the road: Slate takes a look at the political implications of the shift away from coal, and what it means for the presidential campaign: