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Obama Asks Congress For Carbon Emissions Capping Legislation

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 February 2009, 11:35 CST

In an attempt to combat global warming, President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to prepare legislation that will set a market-based cap on U.S. carbon polluting emissions and push the production of more renewable energy, Reuter reported.

Obama told lawmakers at a joint session of Congress: "To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy."

A new budget proposal to be released on Thursday will invest $15 billion a year on wind and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal and American-built cars and trucks that are more fuel efficient, Obama said.

Obama told Congress the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century.

He went on to say that while the United States invented solar technology, it has fallen behind Germany and Japan in producing it. "New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea," he said.

The President reiterated his pledge to double U.S. renewable energy production over the next three years and touted the billions of dollars his administration will invest in energy research.

"We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills," Obama said.

Electricity price deregulation never met its promise because surplus power could not be shipped to regions of the country where supplies were constrained, according to John Kilduff, senior vice president at MF Global in New York.

He said if Obama is seriously committed to updating the electricity grid, consumers could see electricity prices akin to what they pay for long distance telephone service.

Congress has been working on a system for swapping greenhouse gas emissions quotas similar to the one used in the European Union.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in an interview last week with The New York Times that he has already proposed the idea of a carbon emissions tax.

Kilduff said buying and selling the permits among companies and industries to spew the emissions could become a new boom for the financial services industry that could rival foreign exchange trading and oil trading itself.

An update to a 2001 assessment by the UN's Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change warned the risks to the planet of even small changes in average temperatures had been underestimated.

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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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