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Energy

 

Like the rest of the nation, Virginia faces significant challenges in meeting its increasing energy demands.

Today, Virginians are paying $2.50 for gas – twice as much as they did at the start of the Bush administration. Meanwhile the five largest oil companies posted a combined quarterly profit of $13.5 billion and their respective CEOs earned an average $23 million a year.

Barack Obama has a plan to reverse this dangerous course, and to address the moral, economic and environmental challenges posed by global climate change. He has a plan to break our dependence on foreign oil by building our nation’s own clean energy resources. This will require an entirely new approach from Washington, one that incentivizes local ingenuity to find clean energy solutions rather than continuing to subsidize oil companies and putting our environment and national security at risk.

    

 

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Immediate relief from pain at the pump.

To relieve the pressure that Virginians are feeling at the pump every day, Barack Obama will require oil companies to take a reasonable share of their record-breaking windfall profits and use it to provide rebate checks of $500 for an individual and $1,000 for married couples. The relief would be delivered as quickly as possible to help families cope with the rising price of gasoline, food and other necessities. To further help bring costs down, Obama will crack down on excessive energy speculation and swap oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Invest in our secure energy future and create 5 million new jobs.

Barack Obama will work to create jobs in an expanding clean energy sector. He will invest $150 billion over 10 years to grow the clean energy economy, create a “Green Vet Initiative” giving veterans access to the exploding industry of green technologies, invest $1 billion annually to convert closed manufacturing facilities into clean technology leaders, and create new job training programs for clean technologies.

Make our cars, trucks and SUV’s more fuel efficient.

Barack Obama will increase fuel economy standards by 4 percent per year, which will save half a trillion dollars of gasoline per year, and he will establish a national low carbon fuel standard that reduces the carbon of automotive fuel. Obama will also invest in developing the next generation of transportation: he will put one million plug-in electric vehicles on the road by 2015, provide incentives and support for domestic automakers to build more efficient cars and trucks, mandate that all new vehicles are flexible fuel vehicles, and develop the next generation of sustainable biofuels and infrastructure. Finally, Obama is committed to expanding and promoting transportation alternatives such and bus and rail transit, which consume less oil per passenger and reduces carbon emissions.

Promote the supply of domestic energy.

Barack Obama will also maximize our traditional sources of domestic energy, requiring oil companies to develop the presently unused leases totaling 68 million acres of possible drilling sites (an area more than two times the size of Virginia), promote the responsible domestic production of oil and natural gas from existing fields, and prioritize the construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline.

Diversify our energy sources.

Recognizing that oil and gas are not the only answer, Barack Obama will build on Virginia’s renewable portfolio goal and require 10 percent of electricity across the country to come from renewable sources by 2012, develop and deploy clean coal technology and maximize our use of safe and secure nuclear energy.

Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology.

Carbon capture and storage technologies, like those being developed at the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Tech, hold enormous potential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as we power our economy with domestically produced and secure energy. As a U.S. Senator, Obama has worked tirelessly to ensure that clean coal technology becomes commercialized. An Obama administration will provide incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero-carbon coal facilities. In order to maximize the speed with which we advance this critical technology, Obama will instruct DOE to enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration.

Commitment to efficiency to reduce energy use and lower costs.

And finally, Barack Obama will deploy the cheapest, cleanest, fastest energy source: energy efficiency. He will set national building efficiency goals for new and existing buildings; overhaul federal appliance efficiency standards; reduce energy consumption by the federal government, the largest single consumer of energy in the world; flip incentives for energy utilities, so that they profit from reliability and performance rather than from increased energy use; invest in a “smart” power grid to ensure greater energy security, reliability and lower cost; weatherize one million homes annually; and build more livable and sustainable communities.