President Barack Obama will renew his push to spur investment in renewable energy projects that create jobs as a key part of his second-term strategy for tackling climate change, a top White House policy adviser said on Thursday.
This time around, though, Obama won’t have the US$90 billion in economic stimulus funds that his administration earlier pumped into clean energy and “green jobs” projects.
Instead, Obama wants to see “targeted and smart” investments in research and demonstration projects, and will also use the upcoming corporate tax reform process to try to “level the playing field” for renewable forms of energy, said Brian Deese, deputy director of the National Economic Council.
Obama’s first-term clean energy efforts were tarnished by failed loans to companies like Solyndra, the California solar panel maker that went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving more than US$527 million in government backing.
But Obama has continued to argue that the United States cannot fall behind in a global clean energy race dominated by countries like China, South Korea and Germany, which heavily subsidise their domestic industries.
“Our political system and our private sector are never going to operate in the way that some of those countries operate to strategically support targeted industries and go all-in in that way,” Deese told a National Journal/The Atlantic event on energy innovation.