Obama slams attempts to thwart clean energy

Lobbying campaigns by oil companies who are trying to hold back progress in the renewable energy industry to maintain the status quo were sharply criticized by US President Barack Obama on Monday.

"That's not progress. That's not innovation," Obama said at the eighth annual Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas. "That's trying to protect old ways of doing business and standing in the way of the future."

Obama announced plans at the conference to bring solar power to 40 US military bases, to promote the use of microgrids and other energy distribution systems, and to help US consumers pay for residential solar panels with future savings on energy bills.

He said that although the US may be the world's biggest producer of oil and gas, it has also become the world's number one producer of wind energy.

The 9-million-panel solar installation, the world's largest, is "not in Germany, not in China, not in Saudi Arabia, but right here in the United States of America," he said.

Petrochemical lobbyists criticized as fair-weather capitalists

Obama defended renewable energy and lambasted coal-championing critics as free market hypocrites.

"We see the trend lines, we see where technology is taking us, we see where consumers want to go," Obama said. "That, let's be honest, has some big fossil fuel interests pretty nervous. To the point where they are trying to fight renewable energy. It's one thing if you are insistent on being free market, it's another thing if you're free market until it's solar that's working and people want to buy it."

Solar power currently makes up a fraction of America's energy market and has received government grants and subsidies to kickstart it.

Obama praised the rapid expansion of renewable energy industries in the US that he called "an American energy revolution, going from the telegraph to the smartphone in less than a decade."

He described climate change as "one of the most important issues not just of our time, but of any time," and said renewable energy offered a viable solution.

Economic benefits of renewable energy praised

The president also touted the economic benefits of developing green industries that provide "a steady stream of well paying jobs."

"The solar industry now employs twice as many Americans as mining coal," he claimed.

Obama's followed the White House's backing of the first national emissions limits for power plants, which provoked heavy lobbying against the proposals from energy firms and lawmakers in coal-rich states such as Kentucky.

mh/msh (AFP, dpa)