Barack Obama released his energy plan on Monday wherein he greatly emphasized the need to wean the United States off foreign oil. The plan was slammed by some who ridiculed Obama for changing his stance as he proposed selling 70 mn barrels from the strategic oil reserves and “limited amount of new offshore drilling”. However the Democratic presidential candidate clarified that he had relaxed his position on offshore drilling as a compromise and didn’t view drilling as the panacea to the country’s energy issues, unlike the Republicans.
On the contrary, his plan is geared towards breaking the country’s “oil addiction”. He proposed a market based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent (as compared to 1990 levels) by the year 2050. The plan also includes measures such as investing $150 billion in clean technology and ensuring that by 2012, 10 per cent of the electricity is generated from renewable sources; increasing fuel economy standards by 4 per cent per year; encouraging production of plug-in hybrids to reach the 1 million mark by 2015 etc. Read the full speech here.
