Obama promotes energy research fund

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Pablo Martinez Monsivais | Associated Press
President Barack Obama listens to research engineer Henning Lohse-Busch explain electric-car technology during a tour of the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.
By Reuters  • 

CHICAGO — President Barack Obama tried to move past partisan fights over U.S. energy policy yesterday with a modest proposal to fund research into cars that run on anything but gasoline.

Obama toured the Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago, known for its research into advanced batteries used in electric cars, and then delivered a speech highlighting the need to find more ways to wean vehicles off oil.

The United States has a newfound wealth of oil and natural-gas resources made possible by hydraulic fracturing and other drilling advancements, but consumers still face high prices at the pump because gasoline prices are tied to world markets.

“The only way to break this cycle of spiking gas prices for good is to shift our cars and trucks entirely off oil,” Obama said in Argonne’s advanced photon facility, which says it produces the brightest source of X-rays in the Western Hemisphere, used for an array of research projects.

The president proposed a fund that would draw $2 billion over 10 years from royalties the government receives from offshore drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.



The White House touted the idea as bipartisan, saying that it came from retired military and business leaders, including some Republicans, who belong to a policy group called Securing America’s Future Energy.

“This is not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea,” Obama said, standing in front of three cars designed to run on alternative fuels. “This is just a smart idea.”

But Republican approval was far from assured.

“For this proposal to even be plausible, oil and gas leasing on federal land would need to increase dramatically,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester. “Unfortunately, this administration has consistently slowed, delayed and blocked American energy production.”

By choosing to focus his first energy speech on research — an issue that appeals equally to Republicans and Democrats, industry and environmental groups — Obama sought to build common ground on energy, which has been a divisive policy issue.

In his first term, Obama pushed for laws that would use market forces to reduce climate-changing carbon pollution, but the “cap and trade” bill was opposed by industry and failed in Congress.

His administration pumped $90 billion in economic-stimulus funds into clean energy and “green jobs” projects, helping to expand renewable energy production in America.

But some projects failed, including a California solar-panel maker called Solyndra that had received a $527 million government loan. Critics excoriated his administration for that failure, as well as for delaying approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.