US President Barack Obama kicked off his 2012 re-election campaign in Washington on Tuesday in much the same way as he did his last campaign ? promising to deliver new jobs and hoping that clean-tech can deliver them.
He has no other choice. As he emphasised in his State of the Union address, two of the big markers of economic health ? the stock market and corporate profits ? have recovered, but the employment market remains in disrepair. The US can no longer rely on its traditional industries to provide jobs. Obama's own example: a steel mill now requires 100 people to operate rather than the 1,000 it once needed.
If the US wants to grow it?s job market, Obama?s reasoning is that needs to turn to new technologies, and in particular the clean-tech and clean energy markets, because there is simply no other option. And now the US has to deal with the two emerging global economic powerhouses ? China and India ? who have already got the jump on them.
It pains the Obama Administration, and much of its progressive industry ? in particular the new head of his economic advisory committee, the General Electric boss Jeff Immelt ? that the US is falling behind. Obama repeatedly cites, as he did before Congress in his address, the case of the world?s largest private solar R&D facility being located in China. Not for the first time, Obama called it the nation?s Sputnik moment ? referring to the late 1950s when Russia was first to send a man into orbit.
Just as the US unleashed a huge flow of investment to respond to that challenge, and so dominate the space age and create massive new industries (and did the same when Japan emerged as a major tech rival in the 1970s), Obama wants the US to do the same in response to the threat of China and India in the coming decade.
Obama didn?t go into too many specifics in his address ? presidents rarely do at such a juncture ? but the two he did mention stand out as a pointer for where he intends to take the US economy and the transformation he wants to achieve: By 2035, Obama wants 80 per cent of the country?s electricity to come from clean energy sources, and he wants to fund the investment by slashing the billions of dollars of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. ?I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own,? he said. ?So instead of subsidising yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.?
The irony is that these policies go further than the president might have gone with a climate bill or a cap-and-trade scheme. Some wags, and a few country leaders, noted amid the frustration of Copenhagen that if the climate was a bank, it would have already been saved. Obama didn?t mention climate change or global warming once in his speech ? that policy is dead for the moment ? but by redefining it as an issue of energy security, jobs, and the future of the economy (and he slipped in to ?protect the planet?), he may yet achieve an even bigger transformation.
The biggest argument that is mounted against investment in clean energy is the cost and the subsidies required to support it, at least in the initial phase. That argument glosses over the fact that cost increases that are likely to happen in any case, and the fact that fossil fuels, according to International Energy Agency, enjoy greater subsidies around the world by a factor of more than 10.
Obama pointed out that government support has underpinned just about every great breakthrough and new industry in the history of the US ? the nation ?that put cars in driveways and computers in offices"; of Edison and the Wright brothers.
?Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation," Obama said. "But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That's what planted the seeds for the Internet. That's what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS.?
Republicans are likely to baulk at the prospect of a Sputnik-stye spendathon, particularly as they clamour for restrained budgets and smaller government, but that is unlikely to be necessary. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said $US8 billion will be sought to help solar become cost-competitive with fossil fuels by the end of the decade. And Obama sought to play the middle ground on energy choice ? citing the need for nuclear, gas and CCS, as well as wind and solar. Republicans, though, may not easily embrace the idea of slashing subsidies to Big Oil ? many of them depend on it for their election kitties.
Obama cited the transformation of a Michigan roofing company to a solar shingles manufacturer with the aid of a government loan. ?And to spur on more success stories like (this), we've begun to reinvent our energy policy. We're not just handing out money. We're issuing a challenge. We're telling America's scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we'll fund the Apollo projects of our time.
?At the California Institute of Technology, they're developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they're using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.?"
