Clinton Proposes $50 Billion Energy Research Fund

By Michaela Jackson

Washington - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., announced Tuesday that she will reintroduce legislation calling for a Strategic Energy Fund to promote a healthier environment and a healthier economy.

"Still, too often, people try to set the environment against the economy, but a clean energy agenda is a jobs agenda, and we have to take that message and drive it home day after day," she said at a summit of the Apollo Alliance, a lobbying group devoted to the marriage of job growth and energy progress.

The group promised to make energy a major campaign issue. Clinton's legislation, which she first introduced in May, would earmark $50 billion for research, development and deployment of clean energy. The funds would come in part, Clinton said, from ending tax breaks to big oil companies. She called the initiative "an Apollo project for energy," referring to President John F. Kennedy's promise in the 1960s to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Mark Kibbe, senior tax policy analyst for the American Petroleum Institute, said Congress intended the tax incentives to promote domestic oil production.

"Congress needs to take a look at why those provisions are in place, what they are intended to do, and understand what happens if you take those things away," Kibbe said. "We would say, ‘Look before you leap, and then understand the ramifications of making some of those choices would be.' I don't think the results would be what Congress would want to happen."

Clinton said the fund would invest in technology and ideas that already exist "that can quickly contribute to a cleaner, more independent future," including ethanol, wind power and clean coal technology. The fund would quadruple tax breaks for owners of hybrid and clean diesel cars.

She said $9 billion of the fund would "unleash American ingenuity" in advanced research. "We have a big decision to make," she said. "We really are at a turning point. We can wait for something terrible to happen ... or we can be smart again as Americans and start planning for the future, and taking steps that will take us to that new future, will, in effect, create that new future for us."

The giants of energy are preparing for that future, Kibbe said, because the energy companies of today want to be the energy companies tomorrow, in whatever form that energy may come. "Our industry is very much in support of alternative energy," Kibbe said. "With the energy demand growing at the rapid rate that it is, not only in the U.S., but overseas, as well, we need energy from every source that we can get it.

"Just about all of the major companies are investing in hydrogen. We still need to satisfy current demands for energy. ... We don't want to jeopardize the present as we look to the future. We need to do both." Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., also spoke at the summit, highlighting the importance of energy legislation for middle-class Americans.

"There are people in the environmental community who have ignored the needs of working families, and there have been people in trade unions and representing working class families who have not paid enough attention to the economy," Sanders said. "By bringing all of our people together, we are going to be a very, very potent force here on Capitol Hill. "The goal, again, that we are united upon is saving our planet, protecting the environment so that our kids do not get sick from breathing garbage in the air, and at the same time, bring the quality of jobs that will allow the middle class to expand and not shrink," he said. Source: Scripps Howard Foundation Wire