The White House released its budget on Thursday providing significant
details about the administration’s plan to tackle climate change and
promote clean energy.
Most significantly, it includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy
to be raised from the auctioning of carbon pollution permits beginning
in 2012. The budget suggest $646 billion dollars would be collected
under a carbon cap program between 2012 and 2019–a figure analysts
have said is reasonable.
On Tuesday, President Obama called on Congress to pass a carbon cap-and-trade bill this year.
The budget also includes the largest funding request for the
Environmental Protection Agency in eight years. This includes $19
million for improved monitoring of emissions from industry and $3.9
billion for improving the nation’s sewage treatment plants and drinking
water systems, as well as projects to protect sources of drinking water.
The total EPA budget of $10.5 billion is a 50% increase over what President Bush asked for a year ago.
The budget document calls for "significant increases" in
renewable energy research to advance solar, wind and geothermal
technologies, as well as non-corn ethanol.
Other proposed expenditures also signal the administration’s
committment to fighting climate change. These include increased budgets
for NASA’s space-based monitoring of greenhouse gases, mitigation
efforts by the Interior Department and Department of Energy carbon
capture projects.
The budget imposes a new excise tax and fees on companies that
take oil and natural gas from federal waters and reintroduces a tax to
pay for the cleanup of Superfund sites.
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope in a statement
regarding the budget said the "era of dirty energy is coming to an
end."
"The shift in priorities over the past month has been unprecedented,"
Pope said. "President Obama has acted faster, smarter, and more
decisively than any president in memory. He has put us squarely on the
path toward a clean energy future."
Yucca Funding Cut
President Obama is taking the first step toward blocking the
proposed nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain by slashing
money for the program in his first budget, according to an Associated
Press story.
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