Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign found a creative way to highlight how her position on climate change contrasts with the GOP field.
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Does Clinton support or oppose the Keystone XL oil pipeline? The California-based Steyer hosted a fundraiser for Clinton in May.
Clinton said she planned to post the plan on her campaign website at 7 p.m. EDT, and explain it in more detail during an event Monday in Des Moines.
Billionaire Tom Steyer has led an effort to promote the issue.
“We can not close our eyes to the challenges facing hard-working families in Coal Country, who kept our lights on and our factories running for more than a century”, she said.
In related news, What would another Clinton president mean for oil and gas?
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, also seeking the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, noted Sunday that he unveiled a climate change plan in Iowa.
She vowed to “stop the giveaways to big oil companies” and to defend President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce emissions from power plants, which is hitting the coal industry.
“Real leadership is about forging public opinion on issues like Keystone – not following it”, Smith said in a statement that touted O’Malley’s goal of 100-percent clean power by 2050.
“I will refrain from commenting because I had a leading role in getting that process started and we have to let it run its course”, she said.
At the core of the tension is climate activists’ insistence that the next president go beyond defending Obama’s main approach to global warming – a series of EPA regulations that will throttle carbon emissions from major pollution sources such as power plants. She reiterated that one key step would be to ensure the extension of federal tax credits for wind and solar energy that have expired or are set to expire over the next few years.
This story has been corrected to reflect that $60 billion is the estimated cost of proposed grants, not Clinton’s overall energy plan.
Besides the cost for taxpayers, MIT notes the average solar panel is only 15-21 percent efficient in terms of how much sunlight it can make into usable energy — an argument opponents could use to kill her program.
Heather Taylor-Miesle, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, said her group is “excited about” the opening bid from Clinton, while acknowledging that “we have to deal with oil and gas” and that environmentalists won’t know how to judge the candidate’s plan in that department until she reveals it.
But she declined to weigh in on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would send Canadian crude oil to US refineries, a project criticized by environmentalists and many Democratic lawmakers that is awaiting a final State Department review.
Despite her strong rhetoric on renewable power, Clinton did not stake out a clear position on the Keystone XL pipeline, according to the Associated Press.
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For instance, Clinton said she supports renewing the wind energy tax credit as part of over time shifting the U.S. energy system from one based on fossil fuels.
