President Barack Obama wants the love affair to begin between America and clean energy. On Valentine's Day the Commander-in-Chief unveiled his 2012 budget and it includes $8 billion for clean energy. The President also wants us to break up with fossil fuels, so he is asking Congress to repeal oil, natural gas and coal subsidies to pay for the clean energy investments.
Some highlights of the budget include:
- $3.2 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
- Promoting renewable energy and energy efficient projects with $300 million in credit subsidies to support approximately $3-4 billion in projects.
- $36 billion to help jumpstart the domestic nuclear power industry.
- $5.4 billion to the Office of Science to expand research into energy and environmental solutions.
- $550 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to continue support for the promising early-stage research projects that could deliver game-changing clean energy technologies.
While there are sure to be battles in Congress over the budget, let us all hope that our leaders can come to some sort of consensus that in order to keep America moving forward, we need stop our subsidies to 20th century energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas and instead ramp up investments in 21st century clean energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels.
Keeping America competitive in the global clean energy race has to be a bipartisan issue.
There are all sorts of devices that use some form of solar power as an energy source but the area where you will most benefit (as will the planet) is in the home. This article will discuss the various ways to make home solar power.
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