President Obama visited Georgetown University today to deliver an impassioned speech about America's need to once again lead the world in clean and renewable energy. In the speech he pledged to cut America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil by one-third by the year 2025. Obama called for a new clean energy standard to help drive private investment.
Here is an excerpt from the speech followed by video of the entire speech:
"A clean energy standard can expand the scope of clean energy investments because what it does is it gives cutting-edge companies the certainty that they need to invest. Essentially what it does is it says to companies, you know what, you will have a customer if you’re producing clean energy. Utilities, they need to buy a certain amount of clean energy in their overall portfolio, and that means that innovators are willing to make those big capital investments.
And we’ve got to start now because -- think about this -- in the 1980s, America was home to more than 80 percent of the world’s wind capacity, 90 percent of the world’s solar capacity. We were the leaders in wind. We were the leaders in solar. We owned the clean energy economy in the ‘80s. Guess what. Today, China has the most wind capacity. Germany has the most solar capacity. Both invest more in clean energy than we do, even though we are a larger economy and a substantially larger user of energy. We’ve fallen behind on what is going to be the key to our future.
Other countries are now exporting technology we pioneered and they’re going after the jobs that come with it because they know that the countries that lead the 21st century clean energy economy will be the countries that lead the 21st century global economy.
I want America to be that nation. I want America to win the future. (Applause.)"
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