On Monday, Barack Obama, leading from the forefront announced its cabinet’s strategy towards making America Energy-efficient and reducing its oil- dependency on other countries. This he aims to achieve through better and widespread generation, distribution and use of renewable sources of energy. He seeks to double it up from today’s standards within 3 years.
Department of Transport has been ordered to start ground work on forming better fuel- efficiency standards for car models by 2011 and achieve the average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
In another major step, Obama has decided to undo the trends prevalent in bush’s time by granting California the right to decide its own emission limit. Californian auto industry is pinning hopes on the announcement and 13 other states are hoping to follow suit. Note that the state of California is notoriously famous for high level of emissions.
A special American envoy has been appointed to negotiate American terms and conditions on the global level and the stage is set for projecting America as a champion of the cause of the global warming.
Billions of dollars will be spent by government directly on Clean-energy programs and indirectly by way of tax-incentives. The funds are surely coming from the proposed $825 billion stimulus package.
Billions have been set aside for the task of weatherizing two million homes and making almost ¾ of all federal buildings energy efficient which will save money to the tune of $2billion every year.
The announcements have had mixed reaction from all the corners. While the environmentalists are undoubtedly elated, US auto makers see it as a threat to already ailing Auto Industry. Because even if they upgrade, innovate and develop the technology required meeting the energy standards (which is again going to cost around a few billions), the slow increase in demand may affect their liquidity status adversely. Also it may lead to another round of compulsive redundancies by the auto majors, adding to the unemployment woes of the nation.
Nevertheless, if these initial challenges are braved successfully, the American economy will surely benefit from it as the technology investors will be keener on investing once positive results are delivered.
