New York Times Editorial: Setting Big Goals, Hillary Clinton Joins the Climate Battle
Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised a series of initiatives to address the challenge of climate change. The first installment, unveiled this week in Iowa, calls for an aggressive expansion of wind, solar and other carbon-free energy sources so that they provide one-third of America’s electricity by 2027 — enough, she says, to power every home in the country.
Mrs. Clinton at least is willing to confront global warming, which her prospective Republican opponents have been doing their best to avoid, belittle and deny. But as solutions go, setting goals isn’t much. Getting there is the tough part. And even then, renewables can be only part of a comprehensive energy strategy.
The plan’s centerpiece is a huge, sevenfold bump in solar-generated power, which, despite the sharp drop in the price of solar panels, now provides only a tiny fraction of the nation’s energy. Renewable energy sources overall furnish just 13 percent of America’s electricity (natural gas, coal and nuclear power account for nearly all the rest), with hydropower at 6 percent, wind power at 4.4 percent and the remainder coming from geothermal, biomass and solar (less than 1 percent)....
She would enlarge and make permanent existing tax incentives for wind and solar power that are now perilously dependent on periodic congressional renewal. She would open more federal land to wind and solar installations. She would streamline the permitting process so it doesn’t take years to get another offshore wind farm up and running, and help build a transmission system capable of carrying wind and solar energy from remote locations. She pledges full support for President Obama’s forthcoming plan to shut down old coal-fired power plants, which would almost certainly force states to turn to cleaner sources of energy....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/opinion/setting-big-goals-hillary-clinton-joins-the-climate-battle.html?_r=1
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