PACE Responds to State of the Union

In response to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening, the Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy released an official statement detailing its concerns regarding energy affordability and reliability. An excerpt of that statement appears below.

“In his State of the Union preview, President Obama indicated his plans to lay out a ‘blueprint for an American economy that’s built to last.’ But unless that blueprint includes overturning recent regulations implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency, our economy will continue to suffer. While President Obama and the EPA continue to defend new rules like Utility MACT, consumers can look forward to higher costs and less reliability.”

“Media reporting and commentary on environmental progress has overlooked glaring improvements in power sector emissions, leading the public to believe that American air is dirtier than ever when the exact opposite is true. If the president is truly serious about boosting the economy, his administration should reconsider implementing rules that will raise energy prices and cost millions of hard-working Americans their jobs.”

The president’s State of the Union address also included a number of soundbites on energy, including pledges to install renewable power on federal lands and to launch new initiatives to boost renewable power use in the military branch.

“Instead of focusing on common-sense initiatives that will lower the price of energy for Americans, the administration stubbornly continues to pursue renewable power experiments that make little sense in the current economic reality,” states PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “If we’re going to move forward, we need energy policy based on reality rather than focus groups.”