Obama pushing for more clean energy choices for consumers

His first action back in the saddle is pushing for more alternative horse power for ordinary home and business owners.

From the convention center, Obama traveled to the home of Las Vegas Sun owner and publisher Brian Greenspun for a fundraiser for former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat running for Reid’s seat. Goodman gave the president a packet of information about Las Vegas’ efforts to use green energy.

The president questioned the consistency of fossil fuel advocates who champion free-market solutions, except when the free market is finally pointing to the wisdom of solar power.

Obama called for overcoming resistance from “some fossil fuel interests who want to protect the oil-dominated status quo”.

Obama’s keynote speech is scheduled to close the eighth National Clean Energy Summit at the Mandalay Bay.

He encouraged supporters to fight back against them and their push to influence American energy policy. He added, “But we’re also here because we hold another belief, and that is, we are deeply optimistic about American ingenuity”.

Obama touted a slew of wonky climate and renewable policy announcements during the speech, including the news that the administration is opening the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program up to distributed energy projects with a $1 billion solicitation.

“Today, America is number one in wind power, generating three times as much wind power than we did in 2008”, Obama told the crowd. He’ll announce new efforts to make it easier for homeowners and businesses to invest in green energy improvements that in the past may have been impractical or unaffordable.

The CNN-ORC poll said 51 percent of those surveyed disapprove of how Obama is doing as president, up from 47 percent last month.

The Wilderness Society’s Chase Huntley called the project a good example “of how we can meet our clean energy goals with limited impact to wildlands and wildlife habitat”. “A lot of Americans are going solar and becoming more energy-efficient not because of tree huggers – although trees are important, just want you to know – but because they’re cost-cutters”.

The president is also approving a transmission line to California’s Blythe Mesa plant that’s expected to produce enough renewable energy to power more than 145,000 homes.

At a recent summit forum on the development of solar power in northwest China, Yang Yingze, a division chief at Ningxia’s Energy Bureau, said the autonomous region’s Electric Power Design and Research Institute has completed draft plans for establishing nine large-scale complexes to cluster solar power stations instead of operating separated small stations.

“You do not have to share my passion for solving climate change to like renewable energy”, he said.