Obama signals support for bipartisan climate bill

President Obama yesterday signaled that he will push the Senate to pass US climate legislation this year, effectively throwing his weight behind efforts to develop a compromise bill that can secure a number of crucial Republican votes.

Speaking in his first State of the Union address, Obama ended speculation that the White House could delay attempts to pass climate change legislation in favour of a less contentious energy bill, stating that he wanted to pass "a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America".

"This year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate," he added.

Fitting in with the speech's over-arching theme of job creation, Obama stressed how low-carbon projects can help tackle unemployment, highlighting how solar panel companies, advanced battery developers and high-speed rail projects are already creating thousands of new jobs.

In a passage that is likely to anger environmentalists, but was designed to appeal to the Republican senators whose votes are needed to pass climate legislation, Obama said he would support increased investment in new nuclear capacity and clean coal technologies.

"To create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives," he said. "And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies."

His comments offer a tacit endorsement to the bipartisan effort by Democrat senator John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham, and independent senator Joe Lieberman to develop a compromise climate bill.

Few details of the bill have been released, but it is widely expected to feature a range of measures designed to secure support from Republicans and Democrats from coal states, including increased incentives for nuclear energy, clean coal and offshore oil drilling.

"The message from Obama seemed to be that the ball continues to be in the court of the trio of senators to come up with a plan," Whitney Stanco, analyst at Concept Capital's Washington Research Group, told Reuters.

In an apparent attempt to further appease Republicans, many of whom remain sceptical about the need to curb carbon emissions, Obama made only one mention of climate change, gave only a fleeting reference to international climate change negotiations, and did not talk at all about controversial plans for a national emissions cap-and-trade scheme.

However, the reference to a "comprehensive energy and climate bill" was widely interpreted as evidence that he is looking for a compromise bill that still retains ambitious measures to cut carbon emissions, while he also argued that climate scepticism did not undermine the compelling case for transitioning towards cleaner technologies.

"I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change," he said. "But here's the thing – even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future – because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy."