Obama Proposes Change in US Energy Strategy

According to Reuters, Steven Chu, Obama's pick to be energy secretary, will play a major role in implementing the incoming president's plan to resuscitate the U.S. economy with millions of new green energy jobs that will cut America's polluting emissions and the country's addiction to foreign oil supplies.

Chu will have to work closely with a new White House council that will coordinate energy, climate and environmental policies among the various federal agencies. Obama wants former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner to head that panel.

Crude oil and gasoline prices have become less of an issue now that the U.S. recession and the weak global economy has reduced petroleum demand and slashed energy costs for consumers.

This should free up Chu to spend more time promoting renewable and alternative energy sources, which he has already been doing as head of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California.

However, bad economic conditions and low petroleum prices may weaken political pressure to spend money on developing alternative energy sources, according to Rayola Dougher, senior economic advisor at the American Petroleum Institute.

"It makes alternative energy that much more expensive because its competition is oil and gas," Dougher said. "It makes it more questionable how much you're going to put into certain resources that are not viable on market right now."

Even with a big push for renewable energy under Obama, America will still rely on oil as a major energy source for the foreseeable future.

Other challenges facing Chu will be modernizing the U.S. electricity grid, whether to boost the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and if the emergency stockpile should be used to lower fuel prices and how to store the millions of radioactive waste now at nuclear power plants and government weapons sites.

Author: Ksenia Kochneva