U.S. President Barack Obama is continuing his focus on cleaning up the country’s energy production with a keynote address Monday at a summit in Las Vegas.

The event comes as Obama returns from a two-week vacation with a number of important issues facing him in the next few months, including working to push the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program through a skeptical Congress.

But with the world trying to clinch a binding agreement to address climate change by the end of the year, the president has been working on reforms at home to cut carbon emissions, while also cutting costs for U.S. consumers.

 

Brian Deese, the president’s senior climate change advisor, says Obama’s speech late Monday at the National Clean Energy Summit in Nevada is part of the president’s continuing efforts to speak “frankly and frequently” about how climate change is affecting lives and the importance of laying out a broader vision for a clean energy economy.

 

“You will hear him talk about the transformation in the U.S. power sector from one where generation resources are principally fossil fuel-fired and centralized and consumers are largely passive in that system – to a power sector where resources are increasingly clean, and decentralized generation plays a larger role with consumers who are more empowered with information,” Deese told reporters during a press call.

 

Easier investment

In advance of the president’s speech, the White House announced executive actions aimed at making it easier for American households to invest in clean energy technology, including solar power.

 

“Last year in 2014, there was about 7,000 megawatts of solar coming online – about half of that was utility, but about half of that was residential and commercial,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters.  “So, we are seeing the beginning of this transformation. We really feel there is a major opportunity to expand this dramatically and contribute to clean energy.”

 

Moniz says the U.S. Department of Energy will make available $1 billion in additional loan guarantee authority to support distributed energy projects and help developers address market barriers to widespread deployment of such technologies.

 

The executive actions also include $24 million for 11 projects aimed at projects in developing innovative solar technologies that double the amount of energy each solar panel can produce from the sun.

 

Other measures include the DOE and the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development launching a program aimed at providing homeowners with a way to measure and improve their energy efficiency. The Department of Defense will also work with private companies to provide solar power to housing on more than 40 military bases across the United States.

Power grid modernization

Monday’s National Clean Energy Summit is aimed at looking to ways governments and the private sector can work together on clean energy solutions and modernizing the U.S. power grid, according to organizers.  In addition to Obama, speakers include leaders from electric utility companies, solar technology firms and an electric car maker.

Earlier this month, Obama unveiled new regulations for power plants with a goal of cutting polluting carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030.  The plan, if implemented, would also call for boosting the amount of power generated by renewable sources so that it makes up 28 percent of overall power production.

Power companies have already been converting some of their operations in recent years, increasing their reliance on natural gas, solar and wind.  As a result, government data has shown a drop in carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants.

The issue of reducing the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere is a major focus on global efforts to contain a rise in temperatures.

The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report last week citing July as the warmest month ever recorded since data collection began in 1880.  The same report said so far 2015 is the warmest year on record.

Delegations from all over the world will convene in Paris on November 30 for nearly two weeks of talks to decide how to reach the goal of keeping temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which scientists warn would bring extreme weather and rising seas.  They want a binding agreement with specific plans for each country to accomplish.

A new agreement would go into effect in 2020.
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