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Amy Judd | February 24, 2009 at 12:29 pm
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Hundreds of energy projects across the United States are being put on hold until President Obama announces his plans for the stimulus money today, which will most likely include a plan to update the electric grid.
"The future of the grid is a priority,'' said state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ira Bowles about the need to upgrade electric infrastructure to boost alternative-energy production.
Obama has said previously that he wants to install 40 million smart meters in homes in America, which will help save energy in the long term, and this will offer people real time stats on their energy usage. However, Massachusetts may not be completely ready to implement some of these changes in the energy bill, which will cost $11 billion, as the state wants these systems to be heavily researched before being installed.
There will be a pilot project in 2010 from Nstara to see how the system works and how much it is really going to cost.
However, as Obama starts to take on the task of a cleaner energy, he has been forced to slow down on reducing carbon dioxide emissions as it looks like Congress won't be passing any legislation until next year now, which would ultimately hurt the efforts to reach a global treaty by the Climate Change conference in December.
Environmentalists are frustrated because last week when Obama announced the $787 billion economic resuce plan, it seemed to contain a lot of green investment.
But now it is uncertain that the US will be leading the call for less carbon dioxide emissions when they can't reduce them in their country first.
"What is necessary is for us to demonstrate some leadership," Nancy Sutley, the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality said.
The shift appears to come from the fact that the White House wants to reduce some expectations on themselves, but it has raised questions about further green investments from the US government as the green measures they keep announcing do not seem to be followed through.
The White House in the meantime, are trying to maintain support for their green agenda.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 12:48 on February 24th, 2009
i believe the White House needs to really push this subject. We all know we want to improve our energy efficiency and the world is in a depression (or recession as they want to call it). By bringing green energy online, it will force other energy prices to decrease. At the same time improved efficiencies will also bring down energy costs. Okay now the economy should start to improve.