Obama vs. Romney 101: 7 ways they differ on energy issues

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney claim to want to expand America’s access to conventional fuels and green energy. But their energy plans have very different flavors.

5. Wind power

Carolyn Kaster/AP/File
President Obama speaks to media at the Heil family farm on Aug. 14, 2012, in Haverhill, Iowa.

Obama supports tax credits that help wind and solar industries. Wind energy contributed 32 percent of all new US electric-capacity additions last year, representing $14 billion in new investment, according to a new report by the Department of Energy. Total US wind power capacity grew to 47,000 megawatts by the end of 2011 and stands today at 50,000 megawatts, enough to supply 12 million homes annually – roughly the number in California, the DOE reports.

Under Romney’s plan, wind energy would get the same fast-track permitting that other energy sources do. But Romney wants a "level playing field" for all sources of energy. The production tax credit PTC, which was created during the previous Bush administration and extended under Obama, is set to expire at the end of this year unless renewed. As president, Romney says he would allow both the PTC and another credit important to the wind and solar industries, the investment tax credit (ITC), to expire, according to a Romney campaign position statement reported by Energy & Environment Daily.

Alternative energy like wind and solar are good, Romney said at a campaign stop earlier this year, but they don't power automobiles. "You can't drive a car with a windmill on it," Romney said.

That position could hurt Romney in battleground states like Iowa and Colorado, which have significant wind-energy industries.

"The wind industry now supports 7,000 jobs here in Iowa," Obama said while stumping there in August 2011. "These are good jobs, and they're a source of pride that we need to fight for."            

5 of 7

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.