Jul 1st, 2013
From Common Dreams:
US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz declared Sunday that ‘coal is our future,’ affirming skeptics’ fears that, despite the rhetoric heralded in President Obama’s climate policy speech last week, the US will continue to cow-tail to the interests of Big Coal.
The Energy Chief’s statement appeared to backpedal on comments made by the president regarding “new rules to cut carbon emissions from US power plants and support renewable energy.”
Despite these claims, Obama “expects fossil fuels, and coal specifically, to remain a significant contributor for some time,” Moniz told Reuters Sunday while attending a nuclear security conference in Vienna, Austria.
The way the U.S. administration is “looking at it is: what does it take for us to do to make coal part of a low carbon future,” he said, adding this would include higher efficiency plants and new ways of utilizing coal.
It is “all about having, in fact, coal as part of that future,” Moniz said.