Gore touts technology-based energy policy
By Ian McCaleb/CNN
PHILADELPHIA (CNN) -- Vice President Al Gore sought Tuesday to alleviate some of the gasoline price-related pressure he has endured in the Clinton administration, as he unveiled a compressive energy policy aimed at lessening dependence on oil imports through the creation of new, energy-efficient technologies.
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Vice President Al Gore addressed workers at the Trigen Energy Corporation in Philadelphia, Tuesday.
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Speaking in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Gore offered a plan that would offer tax and other incentives to investors and manufacturers as enticement for the creation of a plethora of new energy-efficient technologies, including but not limited to automobiles that run on combinations of gasoline, electricity and other fuels.
The vice president delivered his speech on the grounds of the Trigen Corp., a natural gas company that uses smokeless stacks. Trigen's facility is located in Philadelphia's Center City neighborhood.
"We will say to the nation's investors and entrepreneurs: If you invest in these new technologies, America will invest in you," Gore, the presumed Democratic nominee for the presidency, said Tuesday.
Majority GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate -- and the Republican presidential campaign of Texas Gov. George W. Bush -- have repeatedly slammed the Clinton-Gore administration for what they say is a failure to create a national energy policy aimed at keeping per-gallon prices for gasoline relatively low.
Rather, they have argued, the Clinton administration's low level of interest in energy policy has brought about current gasoline price spikes in some areas of the nation -- most notably in the Midwest.
Clinton and Gore have both described these outcries as lacking merit, with Gore going so far as to call for Federal Trade Commission probes into the large oil companies responsible for distributing the highly priced gasoline.
In a round of satellite interviews with Midwest TV stations later Tuesday, Gore placed some of the blame on his Bush, saying, "My opponent comes out of the oil industry. His experience is as an oil company executive and he (once) called for higher oil prices to boost the oil company profits."
Gore's speech Tuesday was aimed at cutting Republican criticism off at the knees, while exploiting one of the vice president's strong policy points -- his stance on environmental preservation.
The policies revealed Tuesday, Gore predicted, would "make sure Americans will be free forever from the dominance of big oil and foreign oil."
"We will prove once and for all that we can clean up pollution, make our power systems more efficient and more reliable and move away from dependence on others -- all with no new taxes, no new bureaucracies and no onerous regulations," Gore said.
Under the Gore plan, billions of federal dollars would be aimed at encouraging production and purchase of hybrid gas and electric cars.
Gore would also convert and repair aging power grids to make them more efficient and less damaging to the environment; promote the use of solar power in homes; offer bonds and tax incentives for fuel-efficient metropolitan transportation such as clean buses and light rail systems, and encourage fuel-efficient "biomass" technology use by farmers.
The results of this "next stage prosperity," the vice president argued, could include cleaner air, significant economic benefits, and a gradual reduction in rates of respiratory ailments -- including childhood asthma.
The package proposed Tuesday comes with an estimated 10-year, $75-billion price tag. Most of that figure -- some $68 billion -- would go toward "financial mechanisms such as tax incentives, loans, grants, bonds or other financial instruments to those power plants and industries that come forward with projects that promise to dramatically reduce climate and health-threatening pollution," according to campaign documentation.
The rest amounted to little more than extensions and expansions of current policy that would have to be approved by Congress, including doubling the tax credit for producers who make electricity from wind, biomass and landfill methane, the Gore campaign said.
Representatives of a number of environmental groups praised Gore's proposals.
Michael Oppenheimer, chief scientist of Environmental Defense, said, "We have been waiting for a long time for a significant initiative from any of the major candidates," adding, "We're also aware the problems won't be solved without ultimately an explicit limit on emissions that cause global warming."
After delivering his speech at Trigen, Gore made a brief appearance before 6,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
He then returned to Washington to attend two Democratic fund-raising events.
Bush responds
Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, Tuesday dismissed Gore's proposals as "recycled ideas."
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Gov. George W. Bush campaigned Tuesday in Michigan.
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"In a transparent attempt to fix a political problem with voters angry over higher gas prices, Al Gore is offering recycled ideas that will not reduce our dependence on foreign oil," Bartlett said in a news release.
Bartlett later said that the Texas governor favors utility deregulation -- a move that is intended to result in diminished energy costs for consumers. Bush, he added, also favors using financial incentives to get power plants to operate more efficiently.
Bush himself followed up on Bartlett's comments later Tuesday afternoon in Wayne, Michigan, where he held a brief news conference during a campaign stop.
"I'm for the deregulation of electrical grids," Bush said. "Then more of us will turn to natural gas."
Natural gas is an energy source that Bush has often touted -- especially in the early primary season, when shortages of home heating oil in the Northeast became a significant issue just prior to the New Hampshire primary.
"Natural gas is hemispheric in nature and is a cleaner burning fuel," he said, adding that he wasn't "bothered in the least" by the concept of less reliance on the burning of fossil fuels, though he would "like to see the marketplace evolve" enough to accommodate such changes in fuel demands.
"All of us hope for a day in which we are no longer dependent on foreign sources of crude," Bush said, while revisiting his assessment that the Clinton-Gore administration "has no energy policy."
"They are hoping the issue just goes away," he said.
Bush spent part of his Tuesday in Wayne paying a visit to a private organization that helps welfare recipients re-enter the workforce. The Texas governor said he believed the work of welfare reform was yet incomplete, adding that he believed even if welfare were eliminated, there would still be some in this society in need of a helping hand.
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