Gary Fountain: For the Chronicle
White House adviser Lawrence Summers acknowledged the role natural gas should play in future energy policy — a recurring CERAWeek theme.
Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers stressed President Barack Obama's commitment to passage of comprehensive energy legislation Thursday night in a speech to energy industry elite gathered for the CERAWeek conference.
He said energy policy revision must have investments in renewable energy sources, as well as in nuclear power and fossil fuels including coal, to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decrease U.S. dependency on foreign oil.
“If ever there was an issue where we should move from either/or to both/and, I would suggest it is with energy,“ Summers said in the evening keynote address on the fourth day of the CERAWeek conference, which ends early this afternoon after sessions devoted to electric power.
Bounty of natural gas
Summers also acknowledged the role natural gas should play in future energy policy — a recurring theme during the conference sponsored by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Alluding to the advances that are allowing commercial access to gas locked in once-inaccessible shale, Summer cited “the remarkable opportunities created by all the natural gas we didn't know we had five years ago.”
Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, the nation's dominant fuel for power generation, and is viewed by many in the industry and government as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions widely blamed for climate change.
Summers said future energy policy must include a price on carbon emissions, although he didn't specifically mention proposals to cap emissions and create a market for emission permits, an approach called cap and trade.
‘A very long way to go'
Discussing the broader economy, Summer said measures taken by the Obama administration to stabilize the U.S. economy helped avert a financial disaster of the kind the country had not faced since the Great Depression.
“We have a very long way to go. No one can be satisfied with where the American economy is,” said Summers, who is director of the National Economics Council.
Summers served as Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 during President Bill Clinton's administration, and as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. He has taught economics at Harvard and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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