Obama touts tax credits, ending tax breaks and charging carbon polluters

He touted tax credits and loan guarantees in the stimulus bill that “will lead to 720,000 clean energy jobs in America by 2012. By 2015, the U.S. will be making 40 percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrid cards, up from 2 percent now,” he said. 

“We must invest in and embrace the innovation and technology of the future and not the past — that applies beyond our energy policy. That’s why we’ve decided to devote more than 3 percent of gross domestic product to research and development to spur the discovery of services and products and businesses that we have yet to imagine.”

In conjunction with that, Obama again proposed making research and experimentation tax credits permanent, which would help businesses afford the high costs of developing new technologies and new products. In 2009, basic research funding received the largest investment in history, he said. 

BP has yet to find a way to stop the oil leak more than a mile under the ocean. The Deepwater Horizon rig leased from Transocean by BP exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 and starting the nation’s worst-ever oil spill.