An article in The Oil Drum makes some sense of President Obama’s recently announced energy policy, which does look logical and doable to me. It doesn’t chase after hair-brained schemes.

The article starts like this:

The Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy for America plan will:

• Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
• Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
• Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars – cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon – on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
• Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
• Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

The Obama energy agenda focuses on – and these are not mutually exclusive – efficiency, electrification and the promotion of alternative energy resources. Its five main goals are set up in a way so that success in any one of the five individual areas will reinforce the other four, helping the overall agenda achieve success.

For example, creating 25 percent of the U.S. electricity production from renewable resources (Goal #4) will aid in decreasing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent (Goal #5).

The energy agenda is a welcome change, showing a future outlook that is based, at least to some [small] extent, on the physical realities of the natural resource world. However, from the perspective of net energy, some potential problems do exist. My goal here is to discuss some possible shortcomings of the new administration’s energy agenda from the perspective of net energy….

See the rest of the article here.