Prior to the President’s State of the Union address last night, many renewable energy advocates wondered if clean energy would feature prominently in President Obama’s speech, as it has in his previous three State of the Unions. And the answer proved to be yes, President Obama still believes America’s future lies in clean energy.

The President opened the topic of energy generation by directing his administration to open more than 75 percent of the country’s offshore oil and gas resources so that the trend of domestic oil production can continue. In fact, the country used less foreign oil in 2011 than in the previous 16 years.

But Obama went on to say that we need to look beyond our own admittedly meager oil reserves to a new “American energy” strategy– “a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs”.

Natural gas is certainly a part of this; the President stated that we have domestic natural gas reserves capable of meeting our national demands for the next 100 years, while bringing an additional 600,000 jobs to the country by 2020. He was quick to point out the role government research played in modern technologies used to extract natural gas from shale rock that have proved to be so successful.

Those same extraction technologies are controversial as well, something the President indirectly addressed by saying that he will require “all companies that drill for gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use”. This in turn would allow the country to tap into this valuable resource while keeping the health and safety of its citizens of utmost importance.

Moving onto the topic of clean energy, the President took credit for the 50 percent increase in renewable energy usage by way of federal investments directed towards that cause in the last three years. He vowed to end “taxpayer giveaways”–subsidies–to oil companies and instead back clean energy’s future by passing clean energy tax credits. Additionally, he charged his Administration to allow clean energy developments on public land capable of providing energy to 3 million American homes.

Surely alluding to the Solyndra scandal that rocked his administration late in 2011, the President said, “Our experience with shale gas shows us that the payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here.”

Lastly, before moving on to other matters of national attention, President Obama proposed that a bill be constructed that would help manufacturers reduce energy usage and incentivize business to perform energy efficiency upgrades on their buildings.

“Their energy bills will be $100 billion lower over the next decade,” Obama stated, ”and America will have less pollution, more manufacturing, and more jobs for construction workers who need them. Send me a bill that creates these jobs.”

What do you think of the President’s strong words on the topic of clean energy development in 2012?

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