Following up on statements he made in this week’s State of the Union address, President Obama’s administration has released more details on clean energy initiatives that the executive branch will undertake in the coming months.

President Obama delivered two speeches on Thursday on the topic of American’s energy future, the first at the United Parcel Service (UPS) facility in Las Vegas, NV and the second at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado. The focus of the speech given in Colorado centered more around energy security than generation.

In short, the President is focusing on proposals that he can execute solely on his own authority and without the aid, or potential inhibition, of legislation. While many of the proposals focus on Obama’s promise to increase domestic oil and gas production while expanding the reach of abundant natural gas into new technologies, renewable energy will also receive its fair share of Presidential endorsement.

For example, as the President mentioned in his State of the Union speech, the Navy will add 1 gigawatt of renewable electricity generation capacity for its land-based operations. That is the equivalent power needed to supply electricity to 250,000 US homes. Furthermore, the Navy will utilize “existing authorities such as power purchase agreements… [to] ensure these energy projects are cost neutral and require no up-front investments by the government.”

Part of his vow to continue tax credits for the clean energy industry, Obama is requesting an extension of the Production Tax Credit for wind energy. That tax credit is worth 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour credit for manufacturers looking to increase energy efficiency by the use of wind-generated electricity for their operations. The credit is currently set to expire at the end of the year, and has the potential to take 37,000 jobs in the wind energy industry along with it.

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