Energy

Dems Promise The Gov’t Will Run On 100% Green Energy

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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The Democratic Party’s draft platform for 2016 includes a provision to get the federal government to completely run on green energy.

“We support President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline,” according to a draft of the platform. “And we believe that the federal government should lead by example, which is why we will take steps to power the government with 100 percent clean electricity.”

The draft platform also calls for the U.S. to get 50 percent of its energy from green sources by 2050, and still includes a contentious provision calling on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate companies that call into question the “scientific reality of climate change.“

Democrats are looking to go even further than President Barack Obama in terms of greening the federal government. Obama has issued executive orders for federal agencies to cut greenhouse gas emissions and for certain government buildings to get ever-increasing amounts of electricity from green sources, like wind turbine and solar panels.

That’s a tall order, not only in terms of getting enough solar panels on the more than 300,000 buildings owned by the federal government — not to mention electrifying (or biofueling) the hundreds of thousands of vehicles owned by federal agencies.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has made boosting green energy a major part of her presidential platform. She promised to install half a billion solar panels by the end of her first term, and produce enough green energy to power every U.S. home within ten years of her taking office.

“Too many Republicans in this race deny the very existence of this global threat by reminding you that they’re not scientists,” Clinton said in a July 2015 campaign email. “Well… I may not be a scientist, but I’m a grandmother with two eyes and a brain. That’s all it takes to know that we must immediately address climate change, one of the defining challenges of our time.”

The draft party platform now needs approval from the full platform committee in Orlando in July. That document will then need approval at the Democratic National Convention

Democrats have also kept in place a provision calling for the DOJ to investigate companies believed to be misleading shareholders and the public on global warming science.

“Democrats also respectfully request the Department of Justice to investigate allegations of corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies accused of misleading shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change,” according to a platform.

Democrats pushed the call for a DOJ probe as state attorneys general were investigating ExxonMobil for that exact thing — environmentalists had accused the company of orchestrating a campaign of deception on climate science.

That provision in the platform also came after Democratic lawmakers pushed for months for the DOJ to prosecute oil companies under a federal anti-racketeering law.

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