Obama says U.S. must win clean-energy race

Speaking at MIT, the president says the nation that leads in the alternative-energy field will also lead the world. Later today, Obama will focus on a different kind of power at two fundraisers.

Reporting from Washington – President Obama, citing a global competition for development of clean-energy alternatives to oil, insisted today that the United States must win that race and called on Congress to enact legislation also intended to curb climate change.

“The nation that wins this competition is going to be the nation that leads the world,” Obama told an audience at one of the nation’s premier research universities in Massachusetts. “And I want America to be that nation — it’s that simple.”

Obama praised “a legacy of innovation” that “taps into something that is essential about America.”

“Even in the darkest of times that this nation has seen, it has always sought a brighter horizon,” the president said at the MIT in Cambridge, Mass. “We have always been about innovation. We have always been about discovery. That is part of our DNA.”

Obama was touting MIT’s development of “cutting- edge clean-energy technology.” He toured a lab demonstrating wind, solar and batter power before delivering an address to an expected audience of about 750 in the Kresge Auditorium.

“There is no silver bullet,” Obama said. “There is going to be a lot of debate about how we move from an economy that is importing oil to one that is exporting clean energy. . . . There are going to be all kinds of debates, both in the laboratories and on Capitol Hill.”

LA Times