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The Paris Motor Show

At the Paris Motor Show today, electric cars are everywhere.

Chevrolet is showing off the Volt, its plug-in hybrid due in U.S. showrooms this December. (Motown music blared as a Chevy rep told me all about the car’s performance.) Nissan is displaying the Leaf, its all-electric sedan scheduled to roll off assembly lines in Tennessee starting in 2012. Volvo has new plug-in models. So do Saab, Peugot and other European manufacturers. And as I walked through the gates in a huge crowd, the first paper put in my hands was a glossy newspaper describing the show under the headline “Un Mondial Electrique” (“An Electric World”).

And even though I’m a Michigan Wolverine, my favorite might have been the sleek all-electric “Buckeye Bullet” built by a team at Ohio State University that broke records going 320 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in August.

I was in Paris to help kick off the Electric Vehicles Initiative, a global partnership announced this summer at the Clean Energy Ministerial hosted by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Experts from 15 countries – including representatives from national governments, cities, automobile and battery manufacturers, utility companies and more – met to discuss how we can work together to create global market momentum for electric vehicles. The meetings culminated with a public panel organized by the International Energy Agency, including Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, French Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo and others. The panel was held – appropriately – right next to the track where Motor Show visitors can take more than a dozen new electric cars for test drives.

Fortunately, President Obama and Secretary Chu have helped put the United States on the road to global leadership in this rapidly growing industry. With Recovery Act funding, we have made an historic $2.85 billion investment in electric vehicles. We’re investing $2.0 billion in United States-based manufacturers to produce advanced vehicle batteries and drive train components,$400 million to purchase, test, and deploy different types of electric vehicles to test their viability in the marketplace, and$300 million in cost-share projects under the “Clean Cities” program. These investments are reducing our dependence on oil, cutting pollution and creating thousands of jobs, while building a foundation for even more job growth in the years ahead.

The world is moving forward – quickly – on 21st century electric vehicle technology. The United States can and must be a global leader in this industry in the years to come.

Kicking Off National Energy Awareness Month

As you may know, the beginning of October marks the beginning National Energy Awareness Month, a national effort to underscore how central energy is to our national prosperity, security, and environmental well-being.  In commemoration of National Energy Awareness Month, the Obama Administration is kicking off a month of clean energy events and activities.  Senior administration officials from across the federal government will be highlighting the work they are doing to position our country for a sustainable future, create new clean energy jobs and lay the foundation for our long-term economic security. Check out the current calendar of events, and be sure to check back often as more events are added. 

Since taking office, President Obama and his Administration have taken unprecedented steps to build a clean energy economy in this country.  We’ve invested over $90 billion in clean energy technology through the Recovery Act.  We worked with the automotive industry and the environmental community to set new tough new fuel-economy standards and the first-ever greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and light trucks. And the federal government itself -- one of the largest consumers of energy in the country, is leading by example by cutting its carbon footprint and finding creative ways to go green.