The next president of the USA will be Barack Obama and we thought that it would be great to review what the former Senator will do for the environment and whether he will encourage greener technologies. During his campaign, Obama said that the energy and environmental policy will change dramatically under his administration even if the economical crisis will continue.

Everybody is waiting for a change and this new administration and Congress should encourage the use of clean energy technologies for the national energy grid.

“The election is over. Now the hard work begins. Change is on the way,” said Dan Farber, member of the lobbying group Cleantech & Green Business for Obama.

These words are encouraging and hopefully, change will come and Obama will stick to his energy plan which consists of a $150 billion funding for clean technologies on a 10-year period. The plan is to come up with programs where energy efficiency, low-carbon fuels and renewable energies will be promoted. Also the greenhouse gas emissions will have to be reduced dramatically for a cleaner Earth, not only USA.

The Obama administration will concentrate first to implement smaller measures because the energy legislation will have a hard time to pass (one reason would be the slumping economy) therefore Obama will focus on efficiency and renewable energy mandates.

“One of the biggest setbacks is trying to find the money to pay for all of this. This isn’t free. Reality will set in and trying to find money…is really going to temper the possibilities over the next 12 months,” said David Kurzman, managing director of Kurzman CleanTech Research.

A positive thing is that Barack Obama believes that clean technologies are related to economical development as harnessing renewable energies means that new workplaces will be created.

“From a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy,” said the future president of the US in an interview for the Time magazine.

During his campaign, Obama talked very much about clean energy and technologies, and about the environment and it’s very possible that renewable energies will become a really profitable business if the Obama administration manages to implement the energy legislation.

“There’s a growing sense that investing in infrastructure, even if it means more deficit spending, is a good thing because it will help economic growth in the short and long term. And green energy has come to be regarded as a 21st-century infrastructure play,” said Ethan Zindler from New Energy Finance.

President-elect Obama has proposed a portfolio which mandates renewable energies to contribute with 10 percent at the national grid by 2012, and by 2025 clean energies will cover 25 percent of the energy needs. Thanks to the recent financial bailout, solar power got an eight-year extension of federal tax credit, but wind power received only one-year. However, as Obama was elected president it’s very likely that this one year period for wind energy will receive a longer extension.

Barack Obama’s energy plan also includes the modernization of the power grid which consists of more efficient products like demand response, and advanced metering. This will require a federal initiative in order to establish a better interstate transmission of renewable energies.

“A 50-state role to transmission just doesn’t get the job done. You need a federal planning and facilitation,” said Rob Church from the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE).

Biofuels are very important in Obama’s plan therefore ethanol will continue to be produced in states like Illinois where corn fields are abundant. However, in order to replace fossil fuels, but in the same time to be more sustainable, biofuels will have to be produced from wood chips or algae, and not from nonfood feedstocks.

The automotive industry has suffered a lot because of the financial crisis and many of automakers are running “dangerously low on cash“, however, Obama hopes to increase fuel efficiency, and to give more tax credits and loan guarantees for plug-in hybrid cars.

“Politically, the issue here is pretty stark and cost of keeping the auto industry in game is whole lot less than of a major failure,” said David Cole, the chairman for the Center for Automotive Research.

When it comes to fossil fuels and nuclear power, Obama made the best choice, but clearly not the one we would have really liked. Domestic oil and gas drilling will be allowed, and the US President-elect also said that clean coal technology will be encouraged because the CO2-emissions are stored underground.

During his campaign, Obama never really explained the nuclear waste problem, however, recently in the second presidential debate he said that nuclear power is a very important component of the overall energy mix therefore nuclear will continue to receive support from his administration, and from the new Congress.

Probably the most important issue is the carbon footprint policy. Everybody knows that we have to dramatically cut down the greenhouse gas emissions and Barack Obama has called for a 80% percent reduction of CO2 emissions from the 1990 levels. The 80% reduction is scheduled to be completed by 2050 thanks to a federal cap-and-trade system.

The climate-change regulations will require the pollution rights to be at least partially auctioned in order to create funds for cleaner technologies programs. Although there will be a lot of companies who will lose a lot of money, the Congress is willing to put the climate and environment before money and business. Chemical companies and utilities will be affected, but the Obama administration will have to work something out in order to help them and make everybody happy.

“Existing programs can be tweaked to accommodate the new vision. Depending on how you structure things, you could have a quick and profound impact on new technologies,” said Scott Sklar, president of the Stella Group.

Many experts say that the Obama administration and new Congress should not push this situation which means that they have to stick to the energy plan and not take the environmental policies to the extreme.

“I firmly believe that the linchpin to this entire game is allowing agriculture to play a role in diversifying our energy, whether it be wind, solar, using rural areas for geothermal or wind corridors. More extreme positions like trying to end coal result in failure and missed opportunities,” concluded Brooke Coleman, executive director of the New Fuels Alliance.