U.S. Unveils Measures to Encourage Solar Power Use

The Obama administration on Monday announced a slew of small measures designed to encourage the use of solar power hours before President Obama was scheduled to fly to Nevada to speak at the National Clean Energy Summit there.

The measures included making an additional $1 billion in loan guarantee authority available in an existing federal program for innovative versions of the kind of residential rooftop solar projects that have become popular in places like California.  But none of the announced measures would provide the impact on the solar industry of the Clean Power Plan, which was announced this month and requires states to cut carbon emissions by an average of 32 percent.  That plan provides strong incentives for much of those reductions to come from the development of renewable energy resources — exactly what executives at the conference in Nevada are looking to sell.

For Mr. Obama, the solar measures and speech on Monday are part of an increasingly intense effort to highlight the dangers of climate change and implement policies to address them.

On Thursday, he will fly to New Orleans for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and to talk about how to protect cities against some of the more disruptive effects of climate change. Next week, he will become the first sitting president to visit the Arctic Circle in Alaska, and next month he will host Pope Francis at the White House to talk, in part, about the moral dimensions of the problems.

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