Obama pushes renewable energy, climate change rules

NEWTON, Iowa (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the United States must lead the world on renewable energy and pressed Congress to set greenhouse gas limits deemed crucial for global talks on climate change.

"It is time for us to lay a new foundation for economic growth by beginning a new era of energy exploration in America," Obama told workers at a wind power technology plant in Iowa, the state that propelled his presidential campaign more than a year ago.

"The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy. America can be that nation. America must be that nation."

In Washington senior Obama administration officials urged Congress to back a law that would put a cap on carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions to give the United States credibility in international talks to fight climate change later this year.

"There will be no new global deal if the United States is not part of it and we won't be part of it unless we are on track in enacting our own domestic plan," Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate negotiator, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"Unless we stand and deliver by enacting strong, mandatory nationwide climate and energy legislation, the effort to negotiate a new international agreement will come up short," he said.

TOUGH LEGISLATION IN THE WORKS

The House of Representatives is taking the lead in Congress in an effort to write legislation imposing tough new caps on CO2 emissions and other pollutants that are dumped into the atmosphere by big manufacturers, utilities and vehicles.

Last month House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman unveiled a bill that seeks to lower CO2 emissions to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and more than 80 percent by 2050.

The bill could face trouble in the 100-member Senate, however, where 60 votes are required for passage of the controversial measures. Republicans have criticized the cap-and-trade system as a backhanded energy tax.

An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of Waxman's bill found that the bill would raise electricity prices 22 percent by the year 2030 and cost American households an average of $98 to $140 each year through 2050.

EPA head Lisa Jackson said the cost to Americans from the bill would be "modest compared to the benefits that science and plain common sense tell us a comprehensive energy and climate policy will deliver."

The EPA declared CO2 and other tailpipe emissions a danger to human health and welfare last week, opening the way for government regulation of greenhouse gases, but Obama said in Iowa he preferred legislation to do the job.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Ayesha Rascoe and Tom Doggett; Writing by Jeff Mason; Editing by Bill Trott)