Obama calls for more greenhouse gas cuts
President Barack Obama wants federal government workers to re-think their commuting and work-related travel in an attempt to further reduce the government’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House aims to cut the federal government’s indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent from 2008 levels by 2020, said Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, at a clean energy forum held Tuesday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Indirect emissions are less tangible than their direct counterparts, linked more to behaviors, such as commuting patterns. In January, Obama had ordered a 28 percent reduction by 2020 in the federal government’s direct greenhouse gas emissions, whose sources are from government-owned facilities and vehicles.
The president’s carbon emission reduction goals come as Congress works on a comprehensive energy bill.
“In addition to looking inward, we are looking to policy,” Sutley said, echoing Obama’s mantra of making “clean energy the profitable kind of energy.”
The success of this latest order on indirect emissions hinges largely on whether federal workers have access to public transit that would allow them to change their commuting behavior beyond carpooling.
Read more in the Washington Business Journal.
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