President Obama heads out for his four state/two day trip to tout his administration’s energy plan and talk to the American people about what his administration is doing to combat rising gas prices. He’ll be visiting Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Ohio and three out of four states just so happen to be key battleground states.  He’ll start out his energy trip out Wednesday with a stop in Boulder City, Nevada (battleground state #1) where he’ll visit the Cooper Mountain Solar 1 Facility, which is the largest photovoltaic plant in the U.S. In understandable terms, it makes solar panels, and lots of them. According to the Las Vegas Sun, “The panels at Solar 1 produce 58 megawatts of power, enough for more than 17,000 average homes and the recent 48-megawatt expansion of the site, completed in 2010, cost about $141 million and created 350 temporary construction jobs. However, only five people are currently employed there full time.” The White House tells us that the facility operates nearly one million solar panels. In his remarks at this stop, he will talk about “his Administration’s focus on diversifying our energy portfolio, including expanding renewable energy from sources like wind and solar, which thanks in part to investments made by this Administration is set to double in the President’s first term.” 

He then travels to Carlsbad, New Mexico (battleground state #2) where he will tour federal lands with active drilling rigs. While there, he will give remarks where he will reiterate his message over the last few weeks that domestic oil production is at an eight-year high and his administration has a plan to continue to expand production. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney addressed why this is important in Monday’s WH briefing: “Because an all-of-the-above energy approach requires and necessitates that we aggressively expand domestic oil and gas production in a safe and responsible way.”

For the full schedule released by the White House, please click below. FULL POST