Barack Obama has railed against US political and business figures who oppose the expansion of wind and solar power in a speech where he singled out the influential Koch brothers for criticism.



Accusing opponents of his energy policies of “wanting to protect an outdated status quo” based on fossil fuels, he warned them away from “standing in the way of the future” and his efforts to combat climate change.

Obama delivered the closing address at the eighth National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, co-sponsored by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. The senate minority leader had 24 hours earlier given a forceful endorsement of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and as the president took the podium on Monday he acknowledged Reid’s boost to his efforts to prevent Congress from blocking the international pact.

Obama said: “I want to thank him for his statement over the weekend in support of a deal that makes sure Iran does not get a nuclear weapon. The deal is a historic diplomatic breakthrough, the best of American foreign policy.”



The president embarked on a spirited defense of his administration’s policy to back the fast-expanding renewable energy industry in the US – launched as part of a spending program that was originally aimed at pulling the country out of the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 – and more recent moves to “reduce the dangerous emissions that contribute to climate change”.



Obama praised the solar panel industry, where he said prices for panels had fallen by 10% in the US since 2008 while installations had risen 30%, while “every three minutes another business in America goes solar” and thousands of jobs were being created.



“Now is not the time to pull back from these investments. Many Republicans want to take from these successful clean energy programs,” he warned.

Obama said that in some cases renewable energy was becoming cheaper than conventional energy and it was “impossible to overstate what that means”.

He gave shout-outs specifically to Walmart, Google, Apple and Costco – companies he said were investing in renewable energy to run their businesses. “That should give us a big jolt of hope,” he said.

He also argued that ordinary consumers who disagreed with him on fundamental issues should look at solar and wind energy as making financial sense. “You do not have to share my passion for solving climate change to like renewable energy. People are doing it not because of tree huggers – even though trees are important – but because they are cost-cutters,” he said.

This “big shift” was making “fossil fuel interests pretty nervous, to the point where they are trying to fight renewable energy”.

“I’m getting resistance from some fossil fuel interests who want to protect the outdated status quo. When you start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests or conservative thinktanks or the Koch brothers, pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding, that’s a problem,” he said.

The Koch brothers are Charles and David Koch, the business siblings who control Koch Industries, a multinational conglomerate based in Kansas with vast holdings in oil, chemicals and a host of other traditional industries. They actively fund Republican and conservative causes that oppose expanding the government’s role in healthcare and combating climate change, particularly through taxation and tighter regulation of power plant emissions.

“That’s not the American way, that’s not progress, that’s not innovation. That’s trying to protect the old ways of doing business and standing in the way of the future,” Obama continued.

He accused such opponents “who tout themselves as champions of the free market” and “go crazy” at any talk of the government providing healthcare for people without insurance of trying to “choke off consumer choice”, as the summit audience applauded.

He predicted his opponents would only get louder as the clean energy industry continued to grow and win new customers. But he insisted they were going in the wrong direction. “It’s about the past versus the future. And America believes in the future,” he said.

Looking relaxed after his recent family holiday, link the president said it was good to be “back on the road” to talk about energy issues after “recharging my own batteries, so to speak”.