AEA awards “Lump of Coal” to cabinet officials Chu and Salazar

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON D.C. — The American Energy Alliance announced today the latest recipients of the 2011 inaugural “Lump of Coal” Awards, given Dec. 8-23 to policy makers, politicians and other professionals who are most responsible for reduced economic growth and rising energy prices.  Today’s award is shared by 1997 Nobel prize winner and current energy secretary, Steven Chu, and former senator and current interior secretary, Ken Salazar.

“Every time the American people think of Steven Chu, they will be thinking about Solyndra.  If not for his signature on the $535 million loan guarantee, American taxpayers would not have been on the hook for the now-bankrupt company whose backers were political allies of President Obama,” noted AEA President Tom Pyle in the award announcement.

“From the beginning, we have known that Secretary Chu favored higher energy prices, and the policies that would guarantee them.  We didn’t know, however, the degree to which Secretary Chu was playing venture capitalist with taxpayer dollars.  Now, three years into the Obama administration, we know the facts about Secretary Chu’s ideological commitment to conceal the real cost of green energy from consumers while increasing the cost of otherwise affordable domestic energy sources.

“For his ivory tower fantasy of a carbon-less economy even when it means higher costs to American consumers — and for putting his John Hancock on one of the administration’s most objectionable examples of bureaucratic tinkering with energy policy — Secretary Chu is most deserving of this year’s Lump of Coal.”

Sharing today’s award with Secretary Chu is his Obama cabinet counterpart at the Department of Interior, Secretary Ken Salazar.

“Millions of acres of promising energy resources on the outer continental shelf are out of reach, inaccessible, andlocked up in regulatory shackles because of Ken Salazar,” Pyle added.

“Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost in the Gulf coast economy because of Secretary Salazar’s moratorium and subsequent permitorium.  Millions of dollars in revenues for local businesses have dried up.  And job creators are actively moving their business to more friendly regulatory environments, all because of Salazar’s radical administrative activism.

“In fact, no administration in history has done more to ensure that energy producers do less.  Ken Salazar is one of the premier poster children for joblessness and a sluggish economic recovery over the last three years.  He is particularly worthy of a big, fat chunk of carbon-loaded Christmas coal.”

The American Energy Alliance previewed last week the inaugural 2011 “Lump of Coal Awards” for energy stupidity, which will be announced December 8-23, 2011.  To learn more about coal’s important place in America’s energy future, click here.  To learn the facts about coal production in the United States, click here.

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