Romney, Obama trade swing-state punches on energy

President Obama and Mitt Romney bashed each other on energy in dueling swing-state appearances Tuesday, continuing a war of words on the topic that has dominated the campaign trail in recent days.

Romney appeared at an eastern Ohio coal mine to revive claims that Obama is “waging a war on coal,” alleging the president’s recent pro-coal ad in the battleground state is at odds with his record.

The former Massachusetts governor more broadly called Obama an enemy of fossil fuels, arguing that Obama’s oft-repeated call for an “all of the above” energy strategy is more selective than it sounds.

“He is for all the sources of energy that come from above the ground, none of the sources that come from below the ground,” Romney said. He touted his own plans for aggressive development of coal, as well as domestic oil.

“By the end of my second term ... I make this commitment: We will have North American energy independence,” Romney said in Beallsville, Ohio. “We won’t have to buy oil from Venezuela and the Middle East.”

Meanwhile, in Colorado, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan slammed Obama for having "done all that he can to make it harder for us to use our own energy."

"Last week, when I was filing my truck up — something tells me I’m not gonna be putting gas in my truck any time soon — it cost 100 bucks, and that's just because it cut me off at 100 bucks," Ryan said.

The Wisconsin lawmaker went on to pledge that a Romney administration would "streamline these regulations" affecting American energy production.

Romney has attacked Obama administration air pollution rules that Republicans and business lobbyists say will badly wound the coal industry, including rules requiring cuts in mercury and other air toxic emissions.

Romney's platform includes scuttling the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and opening far more federal lands and waters to oil-and-gas drilling than the Obama administration allows.

Obama, for his part, expanded his attacks against Romney’s energy policy during the second day this week in Iowa, a battleground state that has seen a wind energy boom.

Romney has come out in opposition to extending the wind energy production tax credit, which is slated to lapse at year’s end, a stance that has angered several Iowa Republicans.

Obama is pressing Congress to renew the incentive, which the industry calls vital to financing new power projects. He mocked Romney during a campaign stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, on Tuesday.

“During a speech a few months ago, Gov. Romney ... explained his energy policy this way: ‘You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it,’ ” Obama said. “That's what he said about wind power: ‘You can't drive a car with a windmill on it.’ ”

“I wonder if he actually tried that. I know he's had other things on his car,“ Obama said, a reference to an incident in which Romney put his dog in a carrier on the roof of his car during a road trip.

"But if he really wants to learn something about wind energy, Iowa, all he has to do is pay attention to what you’ve been doing,” Obama continued.

The White House on Tuesday was touting a new report from the Energy Department that showed 32 percent of newly installed power-generating capacity in 2011 came from wind, amounting to $14 billion of investment.

This story was updated at 2:26 p.m.

Justin Sink contributed.