Energy and Environment

The ads will likely target swing states like Virginia and Ohio where Romney needs to win more working-class white voters.

Radio ads launched Monday in Colorado and Iowa tout the president’s clean-energy policies as job-creating while casting GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s budget plan as disastrous for that sector.

The ads are part of an eight-state push by the incumbent’s camp, but only Colorado and Iowa listeners will hear how Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s outlook and Rep. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan would hurt the clean-energy industry. President Obama lauded clean energy in a recent tour of both those states, which followed closely on the heels of Romney’s announcement that he favors letting a crucial wind tax credit expire.

The Obama campaign said in one of the ads that “Iowa would get hit hard” in accommodating Ryan’s budget plan, explaining that “renewable energy would be slashed — threatening Iowa’s status as a leader on wind energy jobs.” The Iowa ad also said Ryan’s proposals would gut federal spending on conservation programs that support fishing and hunting.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is ramping up a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in five swing states that will likely put President Obama’s energy policies on the defensive.

Voters in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina will hear and see more from API through the rest of the election cycle, API President and CEO Jack Gerard told reporters Tuesday. Gerard noted many of those states are friendly to natural gas.

“We are going there because that’s where the public dialogue is going on today, and we’re going to inject energy” into the discussion, Gerard said.

Gerard sharply criticized Obama’s treatment of oil-and-gas companies, saying the nation needs a “pro-growth president” and that “the business uncertainty and choices of this administration ... are detrimental” to the economy.

He is attacking Obama for blocking oil development off Virginia’s coast, a plan supported by Republicans in the state.

The new ad from Americans for Prosperity knocking Obama's green-energy spending will run in eight battleground states.

Elizabeth Warren won the endorsement of the League of Conservation Voters Monday in her bid to unseat incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

The news, while not a surprise, officially aligns the environmental movement's two biggest political campaign operations with Warren’s election bid. The Sierra Club, the green movement's other political powerhouse, endorsed Warren earlier this month.

“LCV Action Fund is proud to endorse Elizabeth Warren for Senate because she understands that the policies needed to bring jobs to Massachusetts and keep America’s competitive edge are the same policies that will reduce our dependence on oil and curb harmful pollution,” LCV Action Fund President Gene Karpinski said in a statement.

“We are confident that as Senator, Elizabeth Warren will be a strong voice for environmental policies that make corporate polluters pay their fair share and build a clean energy future for America.”

Romney blasts cap-and-trade efforts to mitigate global warming, but a big Romney supporter backs such efforts with large contributions.

Newt Gingrich hopes to revive his struggling presidential campaign by touting his energy platform amid rising gasoline prices.

The former House Speaker is polling far behind GOP rivals Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. Gingrich, asked Tuesday night on Fox News how he can “rise from the ashes,” had this to say:

I think in my case I rise by focusing on an American energy policy, getting back to $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, outlining both the economic and national-security implications, indicating that instead of bowing to a Saudi king we ought to be drilling, and our goal should be to be so independent that we don't care what the Iranians do in the Straits of Hormuz.