Obama vowed to incentivize manufacturers to make energy upgrades, as well as to green the carbon footprint of the nation's military. He announced that the Department of Defense will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history, with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes per year.

“I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes,” said Obama. It’s an area where the government has significant money to spend.

“Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail," the president said. "But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here.”

It was the closest the president came to referencing Solyndra, the California solar panel manufacturer and Department of Energy loan recipient that went belly-up last year. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly used the company's failure to try to undermine the administration’s investments in renewable energy. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee, has led the charge, arguing that the government should have never invested in the manufacturer because "we can't compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines."

The reality, of course, is more complex, but Stearns' logic was precisely the sort of defeatism that the president boldly dismissed.

“We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough,” Obama said. “It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs.”

The comments came as part of a larger meditation on energy policy, in which the president pulled a leaf from the Republican playbook, pledging to expand drilling and increase other forms of domestic energy production as a way to create more American jobs.

“Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy,” Obama said in the address. “Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.”

In the same breath, he emphasized the importance of breaking the country's dependence on foreign oil.

“Last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years,” the president said to hearty applause. “But with only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, oil isn’t enough. This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy –- a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.”

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