Markey getting top energy post in House

From the Boston Globe:

Representative Edward Markey today will be awarded a key energy and environment leadership post in the House, a move that will make the Malden Democrat one of the most powerful players on Capitol Hill on an issue central to president-elect Obama's first-term agenda.

Markey, a 17-term congressman with a strong record against nuclear power and for more fuel-efficient cars, will be named chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, lawmakers and Democratic leadership staff confirmed to the Globe. Markey already chairs the separate House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a new panel that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created in early 2007.

``It's time to create the clean energy age,'' Markey said in an interview. ``My goal is now to create an energy policy that creates millions of new jobs in the United States,'' many of them in New England, where high-tech firms can benefit from Obama's proposed Green Jobs initiative, Markey said....

...In a telephone interview, Pelosi lauded Markey's ``knowledge, experience, judgment and ability to communicate on this subject so effectively. Combined with his chairmanship of the select committee on global warming, ``this makes him really a powerhouse on the issue of global warming and energy independence,'' she said.

The assignment also signals a shift under Pelosi toward a more environmentalist perspective on energy policy. After the 2008 elections, veteran Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat supportive of his state's automobile industry, was replaced as the longtime chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee with Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat favored by environmentalists.....MORE