The United States is reportedly matching its commitment to renewable energy with $2 billion in new funding. The Obama administration wants 25 percent of U.S. energy to come from alternative energy sources — wind, solar, geothermal and biomass — by 2025.

President Obama recently signed an omnibus appropriation act into law providing $1.93 billion for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for fiscal year 2009, which runs through the end of September. The funding represents a 13.5 percent increase above the Fiscal Year 2008.

The act provides $55 million for wind energy.

Meanwhile, the battle over how best to use offshore U.S. waters for energy is gaining momentum as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is set to hold one of four national hearings in the second week of April. The hearings will help set national policy on exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf, generally the area from three miles to 150 miles offshore.

It has emerged that Salazar is taking the offshore debate in new directions, talking about an East Coast potential for one million megawatts of power that could be generated by wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean — enough to generate nearly five times the power produced by U.S. coal-fired energy plants now.