As expected, President Obama dedicated a large part of his State of the Union speech yesterday to infrastructure and clean energy. He said that by 2035 he wanted 80 percent of America’s electricity to come from clean sources. Unfortunately, he didn’t lay out a financial plan to make this vision into a reality.

“Clean-energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean-energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling,” Obama said. “Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.”

Obama also set an agenda to rebuild America’s infrastructure, telling Congress it needed to double its efforts to repair roads and bridges, and provide 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail in 25 years.

“To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information — from high-speed rail to high-speed internet.

Our infrastructure used to be the best — but our lead has slipped. … Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.” …

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying — without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.”

While that’s a laudable goal, we’re unsure how Obama is going to get there considering governors in Wisconsin and Ohio have already returned federal HSR money, because they didn’t want to pony up the rest of the cash needed to build the train lines in their states.

More importantly, such massive infrastructure projects are expensive, and with politicians, especially on the right, refusing to raise the gas tax — it will be important to see where Obama plans to get the money from (he mentioned cutting subsidies to oil companies, but again that might die along partisan lines too).

Additionally, the federal Highway Trust Fund, which currently pays for road and transit projects from sales taxes on fuel, is on course to run out of money by 2014, reported Bloomberg.

Details of Obama’s transportation plan won’t be revealed until the White House presents its budget in February — but we’re expected to see a six-year plan that will look similar to the $50 billion National Infrastructure Bank he first talked about a couple of months ago. Whether that will pass in Congress we’ll know in a month.

It is commendable that Obama gave infrastructure the much needed push it needs, but without any specifics, and considering our currently financial situation, these ideas could, unfortunately, die as just that – ideas.