President-elect Barack Obama used his weekly radio address this Saturday to call for doubling renewable energy production.

More renewable energy and energy-efficient buildings would generate jobs and reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, Mr. Obama said.

In his New Energy for America plan, Mr. Obama previously has called for getting 10 percent of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2012 and 25 percent by 2025.

In 2007, renewable sources contributed 7 percent of total U.S. energy demand and supplied 8.4 percent of U.S. electricity generation, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Doubling renewable electricity generation to 16.8 percent would be more ambitious than Mr. Obama’s previous 2012 target. But it’s not clear from his speech what time frame he had in mind for this latest announcement.

Mr. Obama primarily used the speech to intensify calls for an economic stimulus plan aimed at creating jobs, improving public infrastructure, reducing health care costs, and investing in education. The overall stimulus package now taking shape under the Obama transition team could be between $675 billion and $775 billion, according to a New York Times report.