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Articles
Congress Needs to Anticipate Our Growing Energy Demands
By Derek Pillie, District Director
June 17, 2008
This column was first published by the KPC Media Group in the News-Sun (Noble & LaGrange Counties), the Evening Star (DeKalb County), and the Herald-Republican (Steuben County).
My daughter turned six last week. The realization that she’ll be a teenager before I know it, and graduating from college soon after came crushing down on me like a ton of bricks.
As my daughter grows up, I understand that our family’s needs will change. I intend to save up so as to help her with her plans for after high school. And I plan to pay the increased car insurance bills when she starts driving.
It is sobering to look 10 years down the road and try to anticipate—and address—your family’s needs.
Public utilities have the same responsibilities for a much larger “family.”
We have talked quite a lot lately about gas prices, because we all see the price at the pump going higher and higher. Congressman Mark Souder wrote recently in these pages about how he’s trying to address our nation’s energy problem.
Mark Souder pointed out last week that, even though our nation has 260 years’ worth of coal, we have been blocked in Congress from researching new ways to apply this resource in more energy-efficient, conservation-minded applications. This obstacle takes on greater significance when you consider that, according to our rural electric cooperatives, 94 percent of Indiana’s electricity demand is fueled by coal-powered generation plants.
Just as some politicians and environmentalists have tried to prevent the much-needed modernization of an oil refinery in Whiting, new electric power plants of any type have been difficult to get off the ground. It takes roughly 10 years for a new plant to be built. In the next 12 years our electric energy consumption will increase by 40 percent.
A 40 percent increase in our demand would require the construction of seven new power plants. Given that environmentalists (and their allies in Congress) are currently blocking virtually all forms of domestic energy production, how can our utilities possibly keep up with the increase in demand?
Congress should be trying to anticipate our future demands for energy. Instead, politicians are pushing us closer to a point where folks will have to hope that the rolling brownouts miss their house when the temperature soars and they’re trying to stay cool.
We need Congress to stop restricting access to research and development that can help us be more energy independent and yet still meet our demand for electricity. To be sure, we also need to continue to pursue conservation and more efficient technologies to meet our energy needs. But American scientists can’t perform the necessary research in the current, restrictive system.
Right now, instead of trying to figure out how to save up for my kids to go to college, I worry that I may be trying to figure out how to afford to keep the lights on, so that they can get their homework done.
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