Webb Brown - October 25, 2007
Montana Chamber of Commerce
Energy Choices
Hello, I’m Webb Brown, President/CEO of the Montana Chamber of Commerce
These are challenging times for our country. Foremost among these challenges is how we ensure that America can continue to compete and lead the world in the year’s ahead. Among the challenges are health care, pensions, trade, and other issues. But there is none perhaps more important than energy.
America faces an energy shortage. Our future economic prosperity is at stake. Thirty years ago, then President Jimmy Carter called our nation’s energy independence “the moral equivalent of war.” Imports accounted for 46 percent of oil and 5 percent of natural gas. Today, imports account for 59 percent of oil and 16 percent of natural gas.
Energy is the single most important physical resource underpinning America’s economic competitiveness, our national security, and our basic, quality of life necessities. Yet, despite its fundamental importance, we still don’t have a comprehensive national energy policy.
We frequently hear the cry for energy independence, but, when given the opportunity to respond, Washington refuses to embrace, encourage, or even tolerate greater domestic energy development.
We are all too familiar with the economic pain felt at the gas pumps, but the economic pain associated with the rising demand for electricity is not so obvious.
This week, experts announced that electricity usage in the U.S. is projected to grow more than twice as fast as committed resources over the next 10 years. Unless additional resources are brought into service, some areas could fall short within two or three years.
Renewable resources are an important part of America’s energy future, but reliably integrating them into the bulk power system has its challenges. Large-scale wind and solar generation resources are often remotely located and will require new transmission lines to deliver their power to population centers. Furthermore, we don’t know how much electricity these renewable sources can consistently produce during peak demand times.
Hydroelectric is big in Montana, but we’re removing dams now, rather than building new ones. Nuclear energy is another important option, but it too requires expanding and strengthening the grid for reliable integration. We consider and support all these as additional, not alternative, sources of energy.
Then, of course, there is natural gas. Like crude oil, America has a growing demand for this precious resource, but a diminishing domestic supply. As a result, costs have far exceeded estimates and prices have nearly tripled since 1990. Despite the promise of natural gas, the U.S. will have to rely on foreign sources from places like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela to meet the demand for natural gas in the coming years.
The most abundant, affordable, and reliable natural energy source America has is coal. Coal currently fuels approximately two-thirds of Montana’s electricity and nearly 50 percent of U.S. electricity. Nationwide demand for electricity from coal is expected to increase to 57 percent in the next 25 years. Fortunately, U.S. coal reserves are nearly six times that of our nation’s oil and natural gas reserves combined and more than three times the energy equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s oil. This equates to approximately 250 years of affordable energy.
The real issue is not so much about energy independence as it is about the fact that we have locked away vast untapped domestic energy resources … resources (like coal) we can and must further develop, in an environmentally safe way, to power our growing population and economy.
Emerging clean coal technologies mean that coal has the potential to continuously improve its environmental profile, while offering the U.S. dependable, affordable energy reserves for the next two centuries. Specifically, we can achieve near-zero emissions from new coal-fired generation facilities through the use of clean coal technologies.
Is coal the exclusive answer to America’s energy problem? Absolutely not. We have diverse energy sources in America and we can’t afford to discard any of them. They are all important factors and should be a part of the mix. Conservation and efficiency must be part of the energy usage equation, too. The bottom line is – we need more, not fewer, choices.
The best thing for our families, the economy, and the environment is a sound and balanced energy policy that addresses practical reality. We must consider and include a complete menu of traditional and additional fuels in order to add to our existing power generation capacity and to decrease our reliance on foreign sources of energy.
With American resources and American technology, we can reasonably, effectively, and cleanly produce the reliable energy that our country desperately needs. It’s a challenge Montana can help meet and we will all be the better for it. Let’s put some energy into Montana!
|
|
