Seven Principles of Sound Energy Policy
Bottomline: Without energy, there is no human flourishing. While it is true that all energy sources have an environmental impact, in our massive energy complex, it is production scale that rules the day. To be effective, energy must be reliable and affordable. Changing our energy system takes a very long time. Energy subsidies ultimately do more harm than help, so government should stop trying to pick energy winners and losers with policy. The market continues to favor fossil fuels over less reliable, less affordable, and less clean than advertised renewable energy systems.
Energy is at the core of our economic well-being.
Energy powers our lives and cools us during the summer and heats us during the winter.
Energy cooks our food, transports us, and is the essential ingredient to the products that we use daily.
In fact, abundant, reliable, and low-cost energy elevated humanity from the near-Hobbesian state of existence — “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
It was vast amounts of energy that enabled the industrial revolution.
Without energy, nearly all of humanity would likely return to a life of poverty, disease, and want.
Some now say that because of deforestation and climate change we have let our growing need for energy come at the expense of the planet.
Yet, today we use energy far more efficiently than we did during the industrial revolution and most of the 20thcentury.
Today, we are growing our knowledge and learning how to do far more far more cleanly.
And there is always a trade-off that must be made when choosing our energy: all energy resources have an environmental impact but the most reliable and the most affordable are the best ones to enable humanity to flourish.
As a result, we have relied on massive, baseload — or “always on” — energy facilities for the past several decades.
In energy terms, this has meant that fossil fuels and nuclear energy are the first employee.
They are there and ready to work whenever energy is needed, and with improving technologies like fracking, we are finding more and more of them to use and making them more efficient and safe at their job.
Those promoting a switch (“transition”) from our current fossil fuel-based energy complex to one based on renewable energies and the batteries required to backup their natural intermittency are really promoting a switch to a less reliable system that lacks the scale to support our current consuming way of life.
Not to mention that these “alternative systems” have massive mining needs that are already proving far more environmentally destructive than advertised.
In any event, adding large amounts of new systems like wind, solar, and electric cars will take a very long time.
Our “energy inertia” ensures that even making renewables and electric cars for transport a significant portion of our energy complex will be measured in many decades, not the years that many advocates are demanding today.
Indeed, politicians and advocates must stop trying to pick energy “winners and losers” with policy.
We know that markets give people the ability to choose what they want themselves at a price they can afford.
Individual choices then push companies to provide reliable products and services that their customers actually want instead of something that has been mandated by a government bureaucrat or demanded by a vocal special interest group.
Markets have proven to be the single best way to reduce prices and improve safety.
Instead of handing out subsidies, the government’s approach should be to create a competitive marketplace that features a level playing field, with no special favors for any energy source.
Read the full study here.
Findings:
- Energy is a requirement for human progress and all energy sources have an environmental impact.
- Scale is king in our immense energy complex and changing our energy systems takes an extremely long time.
- Energy must be reliable and affordable to truly be effective: our consuming way of life demands that.
- Fossil fuels have proven to be far more effective than renewables, which is why they continue to dominate.
- Subsidies to force renewables into the system are provably anti-consumer, anti-market in most cases.
Read the full study here.
