More Inconvenient Truth: The need for sound energy policy for North Carolina

The sustainability and profitability of farming and agribusiness depend on a consistent, affordable, and robust energy supply. Higher energy costs significantly affect rural businesses and citizens more than their urban/suburban peers. For example, I am told that a cotton picker, depending on age, can burn 12 to 24 gallons of diesel fuel PER HOUR. They easily run 10-hour days at harvest time. At 4 dollars per gallon, that can add up quickly. There is plenty of research going on to electrify farm equipment, but North Carolina’s farms are usually a patchwork of fields far from the farm shop. You can bring fuel to farm machinery, but you have to get electric farm machinery to the electric charging station – probably back at the farm shop. In addition, what about the struggling rural family that must drive an hour to the doctor’s office or a grocery store? You get the picture.

For some reason, out-of-state and national nonprofit organizations are working against North Carolina’s energy policy. A “laptop” crowd that mindlessly funds numerous environmental groups for some reason is interested in our energy policy. They conveniently do not acknowledge the fundamental law of economics that modern, free economic systems depend on robust energy policies and supply. Energy costs impact every aspect of contemporary life in complex ways – from the medicines we take, the fertilizers we use to grow our food, the transportation of life’s necessities, to the heating and cooling of our homes. Any supply or cost disruption impacts our homes, families, and communities. Low energy costs expand the middle class and provide hope and economic opportunity for disadvantaged citizens. High energy costs put our fragile farm sector in peril. Our state and national policies must reflect the economic reality that affordability and availability of a menu of energy options bring economic opportunities and make a nation strong, great, and prosperous.

The laptop crowd is glibly saying that wind and solar energy are the least expensive forms of new power generation, conveniently ignoring that neither wind nor solar can provide a reliable base load for power generation. They also conveniently ignore that those energy sources would not exist without expensive, unreliable batteries produced with minerals mined in unstable countries that our national enemies are actively infiltrating. If you think a gas pipeline brings out the professional protestors, wait until we try to permit new mineral mines in the US!

North Carolina’s energy policy must provide us with a complete framework of options that promote our efforts at economic diversity, prosperity, and security. It must support an expanding, prosperous middle class and bolster the largest sector of NC’s economy – farming and agribusinesses. If our state’s energy policy does not reflect the needs of the rural agriculture and agribusiness economy, we hamstring the economic future of half of North Carolina. We don’t hamstring the “laptop” crowd. They will do just fine.