Issues
Energy
No single element is as far reaching in our lives as energy and the way we use it. It affects our personal lives, our economy, our county, and our planet. The impact of our energy policy on the planet's environment cannot be overstated. Read the Rockford Register Star Opinion
The Problem: To date, the administration and our representative have blindly followed a failed policy addiction to oil, inaction, and a tax strategy that can only be entitled "Leave No Oil Executive Left Behind". Our fuel prices are spiraling out of control. Our foreign policy is driven entirely by our need for foreign sources, corporate greed run amok, and there are no plans for change in the future. Our current representative simply says "drill more, burn more". While our planet's climate struggles under the weight of uncontrolled carbon emissions.
The Solution: Solving the energy problem takes a comprehensive approach that goes beyond the big oil companies. We have the technology and systems available to do this today. It is a matter of policy and implementation to secure our future. We must no longer be giving tax benefits, give aways, and corporate welfare to big oil companies that have simply worked to create oligopolies within our energy market place, instead of reinvesting in refining and new sources of energy.
Read more on Bob's Earth Day Message which describes some of the overall policy.
One of the most important aspects is to recognize that our future depends on energy sources that are cheap, plentiful, reliable, safe, and clean. Here in Illinois, we have had a long history of using nuclear power, which now generates some 85% of our electricity. Nationally, nuclear energy supplies roughly 20% of our electricity. Hydro electric and the development of wind and solar must also be part of our plan. Ethanol and bio-diesel will be strategically important and must be developed further.
To this end, Bob proposes the creation of the American Power Authority, or APA for short. The APA is structured similar to the authorities that have built the great dams out west, and the Tennessee Valley Authority which fundamentally changed the infrastructure of the central east coast. The APA is a public-private partnership based on private investment of government securities to construct the next generation of American nuclear electric generation to power our homes, factories, high speed rail, and augment the fueling of our cars and trucks. The goal is to double our current inventory by building one hundred new 1,500 MWe units (similar in scale to the 2 units at Byron Station).
The capital requirement of the plan is far less than 1 month of the cost of the Iraq war on an annualized basis of a 40 year plant life. The plants themselves will have 60-80 year operational lives as we are experiencing today. And because these plants produce a useful product to our economy (electricity and fresh water), their finance is covered by the sale of the power and water.
The APA will also establish the necessary infrastructure for recycling spent reactor fuel as now done in many other countries around the world. These recycling operations will provide an answer for completing the fuel cycle in both new and existing reactors, and recovering the extremely valuable fuel components now being warehoused.
In addition, the APA will foster the development of these other fuel types such wind and solar. This plan will create the necessary diversity in the market place so that one oil company, or one country, cannot command the security of our country and our economy.
Cars and trucks in our country consume a huge fraction of our oil demand. As we move to the hybrid platforms, our cars will be more efficient, cheaper to operate, more fun to drive (Bob loves sports cars and big trucks), but most importantly, they can take energy from the electric grid as well as from gasoline, diesel fuel, and ethanol. Picking up the first 35 miles from non-emitting, green, nuclear generated electicity (at $0.70 / gallon-equivalent) is critical to eliminating the need for foreign supplies of oil and protecting the environment. Today's hybrid platform can do this with only a minor modification of their systems.
Bio-fuels, principally ethanol and diesel fuel are also critical to the plan. While there are certainly concerns about price pressures in the food chain, water supply issues, and other issues when using corn as a feed stock, we must develop these fuels to create market place diversity and decouple foreign policy pressures. Using corn has the advantage of helping to jump start the bio fuel infrastructure, while we develop other feed stocks.
Of course we need to address both the near term issues as well as the long term outlook. Putting this plan in place provides immediate relief on energy prices because oil is priced speculatively in the market place. The moment the policy is enacted, world oil prices will collapse below 1992 levels because the medium and long term outlook for US oil demand collapses as this plan moves forward.
In the end it's about helping families afford their energy, getting US manufacturing back in business, creating real national security, protecting the environment, and most importantly, putting America First.
