America needs a crash-course program designed to drive down the cost of the average kilowatt hour, and there’s only one practical way to do that.
So far, the pollsters attempting to take the temperature of New Jersey’s electorate ahead of November’s off-year elections have tended to keep their questions about the issues on which voters are focused vague and generic. New Jerseyans are asked for their thoughts on “taxes” — but are we talking about sales taxes, local or state income taxes, or property taxes? They get to weigh in on “crime and safety,” a concept that contains multitudes. And, of course, there’s the “cost of living and affordability.” If, however, we’re talking about the entire universe of both discretionary consumer goods and essentials that contribute to individual fulfillment, the politicians who take their cues from these surveys can be as vague as the question wording when addressing them.
Writing in the New York Post today, Bethany Mandel helpfully drilled down on a specific feature of the “cost of living and affordability” in New Jersey, put her finger on a scandal simmering just beneath the surface of the state’s otherwise placid politics: the cost of energy.
The one-time New Jersey resident tapped into her Garden State network and apparently found widespread sticker shock among the locals. And as a Garden State resident myself, allow me to contribute my own experience to the mix in the form of a June bill that came in about three times higher than any previous “actual” meter read.
Fortunately, no one is confused as to what is driving the additional cost of energy: the increased demand for power from the data centers contributing to our AI-dominated future and the decreased supply that has been the result of America’s decades-long push to replace fossil fuel-generated power with renewables.
“They took generation off before they brought generation on,” one energy expert told Mandel in reference to the coal-fired and nuclear power plants that were mothballed during Governor Phil Murphy’s tenure. “These higher prices are the result of a loss in electricity supply caused primarily by decarbonization policies that have led to an uptick in generator retirements,” another energy sector analyst recently observed.
New Jersey power consumers have seen their electricity bills spike by up to 20 percent this summer — a rapid increase that residents are complaining about to anyone willing to listen. That audience does not appear to include much of the mainstream press. The griping has been limited mostly to letters to the editor, drive-time radio-show callers, and conservative op-ed pages.
Not that Murphy has been deaf to their appeals. This summer, the governor committed his state to an “investigation” into the state’s power problems. The state is also pressuring power companies to defer rate hikes into the fall, when usage declines should help mask the new, higher baseline rates, as well as to provide consumers with paltry “rebates” to offset costs.
“The policymakers pushed the policies, but didn’t build the safety net, or the replacement energy sources, first. Instead, families face a double squeeze,” Mandel wrote. “Their bills are rising, and so are the taxes funding the very lawmakers who forced costs up.”
This is not just a New Jersey problem. The average cost of power nationwide is up about 6.5 percent from one year ago. In populous states like New York, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Connecticut, and, yes, New Jersey, rates are up by double digits, with much of that increase coming online in the summer months.
Fixing the problem is, however, not as simple as turning all those old fossil fuel power plants back on. “Nearly half of the country’s coal-fired power plants have already retired due to being too expensive to run,” the National Resource Defense Council warned, noting that the cost associated with repairing these aged facilities can exceed expected returns. And yet, “building new plants is costly as well.”
Yes, well, everything has a cost. And the cost to power consumers is absorbing capital that they could otherwise devote to more productive and satisfying pursuits. As it stands, that money is being drained by a sector that is now compelled to conceal its operational costs. This is all far less efficient than investing capital in new sources of energy to meet America’s growing demand — demand that shows no sign of lagging anytime soon.
In New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has made the rising cost one of his campaign’s central themes. Republicans everywhere should follow his lead. America needs a crash-course program designed to drive down the cost of the average kilowatt hour, and there’s only one practical way to do that.
Republicans have a political advantage here if they are inclined to exploit it. Unbeholden to the pressure groups that have shackled Democrats, the GOP could promote a vision of a future American energy mix that deemphasizes renewables in favor of nuclear, petroleum, and, yes, clean coal. To this, they would encounter predictable objections from the left. But while Democrats emphasize the abstract virtue of environmental protection, Republicans would present voters with a tangible plan to relieve the pressure on their wallets.
America needs more power, and the GOP should make that a priority. They might even find that voters will reward them for it.