EDITORIAL: Energy needs require all-of-the-above solution

During an appearance on CNN last week, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said her clean renewable energy plan would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Mrs. Clinton rightfully took flak for her comments and just a day later backpedaled, saying in a statement that “coal will remain a part of the energy mix for years to come.”

Mixed messages aside, Mrs. Clinton is right about one thing: coal — along with oil, natural gas and nuclear energy — is a vital part of a clean, affordable and convenient energy mix. The fossil fuel and nuclear power industries have taken it upon themselves to institute better safety and environmental standards, providing Americans with convenient, reliable and affordable energy. Despite these advances, however, this era of environmental hysteria has seen the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries become unfair targets of propaganda, politics and misinformation.

Despite being attacked for decades by environmentalists, nuclear power generates roughly 60 percent of the nation’s zero-carbon electricity. As the American Interest points out in a recent article, nuclear power plants can also supply power 24/7, unlike wind and solar energy, which suffer from intermittent production issues.

The American Interest also noted that while the public is justifiably spooked by memories of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, all energy sources — including so-called safe renewables — carry hazards, and the dangers associated with nuclear can be mitigated. According to the Department of Energy, researchers are currently working to replace America’s aging nuclear reactors with safer, smaller and cheaper technologies, which promise “increased flexibility and the ability to match electricity generation with demand.”

On another energy front, the oil and natural gas industries have already put in place steps to drastically reduce extraneous methane emissions at well sites. However, as Katie Brown reported for Energy In Depth, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out new methane emissions restrictions this month on all of the nations’s oil and gas wells, in order to “combat climate change.”

Coincidentally, the move came one day before scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a contradictory study that found oil and natural gas producers are not, in fact, the cause of global increases in methane emissions, but rather increased emissions from wetlands and agriculture are to blame. While the NOAA study says there has been a significant increase in fracking and other “unconventional” energy production methods, it says those methods have resulted in a negligible (at best) increase in global methane levels.

Government regulation of the energy industry cannot be controlled by environmental alarmists. It’s time to dial down completely unnecessary regulations and get behind a truly all-of-the-above energy policy, which must include nuclear, oil, natural gas and yes, those coal miners Mrs. Clinton dismissed. America can’t rely on a pantheon of renewable energy sources that will never be viable without massive government subsidies.