Green Elephant Line Media Backgrounder

Renewable Energy Standard: True Conservatives Diversify Their Assets

February 25, 2009

It has become clear over the past year that America has too many of its energy eggs in too few baskets. Overdependence on fossil fuels, especially oil, exposes our country to significant risks, including price spikes, pollution, uncertainties about security of supply, and the flow of dollars to unfriendly regimes overseas.

Energy is a critical set of assets that supports our economy and our way of life. As conservative investors know, diversification is a strategy for ensuring that assets deliver good value consistently.

A renewable energy standard provides for electric utilities to acquire an increasing share of energy resources from renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, or biomass. Congressman Todd Platts, a Pennsylvania Republican, is sponsoring legislation to ensure that 25 percent of America's electricity comes from renewable resources by 2025.

Renewable resources have several significant advantages as energy assets.

Manufacturing renewable energy technology and building power plants create family-wage jobs in both urban and rural parts of the country. Last year, for example, construction of wind plants and manufacturing wind energy equipment supported 35,000 jobs.

The fuel is free and abundantly available within U.S. borders, eliminating fuel price and security of supply risks.

Renewables emit little or no harmful pollution that requires expensive controls.

A national renewable energy standard will create economies of scale, reducing capital costs and creating a national market in tradable renewable energy "credits" that will give utilities more flexibility in raising renewables' share of our energy mix. A renewable energy standard is a market-driven approach that will encourage investment dollars to go to the most cost-effective renewable technologies.

Why Renewable Energy Development is Conservative
Renewable energy investments will help speed the economic recovery and develop new jobs and industries, which will foster long-term economic growth and keep America globally competitive. Renewable energy resources are clean and secure, yielding better protection of human health and the environment, and greater security for our nation.

As Congressman Platts noted in introducing his legislation: "Establishing a federal Renewable Electricity Standard will help to protect our environment as well as promote economic development and energy security."

Edmund Burke, the writer and statesman who was the founder of traditional conservatism, taught us that stewardship is a core conservative value. Expanding our use of renewable energy is fundamentally about being better stewards of our country - of its people, resources, and economy.