Conservative panel examines NH energy policy
What is driving the price of energy costs? That was the question of the evening at Pipe Dream Brewery on Thursday night at a “Pints and Policy” event hosted by Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire.
LONDONDERRY, N.H. – What is driving the price of energy costs? That was the question of the evening at Pipe Dream Brewery on Thursday night at a “Pints and Policy” event hosted by Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire.
Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire State Director Greg Moore led a panel including New Hampshire House of Representatives Science, Technology and Energy Chairman Michael Vose (R-Epping), Vice Chairman Doug Thomas (R-Londonderry) and Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy Director Drew Cline.
At the root of their discussion, all of the panelists agreed that government intervention was the key driver of higher energy prices, attacking Biden administration policies on fossil fuel exploration and extraction as well as what they saw as hypocrisy from environmental activists regarding carbon emissions and overregulation in areas such as lithium mining in Maine.
The trio indicated that concerns about coal usage among environmental activists served as a red herring given that only one percent of New Hampshire’s energy currently comes from coal most of the time. Instead, they believed that the focus instead should be in two areas.
First, that natural gas should be the primary focus of New Hampshire’s energy policy, given that the U.S. has significant proven natural gas deposits. Second, they championed the concept of small nuclear reactors, a concept currently under development that advocates believe can be more cost-effective than traditional nuclear power plants but still requires new federal regulatory guidelines.
Cline in particular saw nuclear power as path forward for anyone concerned with carbon emissions, noting that the Seabook Nuclear Power Plant currently produces over half of New Hampshire’s energy without any carbon emissions. Cline saw this and opposition to expansion of Seabrook as a matter of hypocrisy on the part of environmentalists, with Thomas also seeing environmentalists as hypocritical in other areas.
“They want to save the whales as long as they don’t get in the way of building their offshore turbines, in that case, so long whales,” said Thomas.
The trio also criticized what they saw as the ineffectiveness and inconsistency of wind and solar power and also criticized the effectiveness of energy efficiency efforts on power costs, citing a concept called Jevon’s paradox, where more efficient resource use actually creates more demand for that resource, leading to comparable usage of the resource.
Thomas said that while the Earth’s climate is changing and it can be controlled by humans, a mixture of energy sources is more effective than relying on just solar or wind.
Vose said that the solution to New Hampshire and America’s energy policy must be a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach, with Thomas asking for more support regarding testimony in Concord, where their committee often sees testimony from environmental activists outnumber their opponents from a ratio of 6:1 to 10:1.
“We will keep on telling the truth and hope the message gets out,” said Vose.
