Green energy – folly or the future?
Former White House energy adviser, Mark Mills, addressed at a packed lunch meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, at an event attended by key state policy makers and members of the public.
Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, talked about some of the implications of the rush to renewable energy. In order to meet net zero carbon dioxide emissions targets, Mark Mills outlined the scale of infrastructure construction that would be required.
“Mark Mills has an encyclopaedic knowledge about energy policy. He laid out some of the hard facts about what it would take to ditch our dependence on oil and gas.” said Douglas Carswell of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
“Mark Mills warned about making the same mistake that Germany has made. Over there, politicians rushed into renewable energy, and in doing so pushed up the cost of energy. This has now priced German industry out of the world market” Carswell added.
“If Mississippi wants to keep on attracting more industry, we need to ensure that we continue to have a plentiful supply of affordable energy”.
“Transitioning to renewables might sound like a bright idea in Washington DC” Carswell added. “Mark Mills showed that unless the federal government can change the laws of physics it is just not realistic. America would need to install thousands of new giant wind turbines each week, cover a vast area in solar panels and build dozens of new nuclear plants each year.”
“Politicians might talk glibly about moving to electric vehicles” he added. “Mark Mills pointed out that we would need hundreds of new charging stations, each one requiring the same amount of electricity as a steel mill. The capacity and infrastructure simply won’t be there to achieve this rush to renewables”.
The event was hosted jointly by Bigger Pie Forum and the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. Several members of the state legislature and Public Service Commissioners attended and asked questions.
To watch Mark Mills, talk online, click here:
