We must meet basic needs

Supervisor Jim Desmond

5th District

Water, food, shelter, these are basic needs for people to live. But in the modern world, there’s a fourth item for that list – electrical power. Technology runs almost everything, and most technology requires power. Medical devices, communication devices and connection to the rest of the world, have become reliant on power. Thanks to amazing technological advancements, some vehicles no longer need gasoline, but they still need electricity.

But, we now face the reality that supply of electricity is not keeping up with demand, for a variety of reasons. Power outages like we have not seen in the past are expected, and moving forward into the future, until supply can meet and exceed the increasing demand. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has warned that two-thirds of the U.S. could experience blackouts this summer.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a piece titled, “America’s New Energy Crisis,” in which it outlined how we’ve gotten into this situation. One part stood out to me from the article,

‘As U.S. power supplies tighten, developers are struggling to build these projects quickly enough to offset closures of older plants, in part because of supply-chain snarls. Another reason: It takes longer to approve their connections to the existing electricity grid. Such new requests neared 3,500 last year compared with roughly 1,000. Typical time needed to complete technical studies needed for that grid approval is now more than three years, up from less than two in 2015.’

I’m all in favor of green energy, but we must do it while balancing our future needs with our current needs. I’m going to try and work with our state officials to speed up the approval time and keep some of our older technologies online until they are no longer needed.

A crisis is brewing as electricity rates skyrocket and power outages are on the horizon, we must do something quickly.