Issue Position: Energy

Issue Position

America needs America's energy: modern nuclear power and advanced oil and gas drilling

Modern nuclear power

Senator Barbara Boxer wants to impose a massive energy tax through her cap-and-trade scheme that will increase the cost of fuel and electricity, costing each American family from $1,700 to $2,000 more per year. This will result in more U.S. jobs being shipped to China.

Rather than put more Americans out of work in service of a global issue, we should seek to grow our economy AND reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging the development of modern nuclear power. Nuclear power produces energy with total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions equal to 20g of CO2 per kWh. This is less lifecycle emissions than solar or wind and 55 times less than coal, from which we get half of our electricity in America.

Greater energy generation from nuclear power will also allow us to economically and reliably electrify portions of our transportation sector as well as prevent the burning of additional natural gas to make electricity -- with the extra benefit of reducing our reliance on imported foreign oil through more electric and natural gas-powered vehicles.

The choice is clear: increase nuclear power to reduce emissions and keep energy affordable; or regulate our economy to a standstill, throwing more Americans out of work while doing little to actually address global warming.

Advanced oil and gas drilling

America has tremendous reserves of energy, but many environmental policies serve to lock our energy up and prevent our using it, making us dangerously dependent on other nations for oil and gas.

Take California, for instance. California produces about 40 percent of the oil it consumes, making California the third biggest oil producing state in America. But environmental restrictions, many of which make no sense in the larger strategic context, have prevented America from accessing the more than 9 billion barrels of oil that we know about off of California's coast. This oil includes at least 1 billion barrels of oil in California's territorial waters, those within 3 miles of the shore. This oil can be extracted with modern slant drilling techniques that require no new offshore platforms or manmade islands. With slant drilling, new wells can be sunk a mile or two inland from the coast in areas chosen for minimal environmental impact.

Further, since for the foreseeable future, America will burn oil and use oil for a multitude of products, it makes sense to produce more of our own oil, rather than pay other nations to ship the oil we need in supertankers from the other side of the planet, spewing pollution and greenhouse gases for the entire trip. Plus, America has the strictest environmental rules and the best labor safety laws in the world -- it makes far more sense to get at our own oil since oil extraction in other nations is done under more lax rules than in America.

Lastly, every dollar of oil we pump for ourselves is another dollar available for domestic investment -- and, potentially, another dollar kept out of the hands of petro-dictatorships or petro-terrorism.

As a lawmaker, Chuck DeVore authored the bill that would have opened up California's first new offshore oil lease in 40 years. His bill passed the State Senate, but stalled in the Assembly when radical environmentalists worked to kill it. That one new lease would have generated $1.8 billion in new oil royalty revenues for cash strapped California while creating 450 new high-paying jobs.

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