Congressman Mike Bost (IL-12) wrote in The Southern Sunday about the importance of balancing renewable energy resources with the ones that benefit his congressional district:
Americans were told for decades that our nation is poor in energy resources. We were warned that scarcity would lead to a future of higher energy imports from unfriendly regimes and unstable regions, thereby putting our national and economic security at risk. And we were told those energy jobs were gone forever.
And then a curious thing happened.
After the United States began to develop more oil and natural gas wells, the price of oil, gasoline and natural gas fell. Where domestic oil and gas production was once in decline, new technologies have enabled producers to safely access significant quantities of these resources and increase production year-over-year.
The United States also possesses enough coal deposits to last us for more than a century. New technologies have been developed that make it possible to more efficiently produce energy from this coal with far fewer emissions of pollutants. Southern Illinois is uniquely positioned to benefit from this new energy bounty. In addition to significant coal resources, there are vast deposits of shale oil.
Unfortunately, there remains opposition by some to any production and use of fossil fuels, including coal. That is a big mistake…
Read the rest in The Southern
