The recent Democratic National Convention had something for everyone — emotional examples of patriotism, and bold leadership from lawmakers and everyday citizens — and it all culminated in the historic presidential nomination of a woman by a major party for the first time in our nation’s history.
But the cameras didn’t capture the emerging consensus around an energy policy — grounded in facts, not rhetoric — that includes natural gas as critical to our nation’s clean energy future. To be sure, consensus isn’t as headline-grabbing as the latest surprises from the campaign trail — or nonsensical activists supergluing themselves to pipelines — but it deserves recognition nonetheless.
What we saw and heard at the convention from the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, to the policy laid out in the Democratic platform was that the Democratic Party not only stands ready to combat climate change but it stands ready to do so in a way that makes sense, and that is realistic and responsible. This includes accepting that natural gas is part of the clean energy equation.
Vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine has said that America has advanced leaps and bounds in cutting greenhouse gases “because of innovations in the natural gas area.” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy herself observed that natural gas has been “a game changer with our ability to really move forward with pollution reductions.”
The consensus emerging around expansion of natural gas is crucial as we strive to reach the ambitious climate goals set forth in the Clean Power Plan by 2030. The Clean Power Plan pushes us to reduce greenhouse gases by 32 percent, and Hillary Clinton would push us even further, if elected, having pledged to reduce such emissions by 50 percent by 2030.
I applaud the aggressive goals and the resolve to tackle the threat of climate change. That said, we are on the clock right now. States are under pressure to begin cutting carbon emissions today but they must also address the 14 percent projected demand increase in 2030. This is compounded by the fact that many states must already fill the energy gap left by the planned closure of higher carbon power plants and nuclear facilities. It doesn’t take a statistician to realize that more demand and less supply is a huge issue we need to get ahead of, responsibly.
The Clean Power Progress Campaign projects that if we don’t get practical and make natural gas infrastructure a priority, the United States faces at least a 21 percent power deficit in 2030 that threatens to put a fifth of our nation literally in the dark. To illustrate the impracticality of using only renewables to address the shortage, to alleviate the energy shortfall with solar energy, we would need over 3.8 million acres of solar panels — an area three times the size of the Grand Canyon — to fill the energy gap.
While some climate activists have been vocal in demanding that we “keep it in the ground” and have zero tolerance for anything but renewable energy sources, this doesn’t reflect our current reality or sound policy. President Obama’s top science adviser, John Holdren, said such an extreme position was “unrealistic,” adding that “natural gas is a very helpful bridge to a cleaner emissions future.”
In addition to natural gas and nuclear, I support the use of renewables like wind, solar and hydro as clean energy sources — and as the leader of an international trade union, we work throughout the energy sector on every type of infrastructure project. However, renewables aren’t capable of shouldering the full burden of our energy needs right now.
Progress on our clean energy future is too critical an issue to be dictated by the simplest or most sound-bite-ready solutions. Environmentalists, energy advocates, laborers and policymakers — all of us — must come together and coalesce around a realistic, fact-based energy policy — one that includes natural gas — if we are ever going to achieve a cleaner energy future.
