U.S. Needs to Blow Down High Energy Costs with Wind-Fueled Policy

Given rising natural gas and oil prices, the United States needs a national energy policy that would require a mix of power sources, with a certain percentage coming from renewable energy, said Michael Polsky, ’87, an alternative power industry leader and president and CEO of Invenergy, an energy investment firm.

“I think higher prices right now are a direct result of us having no policy,” Polsky told the student-led Energy Group November 9 at the Hyde Park Center.

Even if the United States produced 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources like wind, it would have a huge effect on the market because as demand for natural gas and oil dropped, so would the cost, he said.

Polsky said the United States is one of the only industrialized countries that lacks policy to promote conservation or the use of alternative energies. As monopolies, utility companies are unlikely to change to renewable energy because they cannot charge a mark-up on it, Polsky said.

While the Bush administration says energy costs are cyclical and market forces should be relied on to keep costs in line, the market receives no clear signals without a policy in place, Polsky said. In the energy field, it can takes decades for a change to have an effect, Polsky said.

Last year’s National Energy Act “does absolutely nothing” toward creating an energy policy, aside from providing unneeded windfalls to oil, gas, and electric utilities, Polsky said. “It’s a pretty sad story,” he said.

—Mary Sue Penn