Opinion Pieces

This story originally appeared in the Washington Times.

Experts predict that it will cost American families more money to heat their homes this winter than any time in the last 15 years. Since his inauguration, President Biden’s war on domestic energy has been a key driver of the inflation that’s still sending shockwaves across our economy.

In the past twelve months, over a third of American households reported having to forego basic expenses to pay their utility bills. No matter your policy positions, this is a sad state of affairs and clearly unsustainable.

Meanwhile, the administration’s efforts to combat this crisis seem limited to finger-pointing and knee-bending: the president has spent the bulk of his term either blaming U.S. energy producers or groveling before the world’s dictators in hopes that they might increase production.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. America is an incredibly energy-rich nation. In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States has enough dry natural gas alone to last nearly 100 years.

When we unleashed the power of American energy under the previous administration, the United States didn’t just become energy independent – we became energy dominant.

But on his first week in office, President Biden erased virtually all that progress by signing executive orders that crippled our domestic production and made us more reliant on foreign oil. The White House is currently sitting on over 4,800 drilling applications which, once authorized, would take concrete steps to bolster our domestic energy supply.

In the near-term, Congress must work to expedite these approvals and end the regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production. With our energy consumption slated to continue to rise over the next thirty years, we must also continue to invest in nuclear, which we are doing in Georgia’s 12^th Congressional District.

Georgia’s 12^th Congressional District is leading the nation’s nuclear future. The first two new reactors to be built in three decades are currently under construction at Plant Vogtle. They are expected to come online this year, and once they do, these reactors will supply enough safe, reliable energy to power a million homes and businesses across the Peach State.

Most people are unaware that, since 1990, nuclear power has generated roughly one-fifth of the electricity we use every day. This is largely due to the efficiency of nuclear fission compared to other energy sources.

Nuclear energy production is nearly twice as reliable as coal or natural gas, and almost three times more reliable than renewables like wind and solar, thanks to its outstanding capacity factor.

Moreover, nuclear power remains the nation’s largest source of carbon-free electricity, since nuclear reactors do not emit greenhouse gases.

In 2021, America’s commercial nuclear reactors kept our air clean by avoiding 476 million metric tons of carbon emissions, while still producing 778 billion kilowatt hours of electricity – enough to power over 70 million homes.

In decades past, Americans looked to the future with hopes that abundant, low-cost energy would help create a healthier, more thriving society. If anything, the economic and national security woes we have experienced over the past two years are proof that outsourcing our energy needs will never be a viable solution.

Instead, we must embrace an all-of-the-above approach: one that does not sideline U.S. oil and gas producers in favor of renewables only, but one that incorporates the full breadth of our productive capacity. That starts with embracing nuclear energy.