Clean Energy Is the Solution
The following Op-Ed was published in numerous Indiana newspapers in early June. The author, Rahul Durai, is a rising junior high school student in West Lafayette and is one of the directors of Confront the Climate Crisis.
In a letter-to-the-editor published in a number of papers across our state earlier this month, Indiana Chamber of Commerce CEO Kevin Brinegar partly blames the clean energy transition for higher gas prices. According to Mr. Brinegar, “[Green energy] initiatives have directed suppliers to go the renewable energy route at the expense of petroleum production…this has driven up prices at the pump and for anything related to oil.”
As a 16-year-old Hoosier and climate advocate who cares about my generation’s future as well as the future of this planet, I find such attempts to implicate the clean energy transition quite appalling.
At a recent Earth Charter Indiana Climate Camp students toured a local solar farm.
The record-high gas prices Americans are facing can be a complicated issue to wrap one’s head around. However, it’s quite evident, upon looking deeper, that this is a basic supply and demand situation on a global scale.
The demand for gasoline is skyrocketing as people around the world are rapidly returning to work from the pandemic, most recently in China. On the supply side, numerous nations have implemented sanctions on Russia for its unprovoked war in Ukraine, causing global markets to lose Russian oil. Additionally, oil executives are choosing to limit drilling and keep supply low to prioritize delivering capital to their shareholders after unprecedented losses were incurred during the pandemic when most people were not buying gas.
Despite the evidence that the clean energy transition is not responsible for the record-high gas prices, lobbyists associated with the fossil fuel industry are trying to turn clean energy into a bogeyman. Because I have immersed myself in energy and environmental legislative matters at the Indiana Statehouse, I am all too familiar with the fossil fuel industry’s strategy of using the clean energy transition to provoke unnecessary fear.
As the public image of the fossil fuel industry continues to decay, coal lobbyists are attempting to give a facelift to their industry by rebranding themselves as advocates for “reliable” sources of energy rather than advocates for coal companies—”reliable” being code for fossil fuels. The most notable example is Reliable Energy Inc., a group of lobbyists trying to revive the coal industry under the guise of the buzzword “reliability”. Their strategy is focused on manufacturing fear among legislators that more wind and solar means more blackouts. This ignores the fact that research—conducted by scientific experts in grid reliability—has shown that blackouts can be entirely prevented under a grid powered by wind, solar, and hydropower. Sadly, science has also shown that the true threats to grid reliability, specifically in Indiana, are rapid increases in extreme heat and other forms of extreme weather—threats that are being caused by the climate change effects of fossil fuel emissions.
Fortunately, despite the unfounded attacks on clean energy from fossil fuel lobbyists, Indiana and the rest of our country are headed in the right direction, albeit at a slow-to-moderate pace. All five of Indiana’s investor-owned electric utilities are adding wind and solar to their energy portfolios at varying rates, with NIPSCO in the lead. In the 2022 Legislative Session, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law to incentivize the passage of county ordinances that are friendly to wind and solar development as well as a law to protect the property rights of homeowners who want to own solar panels. Laws like this are the type of legislation that are driving Indiana’s energy landscape forward by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and creating countless well-paying job opportunities for Hoosiers.
Regarding the current gas price crisis, the true long-term solution to tame gas prices lies in minimizing our dependence on fossil fuels. Remember: It is the oil executives that are choosing to limit gas supply and thereby keep prices high. To move past this crisis, it is time to embrace cleaner, newer modes of transportation rather than staying entrenched in older, increasingly expensive ways of doing business as usual. Specifically, that means speeding up the transition to electric vehicles and the development of new electric vehicle charging infrastructure and transmission lines. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a recent statement addressing inflation, “The war [in Ukraine] has again underscored the importance of energy security. Accelerating the green energy transition would both improve energy security and help lower carbon emissions.”
Indiana and our country are undergoing immense progress in the energy space, but we still have a long way to go to stop climate change and fully reap the economic benefits of clean energy development. For this reason, I hope that the uninformed attacks on clean energy come to a halt.
