By:  Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President

Making America "Green" is a very high priority these days.  In his speech to Congress, President Obama highlighted the three things on his list, which in his words “are absolutely critical to our economic future.”  Energy was number one, receiving the President’s attention.

In his speech, President Obama sought to inspire and motivate America to move forward in harnessing the power of clean, renewable energy.  He also presented a goal of doubling the nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years.

Accomplishing this desired result will be made possible, in President Obama’s point of view, through the investments being plowed into research funding. 

The President also covered the need for increasing infrastructure components including putting thousands of miles of power lines into service.

As we have written on a number of occasions, expanding alternative energy is a worthy pursuit. There is also reason for public involvement in assisting to finance portions of the establishment of infrastructure which benefits the general public.

Of concern in moving forward is the notion included in the President’s comments when he said “…we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”

The bottom-line to this “market-orientation” is that alternative energy doesn’t fit into the category of the “least costly” or “most affordable” source for energy.  Just getting to a level of even would be a major accomplishment.

The way President Obama (and others who are strong champions of government inserting itself in this fashion) hope to make “clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy” is requiring Big Brother to tweak the system in order to drive traditional energy sources into being the “unprofitable kind of energy”.

There’s probably some economic principle which itemizes the efficiency of pressing the accelerator for a stronger economy while standing on the brake of affordable inputs.  Using federal authority to increase energy costs for citizens doesn’t seem to be the best game plan for helping an ailing economy.

From our perspective, building opportunities for alternative energy should be based on the merits of benefits realized from the nature of renewable, alternative energy – not on the rubble of tearing down existing energy technologies that are plentiful as well as affordable.