WHAT IF... America's Energy Renaissance Never Actually Happened?
October 3, 2016
From Institute for 21st Century Energy
Sitting here in late September 2016, it’s pretty difficult to imagine what the U.S. would look like if the staggering energy renaissance of the last decade had never occurred. It’s almost like trying to imagine what if Donald Trump had stuck to real estate or if Lebron never returned to Cleveland. All of these actualities are now so ingrained in our lives, we take them for granted as almost inevitable. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Yet there are plenty of politicians, anti-energy activists, and other misguided voices who would like to pull the plug on our energy renaissance. Thus, as part of our Energy Accountability Series, we felt it important to examine with facts and figures just how different our lives would be if the energy renaissance had never actually happened.
The simple result of our analysis is pretty clear: we’d be in a world of hurt. The U.S. would be short 4.3 million jobs and over half-a-trillion dollars in annual GDP. Perhaps of more concern to most Americans, electricity prices would be 31% higher and we’d all be paying 43% more at the pump. Carbon dioxide emissions would be 23% higher and we’d be importing 160% more oil.
America is currently in the midst of a tremendous manufacturing build-out. From Texas to Ohio to Pennsylvania to Louisiana, we’re seeing new manufacturing investment being made to take advantage of energy supplies that are cheaper and more abundant that almost any other place in the world. Yet had the energy renaissance never happened, U.S. industry would be paying twice as much for natural gas price, its output would be some $50 billion lower, and almost 400,000 jobs would be lost. And that’s just the industrial sector.
Our analysis also found some states would be especially drubbed absent the renaissance....
Read more at Institute for 21st Century Energy.
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