Political Quotes

“When we deregulated our power industry in 1992, with the energy policy act, that was never presented as being an environmental bill, as far as I can remember. It was designed to encourage people to build cheaper power. And what did they build? The nuclear industry went from running 60 percent of the time to running 90 percent of the time. We started building a whole lot of wind and solar. We basically stopped building inefficient gas plants, and the only new gas plants were combined cycle plants that are almost twice as efficient. Since that bill was passed, the CO<INF>2</INF> emissions in our power sector have fallen from 1,300 pounds a megawatt hour to 900, and the price of power has fallen by 6 percent. Now, there are those who say that is because of the fracking revolution. And there are people who say a lot of things, I guess. It happened because economics drives clean energy. You know what people didn't build since 1992? Coal. It is a really lousy investment. In just those 10 years, after 1992, we built 200,000 megawatts of new gas turbine capacity. Twenty percent of the entire U.S. power grid, which was twice as efficient as what it displaced, was built in response to economic signals and drove down the CO<INF>2</INF> emissions of the grid. That is a start. For us to do what we have to do from this point going forward, we have to electrify everything.…”