Renewing America’s Energy

Renewing America’s Energy

Dropping gas prices, hills covered in rows of wind turbines, panels that flash the dessert with glare from the sun, and newly formed boomtowns that have doubled their population in four years. While this may seem like a foreign nation sometime in the future, this is the US in the present day. The story behind the success is the result of a basic economics principle: when a producer begins to make a higher profit on his product, more producers join this industry. This has been the case in the US energy sector for the past four years. The recent growth in international demand has caused the price of energy to increase in all major segments: oil, gas, and renewable. This price rise has given US companies the incentive to produce more domestic energy, as opposed to the past thirty years when low energy prices caused companies to lower production and operate offshore. Going forward, a higher level of energy output will be beneficial to our economy, but to continue successful growth in the long-term we must invest our resources in renewables.

In less than a decade, the US has gone from a nation turning its back on domestic energy, to one that is rapidly growing its energy production. After years of declining, oil output in 2008 fell to 4.9 million barrels per day (mbpd). Four year later in December of 2012, production had increased to 6.5 mbpd. As Tennille Tracy of The Wall Street Journal points out, “The last time monthly U.S. production reached 6.5 million barrels a day was January 1998.” and that “The statistics reflect the growing role of the U.S. as a dominant energy producer” (Tracy, Tennille, WSJ). The story is similar with natural gas as it is with oil. Since production had leveled off in 2006 at 23.5 million cubic feet (mcf), natural gas withdrawals have increased annually; 2008 production totaled 25.6 mcf while 2011 set a new record when production rose to 28.6 mcf (eia.org). Due to recent government programs, natural gas isn’t...