Electrical supply issues require realistic approach

Pennsylvania needs more energy production — including domestic natural gas.

According to a report on which PJM, which manages wholesale electricity for a multi-state grid, collaborated, estimates for what consumers will expect in coming years are expected to outpace the supply the grid will be capable of offering.

As a report by The Center Square in the June 7 edition of the Sun-Gazette noted, clean-energy requirements and efforts to increase the number of electric vehicles on the road would be two culprits if the shortfall cames to pass.

And as state Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Loyalsock Township, has repeatedly warned us and his constituents, the different trajectories of demand and supply have already brought our region too close to blackouts.

Alarmism about the environment will not change that.

Efforts to conflate the consensus about climate change and human activity contributing to it with any consensus over predictions and guesses about when and how severe the impact of climate change will be also will not change that.

Likewise, the shortfall on electrical power will not be curbed or avoided by cynical finger-pointing about whether realists about our society’s energy needs ever personally benefit from the gas and oil industries. In any case our argument for years has been that every business and property owner throughout the region has benefitted from the jobs created, impact fee money paid and additional domestic energy sold.

Recognizing that as a practical, pragmatic matter Pennsylvania needs to drill for and consume natural gas and oil does not mean — and has never meant — that our state shouldn’t alleviate roadblocks and impediments to solar and wind projects. But what it means as that, as those technologies continue to be developed and improved, Pennsylvania’s families and businesses need reliable energy.

And, despite the exaggerations and insinuations, for the immediate future that means robust gas and oil industries.