Energy Policy Needed to Be Free Market Based

As long as the ideology of progressive socialism is main stream for energy, renewables, wind, solar and biofuel, among the elected leadership, the free market will have no place at the energy table of ideas for future energy expansion and development, especially for fossil energy which includes natural gas, oil or coal which produces more then 40% of our energy needs and growing at better then 8% per year.

Energy politics among the progressives is about control of comes that will produce the desired results of limited options for progress and therefore prosperity. A prosperous individual that has choses will not be easily controlled by government demands.

Needed: Free-Market State-Based Energy Policy
Source: Nicolas Loris, "Seven Objectives for Effective and Productive Energy Legislation in 2015," Heritage Foundation, May 21, 2015.

July 2, 2015

Members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives are calling for a comprehensive energy bill in 2015. If past is prologue, however, such wide-ranging energy bills do much more economic harm than good. For instance, the last two major energy bills signed into law by President George W. Bush, while including some seemingly pro-market titles, contained policies that restrict consumer choice, mandate production of ethanol, and pick winners and losers by subsidizing politically preferred energy technologies.

Congress should operate from the basic principle that free markets work efficiently and that any new legislation should get government out of the way of the market and innovation.

Objectives for Energy Legislation in 2015 should: Open access to domestic resources. Allow access to freely traded energy sources. Eliminate and block burdensome regulations. Eliminate handouts and workforce-training programs. Remove government-forced efficiency and renewable-fuel mandates. Streamline, not subsidize, energy-infrastructure projects. Return power to the states and the people.

Congress should recognize that free energy markets work and should enact legislative reforms to achieve those seven objectives that make the U.S. energy economy freer and more competitive — to the benefit of all Americans.