Energy Supply
Even as early as ninth grade, it was clear to me that coal was a poor choice for energy. I gave a speech on the topic back then, and the basic logic still holds. If you drive down I-75 past the Ford Rouge complex and continue on to the coal-fired power plant in Monroe, the scale of pollution is obvious. These facilities release enormous amounts of waste into the air. By contrast, the nearby nuclear plant emits little more than steam. Regardless of one’s views on climate change, it should be self-evident that filling the air we all breathe with pollutants is not a rational approach to producing electricity.
Energy mix matters as much as energy type. Spain, for example, produces roughly equal shares of its electricity from wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, and fossil fuels. That balance provides resilience: if one source underperforms, others can compensate. The United States, by comparison, relies heavily on fossil fuels, with a much smaller share split between nuclear and renewables. This not only keeps us dependent on dirtier energy, it also concentrates economic and political power in a single industry. A diversified system reduces both environmental harm and systemic risk.
There is also a national security dimension. Energy infrastructure is one of the first targets in any serious conflict. Large, centralized facilities—whether coal or nuclear—are inherently vulnerable because disabling one plant can affect an entire region. Renewable energy, by contrast, is highly distributed. Rooftop solar, local wind, and community-scale generation are far harder to cripple all at once. Personal systems add another layer of resilience: a home equipped with solar and storage can continue to function even when the broader grid fails, including powering vehicles and essential services.
Concerns about grid reliability are often raised in response to renewables, but recent international examples point to infrastructure and grid management issues rather than renewable energy itself. The U.S. power grid is aging and overdue for modernization. Major outages in 2003 and again in 2021 highlighted these weaknesses, and increasing natural disasters are only amplifying the problem. Modern “smart grid” technologies allow energy to flow from many distributed sources while quickly isolating faults so small problems do not cascade into large failures.
A cleaner, more balanced, and more distributed energy system is not just an environmental preference—it is a practical strategy for public health, economic stability, and national security.