Former New York Gov. George Pataki sees a new transmission grid as central to America's economic security, energy security, and national defense.
This country has an antiquated, out-of-date energy transmission system.
There’s no question. We need a high voltage transmission system across the United States that currently doesn’t exist.
Building a high voltage transmission system is an investment in America’s future.
You see investments like this throughout our country’s history. Back in Abraham Lincoln’s day, he advocated and saw the creation of the first transcontinental railroad, and we saw with Eisenhower the national highway building program. Both of these had profound positive economic consequences and national security consequences for our country.
Now we have a fragmented electric transmission system that is unreliable – we’ve seen blackouts – but equally as important, it doesn’t allow us to access the domestic sources of energy that are out there.
These resources have the potential to shape America’s energy future.
Wind power from the Great Plains, geothermal power from the Rocky Mountain states, solar power from the Southwest – these are tremendous resources that we should be utilizing. But you have to be able to get the power to the consumer. Having a national transmission system that is privately run and privately financed but with the support of the federal government on the permitting side would be an enormous step towards a stronger economic and national security country as well as a cleaner country.
Think of the dent it would make on our balance of trade.
When we have to import not just billions but hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign oil every year, the transfer of wealth is unprecedented in the history of the world. It hurts us from an economic standpoint. It hurts us as we develop job opportunities for our children and future generations. And it also makes us geopolitically vulnerable when enemies of the United States threaten to use oil as a political weapon. And certainly you don’t have to look any further than Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, which is a significant source of foreign oil to the United States, to understand that this is a person who despises the United States and everything we stand for and wouldn’t hesitate if he thought it could work to use that oil to hurt our country.
So it is certainly not just economically and environmentally intelligent but it is the patriotic and right thing to do from the national security standpoint to develop these policies that will allow us to achieve greater energy independence.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED, AND EDITED BY ERIC O’KEEFE