Editorial comment below...From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:
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Energy and Inflation
As December begins, Virginians have begun to experience cold winter weather once again. Lows so far have reached the teens in some areas and that means it’s time to crank up the heat in our homes to stay warm.
Unfortunately, for many, turning on the heat comes with extra costs these days. Due to energy policies enacted in the Obama years and continued during the Biden Administration, the cost of energy has been driven up. These increased energy costs have in turn been one of the major contributors to the high inflation we’ve experienced in the past few years.
Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee recently analyzed Consumer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey data and announced that, due to inflation, the typical American household must now spend an additional $11,434 annually in order to have the same standard of living as they had in January of 2021.
This is unacceptable! How many Americans have an extra $11,000 to spend the same items they normally buy?
Americans all around the country are feeling the burn from inflation.
According to an October AP/NORC poll, 69% say their household expenses have risen over the last year, but only 23% have seen their income increase during the same period.
And it makes sense why Americans are feeling this way. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), since President Biden took office, the consumer price index (cost of goods and services) is up 17.1% percent, meanwhile average hourly earnings are only up 13.6%.
Now Americans head into another season of high costs.
In early November, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released their winter fuel outlook for the 2023-24 season. And as predicted, things aren’t looking good.
According to the agency, southern states are projected to see their electricity bills increase by 2%, the cost of propane increase by 6%, and the price of heating oil increase by 8%. (Natural gas prices, thankfully, are projected to decrease by 15%.)
That’s not all, if winter is just 10% colder than predicted, these prices skyrocket.
With everyone’s margins already so thin, these increases will be painful for many.
But wait, there’s more. It was just announced that Virginia customers of Appalachia Power will see yet another cost increase. Virginia state regulators have just approved a rate hike of about 10%, or around $16 a month, which will take effect on January 29th. This is after the average Appalachian customer saw their monthly bill increase by $35 between July 2022 and July 2023.
Then there are gas prices. The Biden Administration is trying to tell Americans that the price of gas is in a good place. A recent tweet from President Biden reads, “Folks, no matter where you're headed this holiday season, you'll be heading there for less. Gas prices are down $1.70 from their peak...”
Unfortunately, these talking points don’t hold much water.
I’m sure many people remember how low gas prices were before President Biden took office. The national average in January 2021 was $2.39 per gallon. In some parts of the Ninth District, it was as low as $1.99 per gallon.
Gas prices being down $1.70 from their national peak of over $5 in June of 2022 is nothing to write home about! In November, the Ninth District experienced gas prices of around $3.20 per gallon – that’s more than a $1 more per gallon than before Biden took office.
Just another increased expense many can’t afford.
As I mentioned in a recent Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing, Americans of lower income will be hit the hardest this winter.
Folks in the Ninth District, and around the country, may be faced with the decision of heating their homes, affording their medications, and/or feeding their children.
Additionally, some folks may turn to alternate unsafe ways to heat their home, like a kerosene heater, which can turn deadly. This is an avoidable tragedy if we are able to find ways to keep energy prices down.
It’s time to get real about the inflation and the impact it is still having on Americans. We must work together to cut spending and enact commonsense energy and economic policies that will benefit everyone’s pocketbook.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"
[signed: Morgan Griffith]
It's a dang shame what the world's comin' to, for people like me and people like you...sing along...
There are people Out There who are going to use this Newsletter post as an excuse to try to sell us dangerous boondoggles that will not actually lower the cost of electricity, but may raise the burden on the Ninth District dramatically in other ways. Want to have the whole district, and parts of North Carolina and Kentucky, and the Illegitimate State, polluted by a nuclear plant accident? What about earthquakes, sinkholes, poisoned wells, and the possibility of flaming oil coming out of our showers, from fracking like those unfortunate guinea-pig people in Pennsylvania? Are we capable of learning anything from Pennsylvania's mistakes?
There are better solutions for the Ninth District.
We' got lots of barns and sheds with roofs. How many of those roofs face south or west? How many of those buildings really heat up in summer? If a house, room, or building is hard to cool down in summer, that's an indication that it could be better insulated with a few solar cells on top. That'd mean cooler summer afternoons and milder winter nights inside, even if the buildings are only potting sheds. Most of us should not be sending Appalachian Power money. APCo should be sending us money. For the surplus solar energy they can sell to the huddled masses in the Hump of Virginia. I've been in Washington on nights when PEPCo was inflicting "rolling blackouts" on people, allowing heaters to run for an hour and then stop for a half-hour, because the demand for electric heating was more than PEPCo could meet. We could be helping them out...total win-win!
Then there's the untapped potential of biomass. The sewer salesmen got to my town in time to load many of us down with an obsolete system, but God did not design us mammals to put out so much exhaust from the fuel we take in, just to pollute the rivers all the way down to New Orleans. What did New Orleans ever do to us, that we should be fouling their water this way? The stuff burns. What you take out of a modern toilet is carbonized to one stage short of what wretched Europeans pay to put in their furnaces as "brown coal." Build a big furnace, insulate it, vent it, filter it, and start a fire, and you can distill methane off raw sewage to heat a building or fuel a car. Solar batteries are a very cool way to run a car, but for backup, instead of gasoline, we could be burning methane. Buses really can "run on poop."
About thirty years ago a friend had the mad idea of taking three kittens to a children's party. The kittens were of different ages and sizes. The eldest one ran and hid. The middle one was a very cool little cat, a foster mother to the youngest kitten, and she actually liked riding in cars with us, so she and the youngest kitten went to the party. What a stress nightmare that must have been for kittens. Strangers, noise, bright lights, horrid smells and tempting smells, and an older cat who didn't really want to have cat visitors sulking in the hostess's closet. Children's hands everywhere. "I want to pet the little long-haired one! Here, Kitty, Kitty, have a bit of this..."
That middle-sized kitten was incredible. Any time the kittens started to get into trouble, I said her name, and she was right beside me. So, within seconds, was the baby kitten. So the worst thing that happened to them was that they both ate more than they needed of a lot of things they shouldn't really have eaten. On the way home, I forget which of us said first: "The one on your lap's not making any more of a mess, is it?" and which one said, "No, but it's got enough gas to run two Toyotas."
That was a slight exaggeration. Turns out that even a cow does not actually produce enough methane to run two Toyotas. But you really can get enough methane out of barn muck to run a farm truck. You can even give a modern toilet a rest and "flush" into a biomass burner to heat your house with what you do not really want to dump into the river for people in Tennessee to have to drink.
Yes, wood shavings are a way to start the fire...but biomass DOES NOT mean merely burning wood, and regulations should be written to ban that practice. Biomass is whatever animal or vegetable material you do not want seeping into the spring branch, where dead wood, dried-up grass, and windfall apples do no harm. Biomass is raw dung and carrion. The gas that makes roadkill look and smell so hideous is mostly methane. Burning biomass means getting some use out of that gas.
Think futuristic, Congressman Griffith! Picture crews scouring our scenic byways clean of roadkill because roadkill becomes valuable. Picture sewers needing to be filtered only for things like soapsuds and stray shopping carts, because raw sewage is being processed...by Metrobuses! Picture the Ninth District cleaner than it was when the Cherokee were in charge, richer than it was in the coal or tobacco or logging days...from selling something wholesome--renewable energy!
Stand up to APCo, Congressman Griffith! Yes, they need to restructure the whole way they think about energy and about us the customers on whom they depend, but there's no reason why they can't be part of a new, Green era in the Ninth District. Tell them to start investing in the people of the Ninth District now, putting up those solar panels now, and no blather about nuclear plants/ They'll be glad you did, some day, sooner than they think.
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