For job creation, let’s build energy infrastructure

The United States continues to enjoy an energy renaissance.

Today, our nation is an energy superpower. In 2013, the United States overtook Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the No. 1 oil and natural gas producer in the world. 

And even though current markets are defined as being “high supply and lower demand,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), oil and natural gas will continue to play a significant role in meeting energy needs here at home and across the globe.

If America is to maintain its edge as a global energy superpower, and sincerely commit to creating more solid, middle-class jobs across the nation, we must make the necessary commitments to build out a national energy infrastructure that will support and enable the continued development and utilization of all energy resources — including oil, natural gas and renewables.

Revamping America’s energy infrastructure could mean about $1.14 trillion in capital investments — the kinds that would save substantial energy dollars and create secure jobs by 2025.

According to an infrastructure investment study, “building, maintaining and updating the oil and natural gas industry’s transportation and storage infrastructure” could grow the economy by $120 billion and generate 1.15 million jobs on average annually. Pipeline investments alone would fortify the job market with over 830,000 additional jobs. 

And these are jobs that pay, on average, three- and four-times the federal minimum wage.

Steel, machinery and engineering service providers and other suppliers would also benefit from increased capital investment in energy infrastructure. This capital investment would “trigger an estimated $45 billion per year throughout the extended supply chain,” according to an IHS Global report. 

And the benefits to individual American consumers of an expanded and updated energy infrastructure are just as pronounced. 

A group of current and nearly completed pipelines could slash home heating prices in the Northeast, a region that has suffered the ill effects of inadequate energy infrastructure.  Compared to the national average, Northeastern households paid almost 70 percent more for electricity during 2014’s winter. And industrial energy bills were 105 percent higher, according to the EIA. 

Experts agree that greater capacity is the key to staving off the economic penalties that American consumers often face as a result of insufficient energy infrastructure. One study from the Economic Development Research Group estimates that, absent significant investments in natural gas and electricity infrastructure in the Northeast, residents and businesses could experience $5.4 billion in spiked energy costs and the loss of “more than 167,000 private-sector and construction jobs between 2016 and 2020.”

Unfortunately, in many instances, federal red tape, archaic permitting processes and a small but vocal minority of radical environmentalists are jointly bringing job generators like pipeline and transmission line projects to a screeching halt. 

Now, radical environmentalists have further upped the ante by embracing a “keep it in the ground” strategy that has unfortunately been manifested via the energy policy of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Without question, the Sanders plan of 80 percent reductions in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050 would require a radical and immediate government-mandated, top-to-bottom restructuring of the U.S. economy. Without the use of “bridge fuels” like natural gas, the Sanders plan would cause massive and abrupt upheavals that will ruthlessly impact the lives of the American middle class.

American infrastructure needs to keep pace with our nation’s ever-growing energy supplies, both traditional and renewable. A modern new infrastructure is vitally important not just in the context of connecting these resources to markets and consumers but in the context of the overall health and vigor of the American economy. 

McGarvey is president of North America’s Building Trades Unions.