Instead of celebrating the fact that Alabama has just started up a new manufacturing facility that will be selling its products to neighboring states and bringing in needed revenue to one of the United States least prosperous states, the Facing South Blog has a posted a comment that implies there is something wrong with operating an electrical factory if the home state does not “need” the power.
Here is the quote that gave me pause:
One interesting point: Alabama doesn’t need the extra power. The new facility is for export of energy to rapidly-growing nearby Southern states like Georgia — a demand that critics believe could be headed off by greater efforts at conservation:
In my opinion electricity is a great product that is so useful that people purchase it almost every time they walk into a new room by automatically flipping on a switch. It is so valuable that losing access to it for just a few minutes often makes news and generates significant call volume for the supplying company.
My feelings about electricity sales always remind me of the old Jay Leno commercial for Doritos (my apologies to young readers or those who live outside the US or who are not television fans.) As Jay used to say – “Crunch all you want. We’ll make more.”
Someday, I hope the world is able to have electricity suppliers who can legitimately say the same thing because they have access to essentially unlimited supplies of heavy metal for fission.
