By Chris Verner
Salisbury Post
As North Carolina’s junior senator, Richard Burr doesn’t have the celebrity aura of Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a former presidential candidate and half of one of Washington’s most famous power couples. He projects the studied competency of a stage manager more than the glamour of a rock star. But talk to Burr about America’s energy dilemma, and he comes across as a pretty electrifying guy.
Electrifying, that is, in terms of how he sees our transportation future evolving. Although Burr supports lifting the moratorium on offshore petroleum exploration, he thinks the formula for America’s energy independence lies not in wells but in wires. It will be possible within a few years, he believes, to switch at least 30 percent of America’s commuters to plug-in electric vehicles. He cites ventures such as GM’s ambitious Volt, a plug-in electric car (with a small combustion engine for on-the-road recharging) scheduled for production in 2010, as evidence that we’re closer than we might realize to electric vehicles with real-world commuting range.
“We have to find mobile platforms that are not fueled with petroleum products,” he said.
Burr recently took time from a busy schedule (along with his Senate duties, he’s co-chair of the 2008 Republican Platform Committee) for a phone interview with the Post. It ranged over several topics, including the potential of the biotech campus in Kannapolis and the need for our local officials to proactively plan for the growth it will bring. He sees the campus as stimulating the same kind of economic transformation in this region as the Research Triangle Park did for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. As for concerns that our local workforce can’t meet the campus’ need for technical expertise, Burr reminds that North Carolina produces the second largest pool of post-secondary graduates in the nation, behind only California. Future biotech workers “may not live there today,” he said, but many will come from elsewhere within the state. “We don’t have to go outside the borders of North Carolina to find the talent to maintain that type of growth.”
But as important as the N.C. Research Campus is to the future of Cabarrus and Rowan counties and the surrounding region, $4 a gallon gas is what has voters pumped up this summer. In a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll, more than 70 percent of Americans say rising gasoline prices have caused financial hardships for them or their household. With the rising prices has come a shift in public sentiment that views oil drilling and new power plants as a greater priority than energy conservation. A Pew Research Center survey conducted last month found that 47 percent of the respondents rated energy exploration, drilling and building power plants as the top priority, compared with 35 percent a few months earlier.
Which brings us back to electric cars and the shock of $80 fill-ups.
“High gas prices are killing the family budget,” Burr said. “This is stealing from their children’s education. In some ways, it’s depleting their retirement funds. The American people cannot deal with this for an indefinite period of time. That’s why it absolutely requires Congressional action.”
Although lifting the moratorium on offshore oil exploration beyond a 50-mile limit is one part of that action, Burr says expanded domestic production, including increased harvesting of oil shale in the Midwest, is just one step toward gaining control of the nation’s energy destiny. Conservation is also important, he acknowledges.
“We have to change our habits to conserve energy in ways we haven’t done in the past,” he says, mentioning more energy efficient appliances as one example.
Finally, he says, the country’s leadership ó Congress, especially ó needs to create a 21st century energy policy that can guide the nation from our current reliance on petroleum to the new technologies that will free us from fossil fuels and the volatility of Middle Eastern politics and international commodity markets.
Burr sits on both the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Intelligence. That makes him particularly well positioned to see how developing energy independence is critical not only for America’s economic stability but also to reduce vulnerabilities in our national security. While it may be desirable to ramp up oil production and refinery capacity in the near term, we’re on a slippery slope so long as we continue to rely on crude as the primary fuel for our planes, trains, trucks and cars.
“If we had started new exploration 10 years ago, we probably wouldn’t have today’s price spikes,” he said. “But if we didn’t have the price spikes, we would still be in denial and saying that petroleum is OK for us to use indefinitely. … We have to become energy independent if we want to be able to control the cost to our families, the cost to our businesses and maintain our competitiveness in the global marketplace.”
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Chris Verner is editorial page editor of the Salisbury Post. Contact him via e-mail at verner@salisburypost.com.