Mississippi’s Gaining a Competitive Edge, While Others Falter

Mississippi Vitality Institute’s Patrick Sullivan says the longer term appears vibrant for recruiting power intensive enterprise to the Magnolia State.

In 2008, then-Governor Haley Barbour in talking on his ‘Extra Vitality’ coverage, stated, “ten or fifteen years from now, firms trying to website amenities is not going to solely ask about power ‘What does it value?’ however ‘Can we get it?’.” Nobody knew then how proper he could be.

Unwell-advised politicians in Washington D.C., Germany, England, California, New York, and elsewhere have taken one motion after one other to stop improvement or in the reduction of on large-scale, dependable power sources, like pure gasoline, coal and nuclear. The outcome?

Electrical energy turns into too scarce and too costly to assist manufacturing and industrial development. Vitality prices get so excessive industrial output and the financial system decline. And households and small companies find yourself utilizing an outsized share of their revenue to pay electrical energy and winter heating payments.

At a excessive stage, it’s not sophisticated. When authorities insurance policies successfully minimize power provides with out sufficient replacements, hassle ultimately follows.

Apparently, politicians in these locations missed the primary day of economics class – when the availability of one thing goes down, value goes up, and when demand exceeds provide on a important good like power, then chaos. There was no lesson on governments cleansing up the financial mess they trigger.

In the meantime, Mississippi and different like-minded states have stayed fixed favoring insurance policies that encourage improvement and funding in any and all power sources to work collectively in a balanced system, together with the infrastructure to assist the huge supply techniques that will get it to the place we want it. Good power insurance policies assist larger provide with the first objectives of decrease value and larger reliability.

When Mississippians recharge our gadgets tonight, we’ll pay a decrease price than residents in 39 different states, half what Californians pays, and a 3rd what Germans pays. Why does this matter?

Mississippi stands to extend its presence in an ever-changing, technology-driven, energy-consuming international market. Our state is on a relentless quest to recruit non-public capital funding and, importantly, high-quality employers to supply extra Mississippians the possibility at a high-paying job.

Such as you and me, firms despise paying unnecessarily excessive power payments, so these firms requiring a lot of power naturally search locations the place they’ll function extra profitably and reduce the danger of outages and shut downs. Mississippi’s extra provide and comparative low charges to the remainder of the U.S. and the world give the state a aggressive benefit as massive energy-consuming industries, like metals, automotive, protection expertise, and knowledge storage contemplate new operations.

Now greater than ever, whether or not they acknowledge it or not, different international locations and states are steadily eradicating themselves from the competitors as a result of overpriced power and the heightened menace of provide shortages attributable to their very own insurance policies.

Time will inform, however the future appears vibrant for recruiting power intensive enterprise to Mississippi. After all, one cause could possibly be we’ll have much less of a wrestle maintaining the lights on.