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Something flipped over the last year or so in my conversations with economic developers and businesses looking at coming to Arkansas.
The availability of a quality workforce remains among the most common top concerns, but more and more of these people are concerned about the availability, reliability and affordability of power.
Indeed, multiple massive economic development projects have reflexively passed over Arkansas because we simply don’t have the transmission capability they would have demanded.
So the timing was nice last week at the 96th annual meeting of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce/Associated Industries of Arkansas during which Entergy Arkansas CEO Laura Landreaux gave the keynote address on the impact of energy diversity and availability on business growth.
She began by acknowledging a proliferation of reporting this year in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, with headlines like: “The Coming Electricity Crisis” and “Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power.”
In summation, there are a lot of factors driving the unprecedented demand — the artificial intelligence boom, more factories running on “clean tech,” data centers and the ubiquity of power-hungry devices.
Couple that with growing clean energy regulations from Washington, D.C., the impending retirement of several nuclear and coal plants, and an uptick in industrial projects and you have conditions ripe for a shortfall.
Landreaux noted that Arkansas remains in a good position, but vigilance is critical.
“We are not in an energy crisis, but we have to stay ahead of the growth,” she said.
Entergy Arkansas sources most of its power from nuclear and natural gas, with coal and more sustainable sources making up the rest. Landreaux said the utility continues to invest heavily in cleaner generation, like solar, to further diversify.
To me, Entergy’s Arkansas portfolio ought to serve as a model. It is heavily investing in clean, sustainable solutions while phasing out coal and remaining heavily dependent on Arkansas Nuclear One. (About 65% of Entergy’s power comes from nuclear.)
This kitchen-sink approach often gets left out of energy policy discussions that focus too heavily on the debate around fossil fuels vs. clean energy. Additionally, in my view, nuclear power has been far underutilized for a solution that could satisfy all sides of the energy conundrum. I readily acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear disaster (though they have been rare) and the extremely high startup costs and timelines of new nuclear plants, but you’d hope to see safety and efficiency improve over time as more plants are built.
The pivot to cleaner energy is the right move, and it comes with a host of economic and ecologic benefits. But not meeting the rising demand for power will have dire consequences too.
The way forward doesn’t have to be so binary.
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