On Wednesday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said that “the insatiable desire for more power is going to require everything.” And “I know the president doesn’t have much affection for wind, either offshore or onshore. Personally, we have wind in West Virginia. If it’s sited properly and can generate the kind of power that we need, I think we should be looking at everything, absolutely.”
Co-host Joe Mathieu asked, “[W]e’ve seen kind of a push and pull when it comes to alternative energy. Gas and oil prices start to go up, fossil fuels are more expensive, people are…more likely to reach for an alternative, but we’ve seen an unwinding of wind, especially, and solar under the Trump administration. As the chairwoman of this important committee, do you see that alternate energy industry being unwound permanently?”
Capito answered, “I’m one of those who believes we need everything, and we need everything all the time. Certainly, I come from a coal state, a natural gas state. So, on that side of it, we’ve been providing energy for this country, over 100 years, certainly, from our coal. And so, we have a great appreciation for that and we still want to be a part of that and we are. But, at the same time, the insatiable desire for more power is going to require everything. And so, my view is, if we can permit — which I’ve been working on a lot — and keep the environmental parameters in place, we should have it all.”
Later, Mathieu asked, “Just quickly, does all of the above or everything include wind? The president has really isolated wind as kind of the outlier.”
Capito answered, “I know the president doesn’t have much affection for wind, either offshore or onshore. Personally, we have wind in West Virginia. If it’s sited properly and can generate the kind of power that we need, I think we should be looking at everything, absolutely.”
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