Renewable energy too expensive to force now

A recent letter in the Daily Herald portends to identify 56,000 jobs that will be created in Illinois by converting to renewable energy and how much money each family will save by using this renewable energy.

This would be an admirable goal if it were not for the fact that to fund these jobs, each Illinois family will initially have to contribute thousands of dollars in tax money to create these jobs. Then, each family will still have to pay energy costs at least as high as they have today if their electricity comes off the new grid. If they choose to utilize home energy items such as turbines, solar panels, etc., made by these new thousands of jobs, each family will have to come up with thousands more to purchase this new equipment, just to save the $810 he identifies that we will save in renewable energy each year. The payback period on solar and wind energy is generally over a decade just to break even.

All this is so that we can restrict drilling for oil in the U.S., penalize the use of coal - of which we have the largest reserves in the world - and ignore the fact that we have billions of barrels of energy in shale oil in the Rocky Mountains.

I believe we should continue to use all the energy options we have today and let the natural forces of renewable energy develop over the coming years as the economics become more favorable. This rush to renewable energy is insane and borrowing the billions of dollars to force conversion and taxing families that are struggling to get by today, places a burden on all of us that is unnecessary.

Gary Koble

Geneva