A new study has verified what we at The Empowerment Alliance have been saying for some time: natural gas is the clean, affordable and reliable American energy source we need most to power our lives!

“Grading the Grid: A national energy report card” from Northwood University’s McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy took a look at eight major energy sources used to produce electricity in the U.S. and assigned a grade for each based on its performance.

Here are some key findings:

• Natural gas provides reliability and affordability that wind and solar do not, and it is the best energy source to fill in the gaps wind and solar create.
• Wind and solar are the most expensive forms of electricity generation in use today.
• The side effects of rapidly transitioning our electrical grid to wind and solar energy need to be scrutinized—a wind- and solar-based grid could take up to 425,000 square miles, or approximately 12% of the nation’s land area.
• Natural gas is a clean energy, responsible for much of the U.S. emissions reductions since 2005, while the hidden environmental and human impacts of wind and solar energy need to be more strongly considered.
• Wind and solar growth are driven by subsidies and mandates. In contrast, oil and gas have received only about 4% of total federal spending to produce 40% of our primary energy.

TEA believes in a strong, all-of-the-above energy mix to keep our grid powered consistently, cleanly and cheaply. But, the facts—and the energy report grades—show that natural gas provides the strong and irreplaceable foundation for that mix.

For more proof that natural gas is the best all-around energy for America’s future, check out TEA’s Common Sense Energy Agenda.