‘BIG WIRES’ Act provides power benefits
The Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply (BIG WIRES) Act is a promising bipartisan bill in Congress that offers a wide range of benefits: reducing the risk of electrical power outages, lowering carbon emissions and energy costs, and increasing national security.
The recent gas pipeline rupture in our region gave many of us a taste of how a blackout in winter would feel. Extreme weather events damaging power stations and overloading the grid are on the rise.
The bill will require each U.S. transmission-planning region to be able to transfer at least 15% more of its current peak load capacity — its highest hourly electricity demand in a given year — to other regions in the event of an outage.
Because building new transmission lines is a major option for increasing load capacity, the bill will also help address the critical shortage of lines for transmitting renewable energy, thus bringing down CO2 emissions. Wind and solar farms now account for more than 92% of proposed new energy projects in the U.S.
In addition, households’ energy costs will go down as regions transfer inexpensive solar and wind power and those with cheaper energy sell to those with more expensive. Finally, a more stable and efficient electrical grid system will foster national security, an important feature during this time of increasing international conflict.
A bipartisan bill capable of all of these benefits ought to become law. Ask your Members of Congress to cosponsor the BIG WIRES Act (HR5551, SB2827).
William C. Engels
Pullman
Medical professionals work to make us healthier
Physicians and health-care workers across the state have experienced unprecedented stress and hardship over the past several years. Despite this, physicians in Davenport and Odessa took and continue to take the time to help train medical students.
We are thankful to the extensive network of physicians throughout Eastern and Central Washington who believe in “paying it forward,” because of the training they received from preceptors and mentors when they were medical students. We’ve learned that despite added layers of complexity, these physicians persevere and understand that a challenging situation is a unique opportunity for medical students to learn – this rang true when we were in a hopefully once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
As Health Partners with Gonzaga University, we are grateful for each patient, physician, nurse, physician assistant, medical assistant and healthcare professional who contribute to our students’ medical education. Because of you, we can deliver top-ranked medical education to train the next generation of excellent physicians for Davenport, Odessa and beyond.
Together, we are working to make our region healthier.
Geoff Jones, M.D.
Newport
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