Energy prices have increased almost 19 percent in the past year. To compound the household budget problem, food prices have gone up more in the past year than they have in nearly 20 years, including an 18 percent increase in milk prices and a more than 30 percent hike in egg prices.

"Part of the inflation in food costs is being attributed to encouragement of ethanol as an alternative fuel, which may be helping drive up prices for animal feed and some foods consumed by people," notes Joe Lucas, ABEC executive director. "This is an example of how energy policy can affect other parts of our economy and the family budget."

"That's why ABEC is fighting to keep coal a part of the mix of our energy resources. It is much more affordable as a source of electricity compared to natural gas or oil, which can cost much more to produce each kilowatt hour of electrical power."

Since 2001 the increases in the costs of fuels for electricity are:

• 201 percent for oil
   
• 80 percent for natural gas
   
• 48 percent for coal

In Pennsylvania, more than half of the electricity (56 percent) is coal generated, compared to the national average of 50 percent, helping keep the state's average price of electricity per kilowatt hour at less than the national average.

For consumers, the increases in the costs of their energy sources since 2001 have been:

• 166 percent for heating oil
   
• 123 percent for gasoline
   
• 44 percent for natural gas
   
• 27 percent for electricity

"As we work for energy independence and environmental improvements, we should remember that electricity, produced mainly from domestic coal -- including coal from Pennsylvania -- has offered the most stable price over the past decade," Lucas noted.

"One can only imagine what would happen to electricity prices and the total energy cost burden if ill-considered public policy drives unnecessary inflation in the cost of coal."

ABEC is crossing the nation, taking its message to urban, rural and suburban areas, that coal needs to remain one of our energy fuels to keep energy as affordable as possible for homes and businesses.

ABEC supports cleaner and more efficient coal technologies, with Lucas pointing out that the industry has reduced emissions by a third even though coal use has doubled during the past 30 years.

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices is a non-profit, non-partisan group that promotes a dialogue with community leaders across the nation to discuss balancing America's growing demand for electricity with the need to protect the environment. ABEC counts more than 150,000 members nationwide, with 9,000 living in Pennsylvania. Because of its prominence in the nation's energy mix, electricity from coal is a major focus of the dialogue.
 

Read the two books that are now alerting the public to these threats:

Ron Arnold's Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy foresaw in 2007 the events affecting Camden, Alabama in 2008.

This powerful 420-page exposé of the American Left is rapidly becoming a classic in political investigative reporting.

Its final chapter, "The Energy Gap," lays bare the inner workings of the environmental movement and its utopian plans to convert the nation to renewable fuels that don't exist in useful amounts, and won't for decades.

With his straightforward Energy Reality chart, Ron Arnold showed that 85% of all the energy America uses now comes from fossil fuels, the target of the global warming lobby.

If we outlaw 85% of our energy - or drive up its price through artificial scarcity so no one can afford it - we will plunge our nation into an Energy Gap that could be fatal.

and

Energy Keepers Energy Killers: The New Civil Rights Battle by Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, makes the compelling point that access to abundant, affordable energy is essential to making our hard-won legal civil rights into real, living civil rights.

This eloquent 120-page statement builds on the fundamental principle that energy is the "master resource" which makes all other resources usable. Without energy, all rights are meaningless.

Roy Innis condemns the environmental elitists and politicians who want to cripple the fossil fuel economy with cap-and-trade schemes and other unworkable restraints, which will devastate low income families and minorities first and worst - and then, everybody.

Boldly striking back at the Energy Killers, Roy Innis makes a convincing case that power must be wrested from them through non-violent civil rights action.

Calling for an Energy Keepers movement to take on the Energy Killers, Roy Innis provides a clear roadmap to the steps needed to assure America's economic civil rights.