Jackson Jambalaya

The Magnolia State is booming. Since Tate Reeves became governor, more than $40 billion of investment has poured in — and hardly a week goes by without news of another mega deal.

This week brought fresh proof: Mississippi now ranks third in the entire nation for jobs created through reshoring and foreign investment — behind only Texas and South Carolina, and up from seventh just a year ago. First-quarter figures point to more than 12,000 new jobs from companies bringing production back to America and choosing to bring it right here.

So why are all these industries flocking in?

One key factor is energy — affordable, reliable energy. Data centers, factories and chemical plants shop for cheap, dependable power, and Mississippi has it.

Cheap, reliable energy is one of our greatest economic assets — and I want you to see exactly what it is worth to your own household. So, we built a new webtool: CompareMyPower.com. Put in your ZIP code and a few details about your home, and it shows what you pay and what you would pay in a different state.

Try it — the findings are striking

●         Mississippi runs at about 16.8¢ a kilowatt-hour against 18.8¢ nationally, and barely half of California's 35.3¢.

●         Almost every dollar on your Mississippi bill still buys actual electricity — generation and delivery — not a stack of subsidy schemes and program surcharges.

Where the wrong road ends

We only have to look at California — and across the Atlantic at Europe — to see where the wrong road ends. Britain, my native country, now has energy costs three to four times higher than America's, thanks to policies that restrict oil and gas drilling, ban shale gas and push heavily on intermittent wind and solar.

Britain has been overtaken by Mississippi in output per person. California made the same mistakes — cap-and-trade, forced retirements of reliable power plants, mandate piled on mandate — and its families pay for it every single month.

An advantage easy to lose

The lesson is simple: an energy advantage is easy to lose and hard to win back. Our job now is to protect cheap, reliable power, welcome new generation, and refuse to copy the mandates that made California and Britain so expensive.

Protect it, and we keep winning the data centers, the factories and the jobs. Follow California down the mandate road, and we throw it away.

Try CompareMyPower.com and see what Mississippi's energy advantage is worth to your household.

Douglas Carswell is the President of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy and author of this post. 

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy sponsored this post.