He’s baaaack. T. Boone Pickens. In 2008, his “Pickens Plan” sounded like the solution to our energy problems and would have filled the Midwest with wind farms—backed up with natural gas-fueled power plants. At the time of his self-promoted plan, the price of natural gas peaked. He likely did quite well with his natural gas investments. He went away, and his idea of farms filled with wind turbines was forgotten.
But he’s back with a new spin: television ads and media appearances promoting, once again, natural gas use—this time in America’s fleet of trucks. With high prices at the pump and Middle East unrest, the 2011 Pickens Plan sounds good. Using natural gas for transportation fuel is, as the Natural Gas Vehicles for America (NGVA) ad posted on his website states: “clean, less expensive, and right here.” It seems hard to argue with and dozens of congressmen have signed on to the plan known as the NAT GAS Act (New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions) or HR 1380.
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Obama’s Funny Math on the Auto Bailout
John Berlau, National Review Online, 6 June 2011
The Electric Car Albatross
Eric Peters, American Spectator, 6 June 2011
Study: Rising Forest Density Offsets Climate Change
Alister Doyle, Reuters, 6 June 2011
Overestimating Wind Generation
Lisa Linowes, Master Resource, 6 June 2011
The Real Cost of the Auto Bailouts
David Skeel, Wall Street Journal, 6 June 2011
Oklahoma last week became the latest State to launch high profile litigation against the Environmental Protection Agency. The subject of the Sooner State’s lawsuit is the Regional Haze provision of the Clean Air Act. For a Regional Haze primer, click here. Suffice it to say, Regional Haze is an aesthetic regulation meant to improve the vistas at national parks, not a public health standard meant to protect human beings. Also, it affords States a uniquely large discretion among Clean Air Act provisions.
In late 2010, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission approved a Regional Haze implementation plan that would switch fuels from coal to natural gas at six power plants. Fuel switching is a drastic response, especially for an aesthetic regulation, but it wasn’t good enough for the EPA, which is demanding that the switch take place 10 years sooner. If not, the EPA is requiring pollution controls that would increase electricity prices in Oklahoma by 10 to 12 percent.
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Get with the Plan
In The National Review, T. Boone Pickens again makes the case for The NAT Gas Act of 2011. I slept through the first few paragraphs (the piece began with a constitutional argument).
There isn’t a whole lot of new information in here, its more of a response to the ongoing attacks on the legislation. He reminds us that Americans get all antsy when gas prices go up, but when prices drop again we are lulled back into indifference.
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Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan recently took to the Huffington Post to promote subsidies for money-saving, “green” retrofits and appliances. While he never articulated why the Obama administration thinks American consumers are so stupid that they need government help in order to save money, Secretary Donovan did offer a nonsensical justification for these tax handouts. Here’s how he opened his HuffPo post,
“With gas prices topping $4 a gallon families and businesses are facing a real burden. But we can take action to ensure the American people don’t fall victim to volatile energy costs over the long term.”
There is a big problem with the Housing Secretary’s lede: Gasoline fuels cars, not houses. The fact that “gas prices [are] topping $4 a gallon” has almost nothing* to do with HUD’s wasteful green subsidies for energy efficient appliances and retrofits.
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In a recent post, I predicted that Japan is likely to turn from nuclear to coal in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. This would have global ramifications, as Japan would become a major importer of coal at the very moment that China’s burgeoning demand for coal was creating export opportunities in the United States and Australia. For major coal companies, the global coal market is looking strong to quite strong.
In addition to being a boon for the international coal industry, there are repercussions in other energy markets. In Europe, where anti-nuclear sentiment already was high before the Japanese crisis, the nuclear industry is reeling. Plans for future nuclear power plants are being shelved; existing plants are being decommissioned. According to EUractiv,
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Obama’s Energy Policies Benefit the Powerful at the Expense of Everyone Else
Deneen Borelli, Fox News, 5 June 2011
Do GOP Hopefuls Trust Al Gore?
Steve Milloy, Washington Times, 3 June 2011
Latest Global Warming Alarm: Biodegradable Cups
Sheela Philomena, MedIndia, 2 June 2011
WalMart’s Support for Cap-and-Trade To Be Challenged at Shareholder Meeting
Peter Flaherty, National Legal and Policy Center, 2 June 2011
Don’t Fall for Socialist Global Warming Hysteria
Davis Patterson, letter to the editor The Bridgeton News, 31 May 2011
President Barack Obama this week nominated John Bryson to be Secretary of Commerce. Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) immediately announced that he would try to defeat Bryson’s confirmation by the Senate. It’s easy to see why Inhofe didn’t have to spend much time weighing Bryson’s qualifications. Bryson is a model crony capitalist, lifelong professional environmentalist, and leading promoter of cap-and-trade legislation to raise energy prices.
Here is what Bryson said at a symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009: “Greenhouse gas legislation – either with a tax or with a cap and trade, which is a more complicated way of getting at it, but it has the advantage politically of sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax, but at the same – you know that’s what you’re trying to do, trying to raise price of carbon….” He went on to say that the Waxman-Markey and other cap-and-trade bills in Congress would not raise energy prices enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the required amount, so that he also favored federal regulations, such as renewable requirements for electric utilities, on top of cap-and-trade. Later, Bryson referred to Waxman-Markey as a “moderate but acceptable bill.”
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Aussie Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard is waging an aggressive PR campaign to sell carbon taxes in the Land Down Under. Resistance is fierce, with opposition leaders saying the tax “is so toxic that Labor MPs could dump her to save their own seats” (The Australian, June 3, 2011). [click to continue…]
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