2011

Update on the States

by William Yeatman on February 22, 2011

New Hampshire

Legislation that would withdraw New Hampshire from a regional energy-rationing scheme gained momentum last week. HB 519, which would pull New Hampshire out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade for 10 northeastern States, was approved by the House Science Technology and Energy Committee and endorsed by House Speaker William O’Brien. Two weeks ago, Governor John Lynch (D) preemptively threatened to veto the bill, but Republicans have a veto-proof majority in the State Legislature, so if they stick together, they can end this energy tax.

Kentucky

Outrage at the EPA’s campaign against coal is bipartisan in Kentucky. Last month, a top Democratic lawmaker, Jim Gooch, called for “secession” from the green regulatory state. Last week, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, the State Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee passed a bill that would make Kentucky a “sanctuary state” out of reach of the EPA’s “overreaching regulatory power.” The symbolic legislation is expected to easily win passage in the full Senate.

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The DOE’s Awful Green Bank

by William Yeatman on February 18, 2011

in Blog

My CEI colleague Chris Horner and I have a piece in today’s Daily Caller, on the Department of Energy’s awful green bank.

This excerpt aptly summarizes out take:

The point of a green investment bank is ostensibly to facilitate the commercialization of new, dormant or otherwise commercially unsuccessful technologies by providing easier financing than is available in the real world, where people scrutinize where they invest their money. It turns bureaucrats into bankers, but with your money, and no real-world incentives to “invest,” as the word connotes and denotes.

Critics argue that these bureaucrats are picking winners and losers. If only. In fact, they just pick from losers.

I especially like that last line, about how the green energy industry is a loser. As Chris and I have explained elsewhere, any industry, like green energy, that owes its creation to government handouts is fundamentally uncompetitive, and, therefore, will always be on the taxpayer dole.

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Cooler Heads Digest 18 February 2011

by William Yeatman on February 18, 2011

in Blog, Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Breaking the Ice
Nicholas Lewis & Matt Ridley, U.K. Spectator, 18 February 2011

Hitting the EPA Pause Button: What Are the Risks?
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 17 February 2011

Green Investment Bank Should Make Taxpayers See Red
Chris Horner & William Yeatman, Daily Caller, 17 February 2011

Galileo and the Scientific Pose of the Left
Robert Tracinski, RealClearPolitics.com, 17 February 2011

Oil Ban Means More Debt
Washington Times editorial, 16 February 2011

Consumer Choice Extinguished with Light Bulb Ban
Manny Lopez, Detroit News, 16 February 2011

The Absolute Madness of Ethanol
Robert Bryce, Washington Times, 16 February 20111

The California Green Debauch
George Gilder, American Spectator, 16 February 2011

The New Old Bulb
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 14 February 2011

Clean Energy Standard: Not Good for National Security
H. Sterling Burnett, NCPA Energy Blog, 11 February 2011

Green Central Planning in the Name of Jobs
John Stossel, FoxNews.com, 14 February 2011

News You Can Use

Another Alarmist Myth Debunked

In the wake of seemingly every anomalous weather event, global warming alarmists are quick to blame climate change. The Wall Street Journal this week reported on new research, conducted by The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present. The researchers were “surprised” to find no evidence of an intensifying weather trend.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Rep. Walberg Introduces Companion to Barrasso Bill

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) has introduced a House version of Senator John Barrasso’s (R-Wyo.) bill to block all regulation of greenhouse gas emissions until Congress decides to provide such authority. H. R. 750 is thus more comprehensive than the Inhofe-Upton-Whitfield draft bill that only pre-empts Clean Air Act regulation. It will be interesting to see how many co-sponsors Walberg’s bill will attract. Barrasso’s bill has 16 other Senators on board.

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Hitting EPA’s Pause Button – What Are the Benefits, Risks? (Updated)

by Marlo Lewis on February 17, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Yesterday (Feb. 16), House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY) engaged in a colloquy with Interior and Agriculture Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-ID) on Sec. 1746 of H.R. 1, the One-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011.

Sec. 1746 of H.R. 1 states:

None of the funds made available to the Environmental Protection Agency by this division or any other Act may be expended for purposes of enforcing or promulgating any regulation (other than with respect to section 202 of the Clean Air Act) or order, taking action relating to, or denying approval of state implementation plans or permits because of the emissions of greenhouse gases due to concerns regarding possible climate change.

Sec. 1746 would block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, which ends on September 30. “The funding limitation will allow Congress to carefully and thoroughly debate a permanent clarification to the Clean Air Act to ensure it remains a strong tool for protecting public health by regulating and mitigating air pollutants, and that it is not transformed into a vehicle to impose a national energy tax,” explains Chairman Whitfield’s press release. Whitfield is a co-sponsor of the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would overturn the legal force and effect of EPA’s Endangerment Rule, Tailoring Rule, and other rules imposing greenhouse gas permitting requirements on state governments and stationary sources.

In the colloquy, Chairman Simpson states: “EPA’s GHG regulations need to be stopped in their tracks, and that’s what section 1746 does – it provides a timeout for the balance of the fiscal year, during which time EPA will be prohibited from acting on them or enforcing them.” In Whitfield’s words: “This CR [Continuing Resolution] provision is Congress hitting the pause button during the very brief period of the CR, allowing time to go through regular order and pass the Upton-Inhofe bill.”

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For Natural Gas, the Other Shoe Drops

by William Yeatman on February 17, 2011

in Blog, Features

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For years, certain natural gas producers, led by Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, have pursued a myopic strategy of demonizing coal in an effort to seize a larger share of the electricity generation market.

It started in 2008, when Chesapeake funded an unsigned “Dirty Coal” advertising campaign. It featured black and white photos of children, with coal smudged faces, looking sad. Having set the table with anti coal propaganda, McClendon then teamed up with the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope to implement a legislative strategy. The pair traveled around the country, pitching natural gas as the “bridge fuel” to a green energy future.

They scored one major success, in Colorado. There, ex-Governor Bill Ritter had made the “New Energy Economy,” the centerpiece of his administration. As such, he was receptive to fuel switching as a way to meet his Climate Action Plan, a non-binding mandate to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 2008 levels. As I’ve written about at length here, the Ritter Administration engaged in a number of deceptions to carry Chesapeake’s water.

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Senator Al Franken’s Shakedown Undermined Energy Secretary Chu’s Defense

by William Yeatman on February 16, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Energy Secretary Steven Chu today testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the Obama administration’s budget for the Department of Energy (DOE). Despite the fact that the DOE has yet to spend $21 billion in stimulus money (about 60% of its 2010 budget), the White House proposed a 12% budget increase.

Minnesota Senator Al Franken was unconcerned with the deficit implications of giving billions more taxpayer dollars to a bureaucracy that has yet to spend the billions of taxpayer dollars it already has. Instead, he had a much more parochial matter in mind.

His line of questioning for the Energy Secretary focused on Sage Electrochromic, a Minnesota-based window manufacturer. Senator Franken explained that the window company had received a $70 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, which you’d think would be pleasing to the Senator. After all, a federally backed loan is a taxpayer subsidy that allows recipients to obtain better financing.

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Biofueling an Egyptian Uprising

by William Yeatman on February 14, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Last week the New York Times Paul Krugman noted that near-record high food prices instigated the social instability in Cairo that has since led to overturning of Egypt’s government. However, Krugman went on to blame the rise in food prices on global warming, which is pure poppycock, as is explained by Roger Pielke Jr. In an editorial last Tuesday, the Washington Post identified a much more plausible explanation for the spike in food prices: ethanol.

This year, American farmers will divert a third of the corn crop into the production of corn fuels that are more expensive and environmentally harmful than regular gasoline. Naturally, this has increased demand for corn, which, in turn, has pushed prices to historic highs. American farmers set the global price for corn, so the impact of our foolish ethanol prices is felt worldwide. American corn is one of the largest crops in the world, and by displacing land given to other crops, the ethanol mandate also increases the price of wheat and soybeans on the international market.

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Are Heavily Subsidized Wind, Solar, and Biofuels “Sustainable” Energies?

by Marlo Lewis on February 13, 2011

in Blog, Features

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So-called “sustainability” advocates never tire of condemning fossil fuels as unsustainable. Their assessment is based on ideology, not facts, I argue in “Sustainability: Some Free Market Reflections” over at MasterResource.Org, the free-market energy blog.

By any reasonable definition, modern commercial energy (except for heavily subsidized renewables) is sustainable. Whether we consider air pollution, life expectancy, health of the elderly, vulnerability to extreme weather, per capita food consumption, or access to safe drinking water, the long-term trends show dramatic — and continuing — global improvement. Abundant, affordable, reliable energy from fossil fuels is a key factor driving those improvements.

The truly unsustainable energy sources are those that cannot ‘compete’ without special policy privileges. Clearly, subsidy-dependent enterprises are not self-sustaining. Chronic subsidy-dependence is an indication the value of the resources an enterprise consumes exceeds the value of the products and services it provides. So from both a business and environmental standpoint, wind and solar power do not deserve to be called sustainable.

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