Brian McGraw

Post image for Naomi Klein Adresses Climate Change

The Competitive Enterprise Institute gets a disapproving nod from Naomi Klein in her latest essay for The Nation:

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions, angles the table mic over to his mouth. “You can believe this is about the climate,” he says darkly, “and many people do, but it’s not a reasonable belief.” Horner, whose prematurely silver hair makes him look like a right-wing Anderson Cooper, likes to invoke Saul Alinsky: “The issue isn’t the issue.” The issue, apparently, is that “no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires…. The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.”

(Before we go any further, Horner addressed this FOIA complaint earlier this week, after Lisa Jackson suggested that those engaged in asking for taxpayer funded communications that they are entitled to under the law were “criminal.” )

She’s going to call us on this — right? She doesn’t want to end capitalism as we know it, she just wants a large carbon tax so we can dot our landscape with windmills in the next few decades and ride off into the sunset on our new carbon-free ponies. Well, no, she’s going to largely confirm that she believes unfettered capitalism is going to destroy the world, and we need to reorganize society around localized organic farming or community co-ops or something: [click to continue…]

Post image for Matt Ridley on Climate Change, Scientific Heresy

Matt Ridley, a prolific author (among many other professional accomplishments) recently name-checked by Bill Clinton as one of the “smartest, most penetrative thinkers” remains one of the highest profile skeptics toward the likelihood of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Last week he delivered the 2011 Angus Millar Lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in Edinburgh. The title of his talk was “Scientific Heresy,” and it detailed extensively why he remains skeptical on this issue. You can read the entire text of the talk here. A PDF with accompanying graphs and charts is here.

Here are a few excerpts, though the speech in its entirety should not be missed if you follow this debate:

Using these six lessons, I am now going to plunge into an issue on which almost all the experts are not only confident they can predict the future, but absolutely certain their opponents are pseudoscientists. It is an issue on which I am now a heretic. I think the establishment view is infested with pseudoscience. The issue is climate change.

Now before you all rush for the exits, and I know it is traditional to walk out on speakers who do not toe the line on climate at the RSA – I saw it happen to Bjorn Lomborg last year when he gave the Prince Philip lecture – let me be quite clear. I am not a “denier”. I fully accept that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the climate has been warming and that man is very likely to be at least partly responsible. When a study was published recently saying that 98% of scientists “believe” in global warming, I looked at the questions they had been asked and realized I was in the 98%, too, by that definition, though I never use the word “believe” about myself. Likewise the recent study from Berkeley, which concluded that the land surface of the continents has indeed been warming at about the rate people thought, changed nothing. [click to continue…]

Post image for The Consequences of our Biofuel Policy

Dave Juday, a commodity analyst writing in The Weekly Standard, has a long essay covering the largely negative consequences of our nation’s ethanol policy. He covers many of the familiar arguments, such as rising food costs and the ongoing nonexistence of cellulosic ethanol, but also many topics less often covered by the media, such as the clever ability of corporations to take advantage of these subsidies in ways that were not intended:

For a time, the $1 tax credit provided a huge incentive to import soy oil from South America, blend it with a small amount of petroleum diesel to claim the U.S. tax credit​—​the blending often occurred while the tanker ship was still in port​—​and then re-export the blended fuel to Europe to further capture EU subsidies. That little scheme was known as “splash and dash,” and it was a $300 million subsidy to promote domestic biofuel use that did not in fact subsidize biodiesel use in the United States.

Consider the absurdity of splash and dash at its height: According to the Department of Energy, in 2008 the United States produced 678 million gallons of biodiesel and exported 677 million gallons. We imported 315 million gallons, and domestic U.S. consumption was 316 million gallons. That particular stratagem ended in 2009, but exports haven’t. Despite not meeting the mandated minimum for domestic biodiesel use last year, more than a third of the biodiesel produced in this country was exported in 2010. [click to continue…]

Post image for Support for Ethanol is Still Unfortunately Bipartisan

The Washington Times today has an editorial chiding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its decision to proceed with approval and support for higher blends of ethanol (E15) to be sold nationally. There are still a number of complications that seem likely to get in the way of (i.e., the lack of price competitiveness) of widespread use of E15, but recent decisions by the EPA are unfortunately steering the country down that path. However, the editorial makes one comment that doesn’t seem quite right:

This issue highlights the danger of allowing liberal zealots to set public policy. They are so obsessed with micromanaging the lives of others and fulfilling their environmental fantasies that they give no thought whatsoever to the real-world consequences of their schemes.

As a fuel, ethanol is highly corrosive. The E15 gasoline blend reduces gas mileage by 6 percent compared to real gasoline. That adds up to about $150 a year for the average vehicle owner. This expense and the mechanical danger serve absolutely no purpose beyond filling the pockets of wealthy farming giants. Congress needs to repeal the ethanol mandate to protect American pocketbooks – and the car warranties of millions of motorists.

Assuming they are using ‘liberal’ in the liberal versus conservative sense,  ethanol has (both historically and to this day) been supported by both liberals and conservatives alike. Indeed, true market-oriented politicians oppose interventions in our energy markets. However, those politicians are few and far between as politicians from both sides rarely have issue with sacrificing their alleged principles in order to support local constituencies or interest groups. [click to continue…]

Post image for New Report Casts Doubt on Ethanol Policy

A recently released report on the future of the biofuel industry, by the National Research Council concludes that the cellulosic ethanol targets are unlikely to be met and casts doubt on the utility of the renewable fuel standard. The report can be downloaded  (after a free registration) here, though the report itself exceeds 400 pages, so its not easy reading. Allow me to include a long quote from the conclusion:

A key barrier to achieving RFS2 is the high cost of producing biofuels compared to petroleum-based fuels and the large capital investments required to put billions of gallons of production capacity in place. As of 2010, biofuel production was contingent on subsidies, tax credits, the import tariff, loan guarantees, RFS2, and similar policies. These policies that provide financial support for biofuels will expire long before 2022 and cannot provide the support necessary for achieving the RFS2 mandate. Uncertainties in policies can affect investors’ confidence and discourage investment. In addition, if the cellulosic biofuels produced are mostly ethanol, investments in distribution infrastructure and flex-fuel vehicles would have to be made for such large quantities of ethanol to be consumed in the United States. Given the current blend limit of up to 15-percent ethanol in gasoline, a maximum of 19 billion gallons of ethanol can be consumed unless the number of flex-fuel vehicles increases substantially. However, consumers’ willingness to purchase flex-fuel vehicles and use E85 instead of lower blends of ethanol in their vehicles will likely depend on the price of ethanol and their attitude toward biofuels. Producing drop-in biofuels could improve the ability to integrate the mandated volumes of biofuels into U.S. transportation, but would not improve the cost-competitiveness of biofuels with petroleum based fuels.

This covers much of what CEI has concluded: cellulosic ethanol is too expensive to be widely produced, it is likely to remain so in the future, and blends exceeding 15% are tricky given the lack of cost competitiveness. This is why the Renewable Fuel Standard should not exist. Previous CEI work on cellulosic ethanol can be read here.

[click to continue…]

Post image for Ethanol Advocacy Groups Want More Ethanol

In a post titled “An ‘open’ and shut case for an enduring American energy policy: The infallibility of free markets underscores the philosophy for FuelChoiceNow” two authors argue that markets are generally the best method to reward new products and technologies while dismissing those that don’t quite pan out.

So, its odd to see that the the rest of the post goes on to demand that the government intervene in the market to require that automobile producers adjust their industrial processes and begin to build each car as flex-fuel compatible, meaning that it can run on higher blends of ethanol. Let’s address their arguments:

[click to continue…]

Post image for Banning Incandescents: What Could Go Wrong?

Via JunkScience.

China has tightened its grip on rare earth metals which has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs through the roof, up 37% this year:

But with light bulbs, especially, the timing of the latest price increases is politically awkward for the lighting industry and for environmentalists who backed a shift to energy-efficient lighting.

In January, legislation that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007 will begin phasing out traditional incandescent bulbs in favor of spiral compact fluorescent bulbs and other technologies. The European Union has also mandated a switch from incandescent bulbs to energy-efficient lighting.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is running for the Republican presidential nomination on a platform that includes strong opposition to the new lighting rules in the United States and has been a leader of efforts by House Republicans to repeal it.

The prices are not likely to go down anytime soon, as efforts to diversify the global supply of rare earth metals will not be completed overnight. In the meantime, can we revisit the cost-savings calculations (predicting net savings for non-incandescent bulbs) that were predicated upon lower prices for compact florescent bulbs (as well as optimistic projections of how long the bulbs last)? It will be interesting to see what happens to the price of CFLs when incandescent bulbs are no longer for sale.

This issue has fallen out of the news, but it seems that even some on the left are questioning this move by the government, even daring to suggest that Michele Bachmann might have been right.

 

 

Energy and Environment News

by Brian McGraw on September 12, 2011

in Blog

Post image for Energy and Environment News

Texas power company says EPA rules force it to close plant, cut jobs
Andrew Restuccia, The Hill’s Energy & Environment Blog, 12 September 2011

‘The message still has to be about the reality we’re facing’
An Interview With Al Gore, The Washington Post, 12 September 2011

Canada’s Oil Sands Are a Job Gusher
Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, 12 September 2011

‘Green Jobs’ Welfare Queens Defend Their Indefensibleness
Chris Horner, The American Spectator, 12 September 2011

EPA Got It Wrong, Obama Got It Right on Ozone Limits
Editorial, Bloomberg, 11 September 2011

 

Post image for Corn/Cellulosic Ethanol Infighting

A blog post at the National Corn Grower’s Association, which has since been taken down, was titled: “If the Government Could Mandate Unicorns…” A cached version is here.

When a two year-old throws a temper tantrum because he cannot have a pet unicorn, it can seem confusing, annoying or possibly endearing.  No matter which gut reaction a parent has, they universally understand the need to explain the concept of “nonexistent.” When the Environmental Protection Agency continually demands the impossible, why are they treated any differently?

The issue is simple.  The updated version of the Renewable Fuel Standard mandates usage of 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol this year and 500 million gallons by 2012.  As of June 2011, zero gallons of qualifying cellulosic ethanol were produced.  The target is, under current conditions, an impossible demand.

It is a demand based on promises.  Much as parents may tell stories about unicorns and fairies, some players in the ethanol and environmental industries pushed a product which they were not prepared to deliver.  In both scenarios, optimism created a beautiful vision of a world that does not exist.  Once the story was sold, neither party could meet the unrealistic expectation that they had created. [click to continue…]

Rick Perry on Ethanol

by Brian McGraw on August 29, 2011

in Blog

Post image for Rick Perry on Ethanol

Rick Perry seems to be taking a tough position against government support for renewable fuels:

Not satisfied with that answer, Iowa Corn Growers Association president Dean Taylor tried again, stepping to the microphone to ask if Perry as president would support the renewable fuel standard that’s currently the law.

Perry answered: “Here’s my position on this issue again. I go back to ridding you of the regulations.

“The oil and gas industry will be asked the same thing. Would you rather have the subsidies, incentives, whatever you want to call them or would you rather have a government that actually removed the regulations?

“Think about what the EPA costs you every day in this country. What it costs John Deere. What it costs every manufacturing plant. [click to continue…]