Marlo Lewis

Wish I had posted this on April 1st, but the good news just popped into my in-box last night.

Over at CO2Science.Org, Craig Idso reviews two extensive studies of the impacts of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations on trees in the Northern Hemisphere.

First, Idso reviews Soulé and Knapp (2015), a study of the growth and water-use efficiency of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees in the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Rockies region since 1850.

The two researchers “collected tree-ring data from 14 different locations, from which information they were able to determine yearly changes (from AD 1850 to the present) in basal area increment (BAI) and intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE), the latter of which parameters they derived from yearly stable carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) of the trees’ annual layers of new-wood production.” Note: BAI means the area of a tree-trunk cross section at ground level.

What did Soulé and Knapp find? Both species experienced “exponentially increasing iWUE rates during AD 1850-present, suggesting either increased net photosynthesis or decreased stomatal conductance [i.e. decreased moisture loss via the stomatal pores of needles and leaves], or both.” In addition, “both species experienced above-average BAI in the latter half of the 20th century despite no favorable changes in climate.” The increase in BAI was observed “at all sites, suggesting a pan-regional effect.” Idso helpfully provides a chart illustrating the gains in water-use efficiency and growth.

Ah, but surely in Europe, where enlightened statesman demand draconian cuts in CO2 to save the biosphere, things are different. Nope.

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The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted Jan. 1, 1970, requires federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of “any major project — federal, state, or local — that involves federal funding, work performed by the federal government, or permits issued by a federal agency” (Wiki). NEPA also established the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which issues guidelines to federal agencies for proper preparation of environmental impact analyses.

On December 14, 2014, CEQ published a Draft Guidance on NEPA review of project-related greenhouse gas emissions and climate change effects. Today (Mar. 25, 2015) is the deadline for submitting comments on the Guidance. On behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 14 other pro-market organizations, and one university professor, I submitted a joint comment letter critiquing CEQ’s proposal.

In brief, we argue that:

• NEPA review is an inappropriate framework for making climate policy.
• Project-related greenhouse gas emissions should not be a factor determining whether agencies grant or deny permits for individual projects.
• Requiring agencies to consider project-related greenhouse gas emissions will make the pointless sturm und drang over the Keystone XL Pipeline the ‘new normal’ in NEPA review, further empowering NIMBY and anti-energy activists to block development projects with immense economic benefits and immeasurably small, hypothetical climate effects.
• The Guidance will feed the hubris of those who believe government exists to bankrupt businesses and industries they dislike.
• CEQ should withdraw the Guidance.

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You know or suspect that the administration’s war on carbon energy is either a costly exercise in futility or a humanitarian disaster, depending on how aggressively they pursue it. You may also know or suspect that “all of the above” is Washington-speak for dispensing more corporate welfare to under-performing energy companies.

So what would a genuine pro-market energy agenda look like? Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) put it all together in a bill titled the American Energy Renaissance Act. The bill would “remove federal impediments to energy exploration, development, and trade.” It would increase U.S. GDP, economic opportunity, and geopolitical influence by reducing federal interference with market-driven energy investment.

Sen. Cruz’s press release presents the two lawmakers’ energy policy perspective and summarizes the bill’s key provisions. The policy summary is reproduced below. [click to continue…]

Although President Obama describes his administration as “the most transparent in history,” a new analysis by the Associated Press (AP) finds that, “The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.”

FOIA failings identified by AP include:

• The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.
• It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law – but only when it was challenged.
• Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years. [click to continue…]

EPA is more than 15-months behind its statutory deadline (Nov. 30, 2013) for establishing Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) blending targets for last year.

To recap, in Nov. 2013, EPA for the first time proposed to scale back the government’s overall biofuel blending target for the following year. EPA determined that the statutory target for 2014 would exceed the “blend wall” — the maximum quantity of ethanol that can be sold each year given legal or practical constraints on how much can be blended into each gallon of motor fuel.

The most common blend today is E10 — motor fuel with up to 10% ethanol. Although EPA approved the sale of E15 in October 2010, potentially increasing by 50% the total amount of ethanol sold annually, lack of compatible fueling infrastructure, warranty and liability concerns, and, most importantly, consumers’ natural aversion to paying more for a lower-value product effectively limit the standard blend to E10.

So in Nov. 2013, EPA proposed to trim the statutory target for 2014 from 18.15 billion gallons to 15.21 billion gallons — a 16% cutback. That ignited a firestorm of protest from biofuel interests, and EPA has been dithering ever since.

Biofuel lobbyists such as Renewable Fuels Association CEO Bob Dinneen claim the blend wall exists only because the oil industry has “steadfastly refused” to invest in blender pumps, storage tanks, and other infrastructure compatible with E15-and-higher ethanol blends. Weirdly unexplained is why it’s not up to the biofuel industry to pay for the infrastructure on which its success supposedly depends. The RFS forces the oil industry to buy biofuel, process and add value to it, and create a guaranteed retail market for it. Isn’t that enough?

Not for Dinneen and company. If they had their druthers, Congress would compel oil companies to build biofuel-compatible infrastructure and (as President Obama proposed during his first presidential campaign) mandate that all new cars be flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on blends up to E85 (motor fuel made with 85% ethanol).

But would even that policy wish-list eliminate the growing mismatch between market realities and the RFS production quota schedule, which requires 36 billion gallons of biofuel to be blended and sold by 2022? No.

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In the current round of climate treaty negotiations, the European Union (EU) advocates a legally-binding ‘protocol’ that would “put the world on track to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 60% below 2010 levels by 2050.” This is roughly equivalent to the EU’s longstanding goal to reduce emissions 50% below 1990 levels by 2050.

On the scale from piece of cake to economic suicide pact, how “ambitious” (or crazy) is the EU proposal?

U.S. Chamber of Commerce VP for climate and technology Stephen Eule kindly sent me two slides based on his analysis of the ‘scope of the challenge.’

To achieve a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gases by 2050, the world as a whole must reduce emissions from 49 gigatons CO2e in 2010 to 19.6 gigatons in 2050. That may not seem like a big stretch at first glance until you realize that global emissions are projected to reach 87.0 gigatons in 2050 under current policies. In other words, to meet the EU target, global emissions must decrease by 67.4 gigatons or 77.5% below the baseline estimate for 2050.

The graph should immediately raise red flags. No country has ever powered its development out of poverty chiefly with solar panels, wind turbines, and biofuels. Developing country GHG emissions already exceed those of industrial countries, nearly all emissions growth over the next 35 years and beyond is expected to occur in developing countries, and billions of desperately poor people still lack access to modern commercial energy, nearly 87% of which comes from fossil fuels.

So under the EU’s “60-by-50” global emissions cap, how much additional CO2-emitting fossil energy would developing countries be allowed to use?

The answer, revealed in Eule’s next chart, is not much. [click to continue…]