The George C. Marshall Institute no longer exists and the organization’s superb monograph, “Connecting Climate Change and National Security,” is not easy to find. The topic is hot once again. So, I am pleased to post the study here. Enjoy!
Marlo Lewis
Due to some glitch, my comment letter on the Obama EPA’s proposed “Carbon Pollution” Standards for new fossil fuel power plants was never posted on CEI’s Web site. So I am posting it here.
The House is expected to vote this week on H.Con.Res.119 expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax is detrimental to the U.S. economy. The House passed similar legislation in June 2016 by 237 to 163, with six Democrats voting in favor and no Republicans voting against.
The vote is apparently timed to put House members on record once again before Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R.-Fla.), co-chair of the so-called Climate Solutions Caucus, introduces a carbon tax bill he reportedly has been shopping to colleagues, businesses, and environmental groups. [click to continue…]
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to release the proposed Clean Power Plan repeal rule on Tuesday, October 10. Someone leaked the proposal on Friday, October 6. To read it, click here.
On Thursday, July 20, 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on President Trump’s nomination of Kirkland & Ellis attorney Jeffrey Bossert Clark to be Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD).
To help inform public discussion of the nomination, I post below several pertinent documents. [click to continue…]
In a recent letter to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Troutman Sanders attorney Peter Glaser argues that “EPA far understated the effects of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) by exaggerating the amount of coal generation that will retire even without the rule.” Ironically, the smoking gun evidence is in the agency’s updated modeling, which now tallies with U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.
Here’s how the numbers break down.
In EPA’s “base case” for the CPP, the agency assumed that in 2016, almost 20 percent of coal capacity would disappear even if the rule were not adopted, reducing coal generation to 214 gigawatts (GW).
However, EPA’s Cross State Air Pollution Rule Update, published October 26, estimates there will be 268 GW of coal generation in service through the end of 2016.
EPA’s new estimate for 2016 is now roughly in line with Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. EIA’s Electric Power Monthly shows 272 GW of coal capacity in service as of August 2016.
EPA estimates coal generation capacity under the Power Plan will decline to 174-183 GW by 2030 (Regulatory Impact Assessment, Table 3-12).
Bottom line: To comply with the CPP, U.S. coal generation will have to decline by about one third.
On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals released a 320-page transcript of the marathon oral argument on EPA’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emission standards for existing fossil-fuel power plants, the agency’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP).
To my knowledge, the transcript is not available on the Court’s Web site. To make the document more easily accessible to the public, I am pleased to post it on GlobalWarming.Org.
To read/download the oral argument, click on the highlighted text in the first paragraph above.
The public comment period for EPA’s proposed rule titled Clean Energy Incentive Program Design Details closes on September 2, 2016. I intend to submit comments on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other free-market groups. We will argue that EPA has once again exceeded its statutory authority. The gist of the argument is available here and here.
Among other evidence, we will cite regulatory comments that no longer exist on agency Web sites. To ensure those sources have active links, I post several below. But first some background. [click to continue…]
Researchers from Canada, the United States, and India measured the indoor air quality impacts of providing modern “clean cook stoves” to families in southern India. The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) subsidizes the distribution of such devices.
The effectiveness (or lack thereof) of CDM-supported cook stoves to reduce indoor air pollution is a big deal. As the researchers explain:
Burning solid fuel (wood, dung, agricultural residues, and coal) in traditional stoves for cooking and heating negatively affects the health and welfare of nearly 3 billion people, mostly in low and middle-income countries. Household air pollution (HAP) emitted from solid fuel combustion contributed to an estimated 2.9 million premature deaths and 81.1 million disability adjusted life-years in 2013.
The researchers examined indoor air pollution concentrations and fuel use in 187 households in a village in Karnataka, India. About half the households received “clean” stoves, and half–the control group–did not.
The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, is paywall protected. The online journal Phys.Org accurately summarizes the results: “Actual indoor concentrations measured in the field were only moderately lower for the new stoves than for traditional stoves.”
Part of the reason was that “40 percent of families who used a more efficient wood stove as part of the intervention also elected to continue using traditional stoves, which they preferred for making staple dishes such as roti bread. That duplication erased many of the hoped-for efficiency and pollution improvements.” Those households “stacked” new and old stoves instead of replacing the old with the new. See the image at the top right corner of the page.
The climate benefit of the CDM-financed “intervention” was also nil. As Phys.Org reports:
Laboratory studies suggested that the more efficient, cleaner-burning stoves could reduce a family’s fuelwood consumption by up to 67 percent, thereby reducing household air pollution and deforestation. In practice, there was no statistically significant difference in fuel consumption between families who used the new stoves and families who continued to cook over open fires or traditional stoves.
Moreover, the “clean” cook stoves actually “increased the proportion” of household emissions composed of black carbon, a strong warming agent that darkens and melts Arctic ice.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) today released its final guidance on how federal agencies should consider climate change effects in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews of their proposed actions.
NEPA is the landmark 1969 statute requiring federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts 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.”
This being the Age of Global Warming, when all things are to be measured by their carbon footprints and all policies judged by their conformity to the climate agenda, the Obama administration’s push to elevate climate concerns in NEPA reviews was a foregone conclusion.
CEQ’s fact sheet claims the final guidance “provides a level of predictability and certainty by outlining how Federal agencies can describe these impacts by quantifying greenhouse gas emissions when conducting NEPA reviews.” On the contrary, the NEPA process already empowers NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) and anti-energy activists to delay and block development projects with immense economic benefits and immeasurably small, hypothetical climate effects. The guidance will increase the role of climate politics, with all their irrationality and rancor, in NEPA reviews. [click to continue…]
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