Last month, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) suspended wildlife biologist Charles Monnett, who is being investigated by the Department of Interior’s (DOI’s) inspector general (IG). Monnett is the lead author of a 2006 study (linking loss of Arctic sea ice to the first documented finding of drowned polar bears. The paper helped galvanize support for DOI’s listing of the bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Al Gore touted the study in An Inconvenient Truth.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) condemned the IG investigation as a “witch hunt” (Greenwire, Aug. 10, 2011, subscription required). Last week, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Greenpeace sent a letter to DOI Secretary Ken Salazar accusing BOEMRE of trying to muzzle scientists whose research may impede the granting of permits to drill for oil and gas in the bear’s Arctic habitat.
The transcript of the IG’s February 23, 2011 interrogation of Monnett shows that the IG “sent agents with no scientific training to ask decidedly unscientific questions about bizarre allegations relating to the polar bear paper,” CBD and Greenpeace contend. I can’t help but agree. What’s going on? [click to continue…]
Earlier this week, Politico published an op-ed by former Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell (1989-1995) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly (1989-1993) that is as intellectually mushy as it is politically devious.
In “Calif. Must Again Lead Way on Emission Standards,” Mitchell and Reilly pretend that the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) proposal to establish a 62 mpg fuel economy standard is the moderate middle between automakers who “protest that the proposal is too demanding” and environmentalists who “want something more stringent.” Horsefeathers!
In September 2010, CARB, EPA, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued an Interim Joint Technical Assessment Report where they considered raising the passenger car fuel economy standard from 35.5 mpg in 2016 to 47 mpg, 51 mpg, 56 mpg, or 62 mpg in 2025.
Let’s not forget that the 2016 standard imposed by EPA, CARB, and NHTSA accelerated by four years the standard Congress set in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which was itself 27% more stringent than the previous standard (27.5 mpg). In May 2011, the Auto Alliance, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration assessment (p. 26), cautioned EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that a 62 mpg standard would depress auto sales in 2025 by 14%. Team Obama subsequently settled on a 56 mpg standard. That’s a tad less extreme than the 62 mpg standard championed by CARB, but it’s still over the top.
A remarkable study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) — The U.S. Automotive Market and Industry in 2025 (June 2011) — reveals how cockamamie these proposals are. [click to continue…]
Yesterday’s UK Guardian reports that a “special meeting” of the United Nations (UN) Security Council is “due to consider whether to expand its mission to keep the peace in an era of climate change.”
This was inevitable. With the Cold War many years behind us, and only a few important regional wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) going on, the Security Council needs some kind of permanent, global crisis to justify its existence. Mission Creep thy name is Climate Change. [click to continue…]
Today, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on “The Future of Natural Gas.” There were no partisan or ideological fireworks. The expert witnesses were Howard Gruenspecht (U.S. Energy Information Administration), Ernest Moniz (MIT), and George Blitz (Dow Chemical).
Moniz argued the environmental risks associated with natural gas were “challenging but manageable.” Blitz sounded a note of caution. Industry uses natural gas both as a feedstock and as a manufacturing fuel. Policy-driven increases in natural gas demand due to, for example, a Clean Energy Standard, EPA’s Utility MACT Rule, or tax incentives for natural gas vehicles could do what high gas prices did in the early 2000s — close factories and offshore jobs. I may blog on their testimonies later on.
Gruenspecht’s testimony provides a valuable primer on natural gas production, demand, reserves, and trends. This post excerpts some of the key facts and figures he presented.
[click to continue…]
Major automakers’ production plans for electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs and PHEVs) “are far below sales targets set by countries,” announced the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a press release accompanying the agency’s newly updated Electric Vehicle Roadmap report.
Major manufacturer production plans add up to 0.9 million units by 2015 and 1.4 million annually by 2020. In contrast, governments have set sales targets of 1.5 million units by 2015 and 7 million annually by 2020.
Evidently, policymakers have mis-underestimated (as a former President might say) market demand for EVs and PHEVs. The gap between production plans and political targets would be larger still without political props for those vehicles such as a federal tax credit up to $7,500 and billions in federal R&D support.
IEA believes more incentives and R&D — including coordinated federal, state, and local support for re-charging infrastructure — will do the trick. Now there’s a big surprise!
Yesterday’s edition of Greenwire features an amazing column on cellulosic biofuels by reporter Paul Voosen. It’s got interviews with leading researchers, industrial history going back to WWII, science, economics, and the narrative suspense of a detective story.
Voosen’s main point: Despite substantial private and public investment, there have been “no Eureka moments” in the “long U.S. campaign” to scale up Nature’s digestive processes (found in fungi and the guts of termites, cows, dung beetles, and other fauna) to break down cellulose and create affordable alcohol fuels from prairie grasses, wood wastes, and other fibrous plant materials.
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Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2012 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that would block EPA from using any funds to:
- Develop greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles and vehicle engines manufactured after the 2016 model year; and
- Consider or grant a Clean Air Act waiver allowing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to establish GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles and vehicle engines manufactured after the 2016 model year.
Capital Alpha Partners, LLC, a firm providing political and policy risk analysis to institutional investors, rightly notes that the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Steve Austria (R-Ohio), could “shift the debate over fuel economy standards and pressure the administration to soften its 56.2 mpg target floated two weeks ago.” In addition, the measure “would slice two of the three currently-involved agencies [EPA and CARB] out of the rule-making loop,” leaving fuel economy regulation to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), “the one agency seen as ‘most reasonable’ by industry and other observers.”
Capital Alpha reckons the measure “has a 25% chance of enactment into law this year.” If enacted as part of the one-year EPA funding bill, the measure would expire on September 30, 2012. “However,” says Capital Alpha, “should it make it into law, opponents would be hard-pressed to strip it out in future years.” An exciting prospect for liberty-loving Americans! [click to continue…]
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