Above is a screenshot from Wednesday’s Bloomberg News. The headline suggests that green energy is a white knight poised to save the U.K. from rolling blackouts. However, the body of the article states nothing of the sort. Below is the story’s actual thesis:
[Government science advisor Sir David] King said power outages [in the United Kingdom] could occur as early as 2017 as old nuclear, oil and coal-fired power stations are closed because not enough is being done to replace them. The school’s study shows Britain can’t meet its goal of cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050 without ramping up nuclear power and electrifying both transport and heating.
The comments contrast with findings by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which last month concluded that growth in renewable energy will prevent the U.K. from suffering an electricity crisis. Britain will build more than 30 gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2016, two-thirds of it in solar, wind and biomass and the rest largely fired by natural gas, according to the researcher.
Oppose Amendment 1782 to the Transportation Bill
March 13, 2012
Dear Senator:
Our groups have diverse missions and different ideas about the role of government. But we join together to urge you to oppose Senate Amendment 1782 to the Transportation bill currently being debated on the floor. This amendment would attach S. 1863, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions or NAT GAS Act to the bill. By providing billions in tax subsidies, the NAT GAS Act interferes in the marketplace to favor natural gas over other transportation and energy technologies that may be more cost-effective or sustainable.
The NAT GAS Act provides significant subsidies for natural gas at all levels of production– from manufacturing and infrastructure to consumer tax credits– carrying an estimated $5 billion price tag. It includes a tax credit for up to 80 percent of the marginal cost of buying a natural gas vehicle–up to $64,000 for the heaviest trucks, an infrastructure tax credit for 50 percent of the cost of a fueling station—up to $100,000, and a manufacturing tax credit for the production of natural gas vehicles. While a consumer fee would be used as an offset over the long-term, the fee does not even begin phase in until 2014, sticking taxpayers with the immediate fiscal impacts.
Again we urge you to prevent the siphoning of billions of dollars to the natural gas industry. Oppose S.A. 1782 to the Transportation Bill.
Sincerely,
Taxpayers for Common Sense
Freedom Action
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Americans for Prosperity
Greenpeace
Friends of the Earth
The Heartland Institute
Earthworks
Food and Water Watch
Western Organization of Research Councils
Senate Takes Up Highway Bill; Pickens Payoff Plan Hangs in the Balance
A logjam on the highway bill broke loose Wednesday afternoon when a unanimous consent agreement was reached in the Senate. The agreement provided for votes on twenty germane amendments and ten non-germane amendments, equally divided between amendments offered by Democrats and Republicans.
Voting on the non-germane amendments, which require a sixty-vote supermajority to pass, commenced at just after 2 PM on Thursday, 8th March. A number of the amendments concern energy policies.
First up was Senator David Vitter’s (R-La.) amendment (#1535) to require more oil and gas drilling in federal offshore areas. It failed on a vote of 46 to 42. Senator Susan Collins’s (R-Me.) amendment (#1660) to delay the EPA’s job-killing Boiler MACT Rule was defeated on a 52 to 46 vote.
The major drama of the day was provided by two very different amendments on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) offered an amendment (#1817) that would further delay permitting the 1700-mile pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in the Gulf States. It would also ban any oil moving through the pipeline from being exported. This is truly goofy, as my CEI colleague Marlo Lewis explains here. Wyden’s amendment was defeated overwhelmingly, 34 to 64.
Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) then offered amendment #1537 that would permit the Keystone XL pipeline upon enactment of the legislation. The amendment failed on a 56 to 42 vote.
Eleven Democrats voted yes on the Hoeven amendment. Two Republicans, Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who is recovering from a stroke, and John Thune (R-SD), missed all the votes. Assuming they both would have voted yes on the Hoeven amendment, support in the Senate to approve the Keystone pipeline is getting close to the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural obstacles.
The amendment might even have passed without some last minute lobbying by President Barack Obama. Politico reported and the White House confirmed that the President called several Senators to urge them to vote no on Keystone.
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President Barack Obama’s slide into daffy irrelevance continued this week. In yet another speech on what he’s doing to lower gas prices, the President proposed raising the federal subsidy for buying an electric vehicle from $7,500 to $10,000. And instead of a tax credit, the President wants to give electric vehicle buyers the $10,000 up front at time of purchase.
This should get the cost-to-buyer of new Teslas and Fiskers below $100,000. Dozens or even scores of new electric cars will no doubt be zooming out of showrooms if the Congress enacts President Obama’s proposal. And low-to-middle income Americans struggling to fill their tanks with $3.75 gas can take satisfaction knowing that their tax dollars are doing so much good.
President Barack Obama’s frantic efforts to deflect blame for rising gasoline prices continued this week and became even more incoherent and contradictory. Following up his speech on energy policy last week at the University of Miami in Florida, on 1st March the President spoke at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire.
President Obama repeated some of the same points that he made in Miami, but dropped any mention of the promising research in using algae to produce biofuels. He took credit for increasing domestic oil and gas production, but argued that “…anybody who tells you that we can just drill our way out of this problem does not know what they’re talking about or they’re not telling you the truth. (Applause.) One or the other.”
According to the President, that’s because the United States consumes 20% of the world’s oil production, but has only 2% of the reserves. “And no matter what we do, it’s not going to get much above 3 percent.” This is a simple misunderstanding that anyone who knows anything about oil statistics could correct. The U. S. has only 2% of the world’s proven reserves. The U. S. also has more areas of high potential reserves that haven’t been explored than any other country. Until those areas are explored, the oil that they possibly contain is not included in the estimate of proven economically recoverable reserves.
The President went so far in taking credit for recent increases in U. S. oil production that he had a chart handed out to those attending his Nashua speech. As has been pointed out repeatedly, increasing domestic oil and natural gas production has come entirely from private lands. Production from federal lands and Outer Continental Shelf areas has declined and is forecast to continue to decline as a result of Obama Administration policies.
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House Passes Energy Bill That Includes ANWR and Keystone Pipeline
The House of Representatives voted on Thursday evening, 16th February, for a package of four energy bills that if enacted will greatly expand U. S. oil and natural gas production on federal lands and the Outer Continental Shelf plus permit the Keystone XL pipeline. The omnibus energy bill, H. R. 3408, passed by a vote of 237 to 187. Twenty-one Democrats voted yes, and twenty-one Republicans voted no.
The most significant provision would require the Department of the Interior to open a small portion of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska’s North Slope to oil and gas exploration. Producing oil in ANWR has been an issue since Congress enlarged the Refuge in 1980 and allowed oil production in the coastal plain subject to a report from the Department of the Interior that it could be done without compromising the Refuge’s purpose of protecting wildlife. That report was issued in 1986. The Congress passed legislation in 1995 to open ANWR, but President Bill Clinton vetoed it. The House and Senate passed different bills opening ANWR in 2005, but couldn’t agree on the same bill.
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House Ratchets Up Probe of White House Involvement in Solyndra Scandal
Fourteen Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) sent a strongly-worded, five-page letter to the White House on 9th February setting a 21st February deadline for turning over documents related to the White House’s involvement in the Solyndra scandal. The letter also demands that five officials be made available for interviews by 17th February.
The letter notes that the Committee requested the relevant documents five months ago and has made every effort to accommodate the White House’s concerns. As to the reasons why the White House has refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena last fall, the letter notes that the White House has not claimed executive privilege for the withheld documents and demands that if executive privilege is going to be claimed the White House must let the committee know by 21st February.
The Department of Energy made the first renewable energy loan under the 2009 stimulus bill to solar panel maker Solyndra, which is based in Fremont, California. The entire $527 million of taxpayer money was lost in August when Solyndra declared bankruptcy. The largest private investor in Solyndra, George Kaiser, is a major Obama and Democratic Party donor and fundraiser and has been a frequent visitor to the White House during the Obama presidency.
I and several of my CEI colleagues were looking forward to an informal debate late Friday afternoon on energy policy sponsored by McKinsey and Company, the global consulting firm. As part of their “Drinks and Debate” series, McKinsey’s Washington, DC office invited David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation and Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress’s Climate Progress blog to make some remarks and then take questions from an audience of around 40 people representing all shades of the political spectrum. It sounded like a lot of fun because Romm often seems enraged and slightly deranged in his frequent blog posts, but unfortunately Romm cancelled at the last minute. Our host explained that Romm had pulled out without giving a reason and that his side of the debate would be represented by a bottle of Corona Light. It was still fun: David Kreutzer gave an engaging and stimulating presentation, as he always does, and the bottle of Corona Light proved to be more rational and less misleading than Romm.
Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine broke the big story this week that the Sierra Club received over $25 million from the natural gas industry to serve as a corporate shill for the natural gas industry’s attacks on the coal industry. Walsh wrote: “TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past.”
McClendon and Chesapeake Energy several years ago funded a multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the coal industry called “Face it, coal is filthy.” Two months ago, it was revealed that McClendon and Chesapeake had given as much as $100 million to the American Lung Association, one of the most reprehensible of the environmental pressure groups, to fund the ALA’s “Fighting for air” disinformation campaign.
House Natural Resources Committee Votes To Open ANWR and OCS to Oil Production
The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, 1st February, passed three bills to increase oil production on federal lands and offshore areas. The House Republican leadership plans to include the three bills as provisions in the five-year, $260-billion highway bill that was passed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee after a grueling seventeen-hour mark-up that ended at 3 AM on Friday, 3rd February.
H. R. 3407, which passed the committee on a 29 to 13 vote, would open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on Alaska’s North Slope to oil exploration. Three Democrats voted for the bill: Representatives Dan Boren (D-Okla.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), and Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico). No one knows how much oil there may be below ANWR’s coastal plain, but the U. S. Geological Survey estimates recoverable reserves of 11 billion barrels. That is probably a very conservative estimate.
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