William Yeatman

Election Exegesis: Cap-and-Trade Hurts

by William Yeatman on November 3, 2010

in Blog

House Democrats who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill were big losers in the congressional elections. Approximately thirty Democrats who voted for Waxman-Markey were defeated. This does not include Democratic losses in open seats in which the incumbent chose not to run for-re-election.

Representative Rick Boucher, a senior fourteen-term Democrat from Virginia’s coal district (the 9th), negotiated the deal that led to passage of Waxman-Markey by a 219-212 vote on June 26, 2009. Boucher lost and took many coal-state Democrats with him.

“One of the clearest messages voters sent last night was a repudiation of cap-and-trade and other policies to raise energy prices,” said Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment.

Other House Democrats who voted for Waxman-Markey and lost include: Betsy Markey in Colorado; Alan Grayson, Allen Boyd, Suzanne Kosmas, and Ron Klein in Florida; Debbie Halvorson and Phil Hare in Illinois; Baron Hill in Indiana; Frank Kratovil in Maryland; Mark Schauer in Michigan; James Oberstar in Minnesota; Ike Skelton in Missouri; Dina Titus in Nevada; Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire; John Adler in New Jersey; Harry Teague in New Mexico; John Hall, Michael McMahon, and Scott Murphy in New York; Bob Etheridge in North Carolina; Zack Space, John Boccieri, Steve Driehaus, and Mary Jo Kilroy in Ohio; Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania; John Spratt in South Carolina; Tom Perriello in Virginia; and Steve Kagen in Wisconsin.

Smart Grid: The Biggest Rip-Off in Contemporary Energy Policy (Besides Ethanol)

by William Yeatman on November 2, 2010

in Blog

According to the AP, an administrative judge last week capped at $45 million the cost-overruns of Xcel’s “Smart Grid City” demonstration project in Boulder, Colorado. I haven’t been following this particular project, but I have been tracking similar cases in other cities, and I assure you, smart grid is the biggest rip-off in contemporary energy policy (after ethanol).

Ask anyone what a “smart grid” is, and you’ll get a different answer every time. In Boulder, it’s a fiber optical network. In Baltimore, it’s a “ZigBee” local area network. In Oklahoma City, it’s GE Smart Meters. They all were spawned of the stimulus, which showered more than $3 billion to utilities across the country to subsidize any boondoggle that called itself “smart grid.”

This is the sort of social policy that makes regulated utilities salivate. It’s ill-defined and capital intensive. Moreover, it promises to grow, like the blob. Today, it’s scores of millions of dollars of cost overruns in Boulder; tomorrow, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars in Denver.

And for what? Smart grid is a means to an end–namely, “demand side management.” The idea is to “manage” energy demand by, say, remotely adjusting thermostats in the homes of hundreds of thousands of utility customers , so as to draw down demand and avoid taxing the electricity grid. With smart grid technologies, your local utility can become your Big Brother.

There is, of course, a much easier way to “manage” demand: Price electricity what it costs.  Energy consumers would voluntarily reduce consumption during periods of high demand, because they would have an incentive (higher prices) to do so.

Unfortunately, local politicians have every incentive to maintain control over the price of electricity. After all, energy is the “master-resource,” so controlling its cost is a powerful political chip. Hence, the allure of “demand side management.” It affords local politicians control over the price of electricity AND control over demand. That way, they can avoid the inimical effects of price controls by controlling demand (that is, by controlling your thermostat). The losers, naturally, are the consumers, who must shoulder the added costs and inefficiencies inherent to a “managed” market.

Cooler Heads Digest 29 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2010

in Blog, Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Prop 23 and the Green Jobs Myth
T. J. Rodgers, Wall Street Journal, 29 October 2010

Prop 23 Puts Jobs before Wishful Thinking
Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 October 2010

Prop 23 Is All about Saving the California Economy
Ben Boychuck, Planet Gore, 29 October 2010

Should States Step up on Climate?
Myron Ebell, Politico Energy Arena, 28 October 2010

Robust Economy Needs Affordable Energy
David Kreutzer, The Foundry, 28 October 2010

Schwarzenegger Is a Climate Cuckoo, Not A Climate Hawk
William Yeatman, GlobalWarming.org, 28 October 2010

Climategate: Did Jones Delete Emails?
Stephen McIntyre, Climate Audit, 27 October 2010

Daniel Greenberg Meets the Climate Scientists
Roger Pielke Jr, Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog, 27 October 2010

More “Green Jobs” Success for Obama’s Models
Chris Horner, American Spectator, 26 October 2010

Can the Endangered Species Act Force De-Industrialization?
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 25 October 2010

The Green Crusade against Cars
Clifford Atiyeh, Boston Globe, 24 October 2010

News You Can Use

According to a new North American Electric Reliability Corporation report released this week, the United States could lose 7 percent of its electric capacity due to pending EPA regulations on coal-fired power plants. The shutdowns could threaten grid reliability in the northeast.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Elections: Running from Cap-and-Trade

Campaigns often become annoying as election day approaches, but they do have the benefit of sucking all the energy out of Washington.  Congress has been out for a month to allow Members to campaign, and even the agencies tend to go silent just before an election for fear that announcing some new rule or policy could become a damaging campaign issue.

But when Washington springs alive again after next Tuesday, it will be a city transformed by the election results.  Even if the rout of House and Senate Democrats occurs precisely as predicted (minus 50 House seats and 7 Senate seats is the average guess; here is a typical forecast), it will all look and feel different after it has happened than in anticipating it.

While the reactions to big election swings are often surprising, one thing that is absolutely clear already is that cap-and-trade has been a significant issue in the campaign and that cap-and-trade will be totally dead after November 2nd.  Every Republican incumbent and challenger is running against cap-and-trade.  Most are running against global warming alarmism.  House Democrats who voted against the Waxman-Markey bill are featuring that vote in their campaigns.  Only a handful of the more than 200 Democrats who voted to pass Waxman-Markey in 2009 are even mentioning it in their campaigns.

Cap-and-trade is especially potent as an issue in coal country.  In West Virginia, it has become so toxic that Governor Joe Manchin (D) revived his Senate campaign against John Raese by running a television ad in which he shoots a copy of one of the Senate cap-and-trade bills.   Rep. Nick Joe Rahall (D-WV)), the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, voted against Waxman-Markey, but is now in the race of his life against a challenger, Elliott Maynard, who is scoring points with voters by arguing that Rahall’s opposition was weak and that he in effect supports cap-and-trade because he voted for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Speaker.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) is in even worse shape in his nearby district in Virginia.  Boucher put the interests of his party ahead of the interests of his coal-mining district when he made a deal and rounded up the votes necessary to pass Waxman-Markey on June 26, 2009.  In 2008, Boucher didn’t have a Republican opponent.  This year Morgan Griffith appears to be running a very close race. Boucher’s loss would send an unmistakable signal to congressional candidates in energy-producing and energy-using manufacturing districts for many elections to come.

Across the States

California Releases Cap-and-Trade Energy Rationing Plan

The California Air Resources Board this afternoon released a cap-and-trade regulation. The release begins a public comment period culminating in a December 16 public hearing in Sacramento, California, at which the Board will consider adopting the proposed program. Click here for a two-page summary of the plan.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

Schwarzenegger Is a Climate Cuckoo, Not a Climate Hawk

by William Yeatman on October 28, 2010

in Blog

Last week, David Roberts at Grist coined the phrase “Climate Hawk,” to describe “people who understand climate change and support clean energy but do not share the rest of the ideological and sociocultural commitments that define environmentalism as historically understood in the U.S.”

Of course, a “hawk” in political jargon has long referred to policymakers who are bullish on the use of military might to advance American interests. The national security overtones are meant to impart a seriousness to global warming alarmists otherwise conflated with hippy-dippy granola environmentalists. According to Andrew Leonard at Salon, Roberts’s term is “a brilliant jiujitsu move of rhetorical framing.”

Roberts’s new meme was adopted quickly by the green journo beat. Today, for example, both Joe Romm (of Climate Progress) and Brad Johnson (at the Center for American Progress) refer to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Climate Hawk in the wake of a recent interview he did with Diane Sawyer, in which he said,

“We need to go to Washington and say, “Look what happened. You, because oil companies have spent money against you, they have threatened you, you backed off the energy policy and the environmental policy in Washington.” What wimps. No guts. I mean, here, you idolize and always celebrate the great warriors, our soldiers, our men and women who go to Iraq and Afghanistan, and they’re risking their lives to defend this country, and you’re not even willing to stand up against the oil companies?”

Those are tough words, but are they appropriate? After all, Schwarzenegger hasn’t actually implemented any difficult climate policies. Indeed, AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, doesn’t kick in until after the Governor leaves office. Moreover, Schwarzenegger in 2007 actually tried to delay early action climate policies under AB 32, in order to protect the construction industry, which had been a big donor to his 2006 reelection campaign. What “guts” has the Governator evinced?

Rather than “climate hawk,” a more appropriate bird metaphor for Arnold Schwarzenegger is “Climate Cuckoo.” The Cuckoo is a parasitic bird that lays its eggs in other nests, in order to be reared by other birds. That’s a pretty good parallel for what the California Governor is doing with respect to climate policy. He helped birth a climate law full of sacrifice that his successor will have to shoulder.

Alarmist PR Campaign Disguised as Art Exhibit in London

by William Yeatman on October 28, 2010

in Blog

Global warming alarmism long has marred energy politics; now, it is blemishing the art world.

According to a story in today’s Guardian,

Wind turbines lining the Mall; a shanty town at the foot of Nelson’s column; the Thames frozen under Tower Bridge; and a nuclear power station in Kew gardens. These are some of the artistic visions of a future London loosely inspired by the predictions of climate science.

The provocative images are part of the Museum of London’s London Futures show, a series of 14 photomotage pictures exploring how the capital might be affected by global warming.

This “art” is the work of Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones, who work at London-based communications company GMJ. That is, it was created by a PR company, no doubt funded by deep-pocketed environmentalist organizations. Which begs the question: Why is the prestigious Museum of London presenting an alarmist PR-campaign as art?

Insightful Lecture by Czech President Vaclav Klaus

by William Yeatman on October 26, 2010

in Blog

Czech President Vaclav Klaus last week gave the inaugural annual lecture at The Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. To watch Klaus’s lecture, titled “The Climate Change Doctrine,” click here. To read a transcript, click here. President Klaus wrote a related oped (“An Anti-Human Ideology“) in the National Post.

It Could Happen Here

by William Yeatman on October 25, 2010

in Blog

In 2007, the Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed a law that guaranteed solar power producers a price for power more than 10 times the 2007 average wholesale price paid to conventional energy suppliers. The generous subsidies sparked a rush to solar, and taxpayer costs mounted. Today, the government owes $172 billion to renewable energy investors, but it doesn’t have the means to meet its obligations in the face of rising budget deficits. As a result, more than 50,000 other Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster.

Cooler Heads Digest 22 October 2010

by William Yeatman on October 22, 2010

in Blog, Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Biofuels or Bust?
Brian McGraw, Detroit News, 22 October 2010

Can the Endangered Species Act Compel America To De-Industrialize?
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 22 October 2010

Eight-Tenths of a Degree? Think of the Grandchildren!
Willis Eschenbach, WattsUpWithThat, 22 October 2010

Shock! Green-Posing Hollywood Hypocrite
Chris Horner, American Spectator, 21 October 2010

Pop Went the Climate Bubble
Steven Milloy, Human Events, 21 October 2010

Chunk It or Chuck It
Marita Noon, GlobalWarming.org, 21 October 2010

Restore the Balance between Energy and Environment
Washington Examiner editorial, 21 October 2010

The All-Electric Car: Think 132 Year Payback
Patrick Barron, MasterResource.org, 19 October 2010

The EPA’s Odd View of Consumer Choice
Patrick Michaels, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 17 October 2010

Renewables Will Add $1400 to Power Bills
Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, 16 October 2010

California Could Feel Spain’s Pain
Gabriel Calzada, Orange County Register, 15 October 2010

Global Warming Propagandist Shot Down
Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 14 October 2010

News You Can Use

Insightful Lecture by Czech President Vaclav Klaus

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Monday gave the inaugural annual lecture at The Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. To watch Klaus’s lecture, titled “The Climate Change Doctrine,” click here. To read a transcript, click here. President Klaus wrote a related oped (“An Anti-Human Ideology“) in the National Post.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Obama Convinces Wealthy Voters

President Barack Obama is still talking about how his policies are creating a new green energy economy, but he is aiming the message at smaller and smaller audiences.  On Thursday night he appeared at a $30,000 a plate fundraiser at the Palo Alto home of Google Vice President Marissa Mayer and her husband, Zachary Bogue, a real estate investor.  The San Francisco Chronicle reported the President’s brief remarks: “‘We’re taking on clean energy in ways that we haven’t seen before,’ made the largest investment in clean energy in history, and ‘we’re seeing solar panels and wind turbines’ all across the country, he said.”

The people who can get excited about the President’s vision are restricted to a relatively few wealthy individuals who are becoming wealthier from government subsidies and mandates for such things as solar panels and wind turbines.  No doubt, several were in the audience in Palo Alto.  The message doesn’t resonate as well with the vast majority being victimized by these redistributionist policies.  That’s why the President is spending less time talking to the public and more time talking to big donors to the Democratic Party, who are getting their money’s worth from this Administration.

EPA Moves Ahead with Economy-Wrecking Regs

Robin Bravender in Politico reports that the Environmental Protection Agency will propose new rules for greenhouse gas emissions from big trucks and buses next week.  According to Dan Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign, EPA is going to require a 20% cut in emissions by 2018.  Bravender reports that Becker considers this goal too modest.  He favors 35%.

It is not clear how freight trucks are going to be re-engineered to comply.  It is clearly already in the interests of truck manufacturers and the freight industry to make trucks as fuel efficient as possible.  Perhaps with our new slimmer economy, they can just haul 20% less freight.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson also told reporters this week that the guidance document on what industry must do to comply with the Clean Air Act’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by stationary sources (such as power plants) will be released shortly.  EPA plans to start requiring PSD (Prevention of Significant Deterioration) permits from large emitters on January 1, 2011, so the several-month delay in issuing the guidance document is likely to create a regulatory mess in the new year.

Across the States

Ben Lieberman

Megabucks Behind Effort To Stop Prop 23

Green activists and allied rent seekers like to portray themselves as the underdogs against big business in their environmental causes.  The battle over Proposition 23 – the California ballot measure to suspend the state’s global warming law until unemployment is under control – is certainly no exception.    But they have David and Goliath backwards here; those spending to defeat the measure and keep California cap and tax in place have outgunned supporters of reform by at least 3 to 1.

Compared to the $9 million or so in favor of Prop 23, including most from oil companies, the $28 million to kill this measure has gotten relatively little attention.   Only a minor percentage of this amount has come in the form of small contributions from regular Californians – little wonder since it is defending a global warming policy that would drive up fossil fuel costs and kill jobs just as a similar policy has done in Spain. In fact, most of the money has come in the form of six and seven figure contributions from big environmental groups, Hollywood bigshots, and, most disturbingly, opportunists like venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, who hope to secure a guaranteed market selling alternative energy and vehicles far too expensive to compete otherwise.

Around the World

It Could Happen Here, Part 1

In 2007, the Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed a law that guaranteed solar power producers a price for power more than 10 times the 2007 average wholesale price paid to conventional energy suppliers. The generous subsidies sparked a rush to solar, and taxpayer costs mounted. Today, the government owes $172 billion to renewable energy investors, but it doesn’t have the means to meet its obligations in the face of rising budget deficits. As a result, more than 50,000 other Spanish solar entrepreneurs face financial disaster.

It Could Happen Here, Part 2

Next year Germany’s renewable energy tax will increase to 3.5 cents/kWh. For comparison, that’s more that’s 30% of the average kWh price paid by Americans.

The Cooler Heads Digest is the weekly e-mail publication of the Cooler Heads Coalition. For the latest news and commentary, check out the Coalition’s website, www.GlobalWarming.org.

Saving the Polar Bear or Obama’s CO2 Agenda?

by William Yeatman on October 21, 2010

in Blog

This afternoon I attended an informative panel, “Saving the Polar Bear or Obama’s CO2 Agenda?,” on how the Endangered Species Act is easily manipulated by environmentalist lawyers intent on gumming up economic activity. The panel was videotaped, so you can see it for yourself at the Heritage Foundation’s website. If, however, you don’t have an hour, then here are the highlights:

  • Robert Gordon of the Heritage Foundation cited the Iowa Pleistocene snail. Seemingly, the snail is a smashing success story. It was listed as an endangered species in 1978, and after implementing protections, the snail recovered. Indeed, it far-exceeded the criteria first set out to de-list. Nonetheless, the Obama administration upgraded its peril. Why? Because, the Obama administration says, the snail is threatened “in the long term” by global warming! This example supported Mr. Gordon’s conclusion, that the Endangered Species Act is a “tool for those that wish to constrict economic activity.”
  • The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s R.J. Smith questioned which section of the Constitution authorizes the government to favor animals and insects over humans. He joked that the 3rd amendment prohibits the government from forcing Americans to quarter soldiers, yet the Endangered Species Act can force Americans to give quarter to snails.
  • I asked Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation to flesh out the regulatory consequences of listing the polar bear as an endangered species due to climate change, and his response was sobering. According to Mr. Hopper, a citizen suit provision of the Endangered Species Act means that anyone could sue anyone for harming the polar bear by emitting greenhouse gases. He said it would be “unprecedented.”

China Entering “Demand Super Cycle” for Coal

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2010

in Blog

In a story today about the surging profits of Peabody Energy (a major American coal producer), Climatewire (subscription required) quoted Peabody Chairman and CEO Gregory Boyce as saying that coal is entering a “demand super cycle” due to exploding Chinese growth. According to Mr. Boyce, “China now forecasts that 290 gigawatts of coal-fueled generation will come online from 2011 to 2015.” He calls the demographic trends in China “overwhelming.”

Two quick snap responses:

  1. There’s a silly meme being bandied about by the mainstream media that China is winning some sort of green energy great game with America. In fact, China is building two coal fired power plants every three weeks, while in the U.S., environmentalist lawyers recently celebrated the scuttling of 100 coal fired plants. We are losing an energy game with China, but the prize isn’t green energy. Rather, it’s affordable, reliable energy. They are building it. We aren’t.
  2. Peabody is looking for a west coast port to increase the export of low cost coal from Wyoming to China. That is, China is welcoming the coal our country is spurning. As a result, we are heading towards a future where the U.S. buys expensive green energy from China (because it is cheaper to manufacture there), while China buys cheap coal from the U.S. Guess whose energy future is more promising?

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