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In today’s New York Times (Jan. 25, 2011), reporter Tom Zeller, Jr. reviews Alternative Fuels for Military Applications, a study by the RAND Corporation. He doesn’t mince words:

The United States would derive no meaningful military benefit from increased use of alternative fuels to power its jets, ships and other weapons systems, according to a government-commissioned study by the RAND Corporation scheduled for release Tuesday.

Well, that’s actually pretty obvious. Nobody argues that jets run better on fuel blended with liquids derived from animal waste, seed plants, or algae. Nor do defense planners worry that oil supply disruptions would force the U.S. military to mothball aircraft, ships, or other weapons platforms for lack of home-grown biofuel.

The RAND study [p. 12] goes further:

Ethanol and biodiesel are unsuitable for use in weapon systems. They pose a severe safety risk, reduce performance, unduly complicate fuel delivery and storage, and generate maintenance problems.

The bigger problem, though, as Zeller puts it, is that “most alternative-fuel technologies [are] unproven, too expensive or too far from commercial scale to meet the military’s needs over the next decade.”

This is not exactly the message one hears from top military brass. For example, on Earth Day 2010, Navy Secretary Ray Mablus crowed about the Navy’s experimentation with jet fuel blended from petroleum and camelina (a non-edible plant). Mablus neglected to mention the cost: $65 per gallon — about 30 times more expensive than commercial aviation fuel. (For more details, see “Bio Jet Fuel: the Real $600 Toilet Seat?“) 

The U.S. Armed Forces, or at least the Navy and Air Force, may be too bullish on biofuels to give the RAND report a fair shake. Too bad for us taxpayers. The Air Force, says RAND, “aims to be prepared by 2016 to acquire amounts of alternative fuel blends sufficient to meet 50 percent of its domestic requirements for aviation fuel. Air Force policy clearly specifies that this must be done in a manner that is cost-competitive and emits fewer greenhouse gases than fuels produced from conventional petroleum. Moreover, the alternative fuel component of the blend must be derived from domestic sources.”

Similarly, RAND reports, “In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus committed the Navy and Marine Corps to “creating a Green Strike Group composed of nuclear vessels and ships powered by biofuels” by 2012 and deploying it by 2016. By 2020, at least 50 percent of the energy the Navy consumes is to come from alternative sources.”

These goals probably won’t be met, and can’t be met at reasonable cost: “It is highly uncertain whether appreciable amounts of hydrotreated renewable oils [alternative fuels derived from animal fats, waste, and vegetable matter] can be affordably and cleanly produced within the United States or abroad.” RAND estimates [p. xii] that the “available supply” of animal fats and waste oils “will likely limit production to no more than 30,000 barrels per day.” For perspective, the Department of Defense consumes about 337,000 barrels per day (bpd) of petroleum-based fuel [p. 6]; the U.S. economy consumes about 19 million bpd of petroleum-based fuel.

Similarly, “uncertainties remain” regarding the “commercial viability” of military fuels derived from seed plants:

Jatropha and camelina are often mentioned as ideal plants to meet these requirements, but there exists little evidence to back these claims. Even if low-greenhouse-gas approaches can be established and verified, total fuel production is likely to be limited. Producing just 200,000 barrels per day (about 1 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption) would require an area equal to about 10 percent of the croplands currently under cultivation in the United States. [p. xii]

Many tout algae-based biofuel as the next big thing. However, “Because all methods for liquid fuel production from algae are at early stages of development, lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for commercially produced algae-derived fuels remain uncertain.” [p. 30] In addition, “the commercial prospects of this approach remain highly uncertain.” [p. 78]

The RAND study concludes:

Considering (1) the very limited production potential for fuels derived from animal fats and waste oils, (2) the highly uncertain prospects for affordable, lowgreenhouse-
gas fuels derived from seed crops, and (3) the early development status of algae-based concepts, hydrotreated renewable oils do not constitute a credible, climatefriendly
option for meeting an appreciable fraction of military fuel needs over the next decade. Because of limited production potential, fuels derived from animal fats, waste
oils, and seed oils will never have a significant role in the larger domestic commercial marketplace. Algae-derived fuels might, but technology development challenges suggest
that algae-derived fuels will not constitute an important fraction of the commercial fuel market until well beyond the next decade.

On December 23, 2010, one day before the Yuletide season when Members of Congress, the media, and Tea Party activists are least likely to watchdog the federal bureaucracy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced rulemakings to establish New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and refineries. Or maybe “whispered” would be more accurate.

If you didn’t read the text of EPA’s press release and just skimmed the headline, you would not know the agency had just launched the next phase of its greenhouse gas regulatory program. The release carried this bland and uninformative title:  “EPA to Set Modest Pace for Greenhouse Gas Standards/Agency stresses flexibility and public input in developing cost-effective and protective GHG standards for largest emitters.”

Then on Dec. 30, with public attention still diverted by holiday celebration, EPA published two proposed settlement agreements in the Federal Register outlining the agency’s plans to establish GHG performance standards for utility steam electric generating units and petroleum refineries. The proposed agreements are between EPA and a gaggle of State, municipal, and environmental litigants.

In a recent (Jan. 19, 2011) Alert, VanNess Feldman, a law firm specializing in environmental issues, explains the significance of this under-reported development:

These new regulations have potentially broader reach and impact than the New Source Review (NSR) greenhouse gas rules that became effective on January 2, 2011 under the “Tailoring Rule” timetable. Most notably, the NSPS, notwithstanding their name, can reach not only new and modified facilities but also existing facilities.

Unlike NSR “best available control technology” (BACT) standards, which are determined on a case-by-case basis for each new or modified “major emitting facility,” NSPS standards apply in advance to all new or modified major emitters within specific industrial categories. What’s more, as the Alert explains, EPA working with State environmental agencies can apply NSPS to existing, non-modified sources.

The Clean Air Act’s NSPS provisions—which require EPA to set industry-specific performance standards for facilities that emit significant quantities of certain air pollutants—include separate tracks for new and modified facilities (section 111(b)) and existing facilities (section 111(d)). Under section 111(b), EPA directly establishes NSPS for new and modified facilities. Section 111(d), by contrast, establishes a cooperative federal-state process under which EPA first establishes “emissions guidelines” for facilities in the relevant category.

These guidelines are then translated by states into enforceable performance standards for facilities within their boundaries. States may apply less stringent standards or longer compliance schedules if they demonstrate that following the federal guidelines is unreasonably cost-prohibitive, physically impossible, or that there are other factors that reasonably preclude meeting the guidelines. States may also impose more stringent standards or shorter compliance schedules in appropriate cases.

EPA, in cahoots with the usual pro-Kyoto State attorneys general and eco-litigation groups, is engaged in an end-run around democracy. The Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. The statute does not even mention “greenhouse gases” or the “greenhouse effect.” The Act as amended in 1990 does include the terms “carbon dioxide” and “global warming potential” — but only in the context of non-regulatory provisions, and in each instance followed by a caveat instructing EPA not to jump to regulatory conclusions. That admonitory language would have no legal effect, and would have been pointless for Congress to include, if, as the Supreme Court mistakenly opined in Massachusetts v. EPA, the agency has separate authority under other provisions to ‘enact’ regulatory global warming policy.

The longer Congress tolerates this usurpation of legislative power, the harder it will be to stop, because firms that spend millions of dollars to comply with a regulation may gain little from its repeal. They may even acquire a vested interest in preserving the rule as a barrier to entry if it hobbles upstarts less able to bear the expense. Moreover, the proposed rulemakings are just step one of a broader campaign to establish GHG performance standards for numerous industrial categories such as steel plants, cement production facilities, and paper mills.

Things are moving swiftly. Under the proposed settlement agreements, EPA will propose NSPS rules for power plants by July 26, 2011 and finalize them by May 26, 2012, and propose NSPS rules for refineries by December 10, 2011, and finalize them by November 10, 2012. If the Tea Party Congress means to stop EPA from Kyotoizing America, it must do so in the very near future.

President Barack Obama frequently has cited the supposed success of the Spanish solar power market in order to justify the scores of billions of dollars of taxpayer money that his administration has given to the U.S. renewable energy industry. The President might want to rethink this allusion. A report last week estimates that the Spanish solar industry has lost more than 30,000 jobs since 2008, due to the rollback of solar subsidies.

The BP Deepwater Horizon Spill Commission report is out and its recommendations would spell bad news both for energy industry jobs and the future price at the pump.   The administration-selected panel, dominated by anti-drilling activists but devoid of anyone with actual experience producing energy, proposes to pile new layers of red tape onto a process that already leaves much domestic energy off-limits and creates years of delays for rest.    It even includes measures that would virtually shut down new oil drilling in Alaska, though the spill occurred thousands of miles away and under very different conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

But buried in the report is an important truth – the spill occurred because of a series of blunders by BP and its contractors and was far from inevitable.   This contrasts sharply with the recommendations suggesting systemic problems to be fixed by an industry-wide crackdown.

There is ample reason to believe – along with the powerful circumstantial argument that the deadly April 20th explosion and subsequent oil spill is unique amidst the thousands of offshore wells drilled in Gulf – that this incident was due to gross mismanagement and is not a justification for closing the door further on domestic drilling.

The American public is more worried about a repeat of $4.00 gas than a repeat of Deepwater Horizon – and rightly so as the former is vastly more likely than the latter.  Reasonable changes to improve safety are warranted, but should occur in the context of a policy that ensures expanded offshore drilling.   To do this, Congress should not adopt the report’s recommendations or allow Obama regulators to impose them.

During the past two millennia and more, Europe suffered during cooler, drier periods and flourished during warmer, wetter periods. That’s what any attentive reader will infer from “2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility,” a study published in ScienceExpress by Swiss researcher Ulf Büntgen and 11 U.S. and European colleagues.

The study, based on the most extensive collection of proxy data from European tree ring samples ever assembled, confirms what Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institution concluded in his 1998 book, Climate of Fear, namely, “happiness is a warm planet.” However, the Büntgen team leave that at the level of implication.

Indeed, the study includes politically-correct statements that are either gratuitous or intended to placate the Gorethodox. The study’s Abstract, for example, states that “Recent warming is unprecedented.” There’s no discussion of this point in the text, and the authors certainly do not attempt to derive it from or validate it with their proxy data. The study ends with what can only be described as political sermonizing:

Linking palaeo-demographic to climate proxy data challenges recent political and fiscal reluctance to mitigate projected global climate change, which reflects the common societal belief that civilizations are insulated from variations in the natural environment. The historical association between European precipitation and temperature variation, population migration and settlement desertion, however, questions the wisdom of this attitude.

Maybe mouthing pious platitudes is what scientists have to do these days to get published in prestige journals like ScienceExpress. No matter. The results of the study speak for themselves.

In a nutshell, periods of warmer temperatures and greater precipitation (the Roman Empire up to 250 A.D., aka the Roman Warm Period; Europe during 800-1200 A.D., aka the Medieval Warm Period) were also periods improved human health, prosperity, and political stability. Conversely, periods of colder temperatures and less precipitation (Europe during 250-550 A.D., aka the Dark Ages Cold Period; Europe during 1300-1700 A.D., aka the Little Ice Age) were marked by famine, plague, population displacement, and political instability.

Three events last week demonstrated that the EPA’s new regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from large stationary emitters such as power plants is not the only tool being employed to strangle the economy.  There’s also the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFÉ standards.

First, the Clean Water Act

The EPA last Thursday announced that they were going to force the Corps of Engineers to revoke an already granted Section 404 permit to Arch Coal’s Spruce Fork Mine, which is an operating surface coal mine in West Virginia.  The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal articles repeated the EPA’s ludicrous claim that new scientific research since the permit was granted in 2007 shows that surface mining will have much more detrimental environmental and health effects than previously thought.  My CEI colleague William Yeatman has written about this issue here, and CEI sent out a press release criticizing the decision.  EPA’s revocation of a permit that has already been granted for a mine that is already in operation is outrageous.  The consequences could be catastrophic if this precedent scares away investors in future energy projects because of the risk that their investment could be lost by the retroactive revocation of an operating permit.

Second, the Endangered Species Act

The polar bear was listed as a threatened species by President George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne in 2008.  Last month, President Obama’s Interior Department designated 187,000 square miles in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska’s north coast as critical habitat. Interior also explained that the designation of critical habitat would require more environmental scrutiny of offshore oil and gas exploration and production, but that it would not be used to ban drilling.  The Center for Biological Diversity last Thursday announced that they would file suit in federal court to force Interior to ban all oil and gas drilling within the critical habitat designation.  This is a game that has often been played by environmental pressure groups working with their allies in the executive branch (and often those allies were formerly employed by environmental pressure groups).  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar can claim that he is trying to be reasonable and to balance environmental and economic interests, but will then probably reach a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity to ban some or all drilling in the designated critical habitat.  Once the court approves, the settlement will have the force of law and will be nearly impossible to overturn.

Third, CAFÉ standards

In 2009, the Obama Administration did a deal with the State of California and the auto industry.  The auto industry thought they were getting some mythical beast called “regulatory certainty” in return for agreeing to a CAFÉ standard of 35.5 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks by 2016.  First, EPA said last fall that they were considering raising that to up to 62 miles per gallon by 2025.  Now, the California Air Resources Board is making sounds that it wants to control the process by setting its own higher standards beginning in 2017, which would precipitate the same mess that the auto industry assumed they had alleviated with their 2009 deal over the California Waiver.  So this week the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers sent a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the new Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asking for help.

I don’t have much sympathy for the automakers because they were warned that this is what would happen (I know because I and my colleagues at CEI were among those warning them publicly), but it needs to be kept in mind that the ultimate victims will be consumers who want to buy cars.

The BP oil spill may well be the worst environmental disaster in history. Yet it was not the planetary catastrophe some predicted it would be.

In May 2010, experts warned that the Deep Water Horizon rig blowout would cause “irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond.”

 But a surprising thing happened on the way to the apocalypse. Bacteria gobbled up the oil so fast that by August, the underwater oil plume became “undetectable.”

A study published last week in ScienceExpress reports that bacteria also made short work of the massive volumes of methane (natural gas) released when the BP well exploded. This is good news not only for Gulf Coast eco-systems. It also further undercuts the credibility of a popular global warming doomsday scenario.

Some warmists warn that rising ocean temperatures will melt frozon methane crystals (known as “clathrates”) on the deep ocean floor.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. So the fear is that warming will cause even more warming, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect. However, if this scenario were realistic, we would expect ice core data to indicate higher-than-present atmosopheric methane concentrations during the Last Interglacial Period, when the Arctic region, for centuries to thousands of years, was substantially warmer than it is today. Instead, the data indicate that current methane concentrations are 130% higher (due to man-made emissions, not clathrate melting) than at any time during the past 650,000 years.

Apparently, then, clathrates were not much affected by the greater warmth of the Last Interglacial. Or maybe they were but, as in the case of the BP blowout, the sea bugs digested the methane before it reached the surface.

Our resilient Earth — is this a great planet, or what?