A government showdown between the Congress and the President will come to a head this morning at 9 A.M. That’s the deadline set by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee (of the Energy and Commerce Committee) for the Office of Management and Budget to produce documents relating to the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office’s* issuance of a loan guarantee to Solyndra, Inc. The Subcommittee took the rare step of subpoenaing the executive branch agency on Thursday, July 14, by a party-line vote, 14-8.
Here’s the background. In late 2009, Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar rooftop components, was the recipient of the first loan guarantee issued by the Department of Energy pursuant to the “Section 1705 program” created by the 2009 stimulus. Only months after receiving the $535 million loan guarantee, Solyndra pulled back on a planned public offering after a PricewaterhouseCooper’s audit found that the company’s finances “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” In November 2010, the company announced that it would shutter a plant and lay off 170 employees. Last week, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison made the rounds on Capitol Hill to perform damage control. I suspect that whatever rosy financial numbers he presented were influenced heavily by the billions of dollars in renewable energy subsidies that are still trickling out of the Department of Energy. (So much for the stimulus mantra, “temporary, targeted, and timely,” right?). As such, I wouldn’t trust any data put forth by any renewable energy company until after the stimulus money is (finally) spent.
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2011 U.S. Temperature Update: Alarmism Not
Chip Knappenberger, Master Resource, 25 July 2011
The Great CAFE Stick-up
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 25 July 2011
Rhetoric on Renewable Energy Does Not Match Reality
Jon Ralston, Las Vegas Sun, 24 July 2011
If IPCC Seal Level Numbers Aren’t Bad Enough, Try Tripling Them
David Kreutzer, The Foundry, 22 July 2011
Inhibiting an Oil and Gas Boom
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 22 July 2011
Bill Introduced To Block EU from Forcing U.S. Airlines into Cap-and-Trade Scheme
Representative John L. Mica, Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has introduced a bill with strong bipartisan support that would prohibit U. S. airlines from taking part in the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme. The bill is an attempt to block the European Union from their latest attempt to extend their cap-and-trade scheme beyond the EU.
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The Environmental Protection Agency this week issued a final Guidance document directing Appalachian States and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to account for saline effluent when they issue Clean Water Act permits to surface mining projects, including so-called mountaintop removal mines. The EPA set the regulatory threshold for salinity “pollution” so low that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said that “no or very few [surface mines] are going to meet this standard.” Obviously, this will have a severe negative impact on the Appalachian coal industry. EPA’s justification for the Guidance is to protect a short-lived insect that isn’t an endangered species.
Surface coal mining in Appalachia, which is sanctioned by the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, is loathed by the President’s environmentalist base, but it is essential for the industry’s competitiveness. Since June 2009, the EPA has used precursor documents to the final Guidance to review permitting decisions made by Appalachian States and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. These EPA actions effectively created a “permitorium” on new mountaintop mines. On January 13 2011, the EPA went so far as to veto a Clean Water Act permit that had already been issued to Arch Coal for the Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. It was the first time the EPA ever used this authority to veto a Clean Water Act permit that had been issued to a surface coal mine.
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The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has started running radio ads complaining about the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE) standards for cars and light trucks to 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025. According to the Detroit Free Press, the sixty-second ads “feature an ominous voice warning ‘after tough times, today’s auto industry is on the road to economic recovery,’ but that fuel economy rules ‘threatens that progress’ –leading to less choice, higher prices, job losses, and an ‘electric vehicle mandate.’
This is the first sign that the auto industry is finally waking up to the reality that their cozy 2007 deal on CAFE isn’t such a good deal after all. CAFE standards are scheduled to increase to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.
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One year ago today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) announced that the Senate would drop cap-and-trade negotiations led by Sens. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut), thereby ending any chance that the 111th Congress would enact an energy-rationing bill.
This time its former Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) writing in The Hill’s Congressional Blog:
But what people often forget is that the ethanol industry has been suggesting reform for more than a year. We recognized that the industry has changed, and that the policy must change as well.
The blender’s tax credit has been instrumental in developing the ethanol industry, but the most important challenge our nation faces today in securing our energy independence is not the continuation of this incentive, but access to a fair and open marketplace.
We have suggested a pathway that will not only create that market access but continue to provide the necessary incentives for developing the next generation of biofuels – cellulosic ethanol – to help our nation meet our stated goals of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.
Consumer choice at the pump is the most critical component of this plan to help us achieve this goal. Today there are about nine million Flex Fuel Vehicles in this country and the owners of these vehicles have a choice of fuel blends when they pull up to a Flex Fuel pump: E30, E50 or more. But unfortunately, there are fewer than 300 Flex Fuel pumps in the entire nation. Even as domestic automakers commit to making half their fleet Flex Fuel, the lack of pumps to serve this fleet means that most Flex Fuel Vehicles have never run on anything but gasoline.
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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…]
‘BBC’s Biased Climate Science Reporting Isn’t Biased Enough’ Claims Report
James Delingpole, The Telegraph, 21 July 2011
Don’t Drink the CAFE
Henry Payne, Planet Gore, 21 July 2011
The World Is Not Overpopulated
AlexB. Berezow, Real Clear Science, 21 July 2011
Obama’s Anti-Coal Agenda Hurts America
Daniel Kish, US News, 20 July 2011
Gray Lady Finally Finds Proof of Global Warming
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air, 20 July 2011
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