GlobalWarming.org

Senate Again Votes Against Renewing Wind Subsidies

The Senate voted this week not to invoke cloture and proceed to a final vote on Senator Robert Menendez’s bill, S. 2204, that would repeal tax subsidies (of around $4 billion per year) and standard business deductions (of around $20 billion a year) for the five biggest oil companies and extend tax subsidies for a variety of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency technologies, including the production tax credit for wind power.

The vote was 51 to 47, with 60 votes required to invoke cloture. Forty-nine Democrats and two Republicans—Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.)—voted for cloture. Forty-five Republicans and four Democrats—Senators James Webb (D-Va.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)—voted against cloture.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, 27th March, released proposed New Source Performance Standards (or NSPS) to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas fired power plants. The rule will effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants unless they include carbon capture and storage technology that is not commercially available and has poor prospects of ever becoming economically feasible.  This is one of several rules EPA is writing in order to implement their 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The proposed new rule does not apply to existing power plants fueled by coal or natural gas or to plants that are under construction or have been permitted.  However, the Clean Air Act’s section 111d requires that existing sources be regulated as well as new sources.

When asked during a press teleconference on Tuesday when rules for existing power plants might be issued, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson replied, “We have no plans to address existing plants….”  What she should have been asked by reporters was how her agency would respond when environmental pressure groups file suit in federal court to compel the agency to issue NSPS rules for existing power plants.  A good follow-up question would be to ask whether anyone in her agency is talking to environmental pressure groups about filing a friendly suit that EPA could then settle in a friendly way.

Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) immediately announced that he would do everything he could to block or overturn the rule. The most likely route is to introduce a resolution of disapproval using the Congressional Review Act.  However, that cannot be done until the rule becomes final, which is not likely to happen until next year.

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“If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” – Candidate Barack Obama, 2008

Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

This week the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency released a new set of proposed rules designed to lower our greenhouse gas emissions.  If enacted, these rules would virtually destroy the coal industry – just as the President once promised.

Specifically, new power plants will be required to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity; current coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.  As Jordan Weissmann writes for The Atlantic, “Natural gas plants already meet this requirement. But if a utility wants to burn coal for electricity, it will need to install carbon capture technology — and that’s really expensive.”

Indeed it is, and assuming new coal plants are actually built under this regulatory behemoth, to whom do you think those new expenses will be passed on to?  That’s right – energy consumers.  Rich people will be able to pay those extra costs, though they may gripe about it.  But middle class households will see a rise in their energy bills that will put them in even greater financial distress than they already are under this abysmal “recovery.”

And as for poor and working class people, well, they will be screwed, as is almost always the case when wealthy pencil pushers hatch some brilliant plan to “save the planet.” Pencil pushers like EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who crowed, “Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy.”

Will coal-power producers try and forge ahead and stay financially viable under these new regulations?  Doubtful.   Remember, this is an industry already groaning under the weight of a slew of new regulations imposed by the Obama EPA, including other emission limits “which would require utilities to eventually upgrade old plants or build entirely new ones,” as Weissmann notes.

OK, so unlike his promises to close the terrorist detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, keep lobbyists out of the White House, oppose an individual mandate for health insurance, et cetera, ad nauseam, at least we know the President was true to his word when he promised to bankrupt an entire industry that employs many tens of thousands of Americans.

Well done.

“This was the moment,” candidate Obama proclaimed after winning his party’s nomination, “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” When he assumed office, President Obama attempted to act on that promise and regulate greenhouse gas emissions. On June 26, 2009, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey Bill). In the words of The New York Times, “The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change.”

But in June 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the Senate would not vote on the bill. “We know where we are,” Reid said, “We know that we don’t have the votes.” President Obama’s bid to become the first president to directly limit greenhouse gas emissions failed—he didn’t have the votes, he couldn’t change the law, right? Wrong. On December 7, 2009 (yeah, yeah, “the day that will live in infamy”), the Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to regulate GHGs anyway, even without a law that “either house of Congress had approved meant to curb” GHGs.

On that day, EPA found that GHGs endanger human health and welfare, and therefore, could be regulated under the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1972. Sadly for EPA, this regulatory action leads to clearly absurd results. According to the letter of the law, EPA would have to process over 6 million operating permits for stationary sources each year—400 times the current amount. This inconvenient truth didn’t, however, make EPA reconsider whether the CAA was ever intended to regulate GHGs. Rather, EPA decided to simply “tailor” the Act on their own—that is, amend Congressional legislation without Congress’s approval—to target only those environmental “criminals” it wanted.

Today, EPA released its first GHG regulation for coal-fired power plants. As Politico reports, “The standard will generally require that new power plants emit CO2 at a rate no greater than that of a natural-gas-fired power plant. Such plants emit about 60 percent less greenhouse gases than coal plants. The only coal plant to break ground during the Obama administration is a carbon capture and sequestration plant — Southern Co.’s Kemper County plant in Mississippi.” And that’s federally-subsidized.

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…namely, milking the phrase like there’s no tomorrow. To wit, see the results below of a Google search for the terms “Scientific American” and “tipping point”:

Markey [mar-kee] intransitive verb, mar-keyed, mar-keying

1. To be sold a false bill of goods

Origin:  1976-present; after Rep. Ed Markey (D–Massachusetts), ironic rhetorician

On a routine Google News search, I encountered the headline: “Mass. Bill Aims to Ease High Cost of Electricity.” At first glance, this seemed like welcome news. After all, electricity rates in Massachusetts are among the highest in the country.

According to news accounts, however, the method by which State Senate President Therese Murray’s legislation would lower electricity bills is…to make electricity more expensive! Specifically, the legislation would double the amount of costly, intermittent “green” energy that must be provided by utilities serving the State.

I’ve no idea how Sen. Murray will rationalize the discrepancy between her expressed intent (lowering electricity costs) and her preferred means to this end (raising electricity costs). I’ll update this blog when I find out.