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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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Within 48 hours of giving a decidedly populist State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama shilled for the Billionaire’s Bailout. At the time, I thought this was situational irony of the worst sort. Unfortunately, it gets worse.

As was noted this afternoon by my colleague David Bier, the President’s budget, which was proposed this week, actually increases the regressive green vehicle tax credit financed by all taxpayers, but enjoyed only by the upper crust—i.e., the only kinds of people with enough spare cash to buy an eco-statement like the $100k+ Tesla roadster. People like Brad Pitt. According to political pundits, the President’s budget isn’t a serious proposal; rather, it is meant to galvanize his base. If this is true, then the EV tax credit is a regressive component of a progressive budget. Sort of like a black fly, in your chardonnay. Or a death row pardon, two minutes too late. Or, myriad spoons, when you only need a knife.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency published in the Federal Register the ridiculous Mercury and Air Toxics rule. It’s one of the most expensive regulations, ever, and its purpose is to protect America’s supposed population of pregnant, subsistence fisherwomen who consume more than 300 pounds of self-caught fish annually, from the 99th percentile most polluted fresh, inland water bodies. EPA never actually identified any such “victim”; instead, these voracious fisherwomen-cum-child were modeled to exist. In a series of posts on “EPA’s Big Mercury Lie,” I question whether it is reasonable to simply assume, as EPA has done, that there are, in fact, Americans who every year eat more than 300 pounds of fish, caught exclusively from the foulest water.

How did we get here? Below is a bare-bones timeline of the Mercury and Air Toxics rule’s development:

• 1990: The Congress amended the Clean Air Act to beef up Hazardous Air Pollutants section 112, which sets the most stringent emissions controls. However, the Congress exempted coal fired power plants. Why? Because the same amendments to the Clean Air Act included a major new regulatory regime for coal-fired power plants: namely, a new sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade program to fight acid rain. Before it subjected the electricity industry to the most onerous provision of the Clean Air Act, in addition to the public health regulations to which generators and utilities already were beholden, Members of Congress first wanted to understand how the sulfur dioxide program would affect emissions of hazardous air pollutants. So, the Congress ordered EPA to conduct a study to determine the public health threat of toxic air pollution from coal fired power plants, after the implementation of the sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade. EPA could regulate coal-fired power plants under the Hazardous Air Pollutants section 112 of the Clean Air Act only after considering the results of this study, and then making a determination that doing so is “necessary” and “appropriate.”

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The president’s phony green economy is collapsing, drip by drip. While the rest of country is frantically trying to turn off the tap, it’s like the president has turned up his environmental music so loud he can no longer hear the coming cascade.

Consider the president’s clean car initiative, which has already funneled $5 billion into the electric car industry. Ener1—an electric car manufacturer who received $118 million from the Obama Department of Energy—went bankrupt two weeks ago. Fisker Automotive is downsizing and firing workers because the stimulus money that supported their green jobs ran out. Its battery supplier and fellow stimulus recipient A123 will also be down-and-out if Fisker goes. Even while the industry continues to receive tax credits for electric car sales, electric car manufacturers Aptera and Think both went bankrupt this month.

Enter the Obama 2012 budget, which fulfills his promise to “double-down” on clean energy investments. The budget not only continues the failed clean car fiasco, but actually escalates it, raising the $7,500 tax credit by $2,500 to $10,000 and broadening eligibility, in what sure looks like another industry bailout. Didn’t the president say something about bailouts in his State of the Union Address? Oh right, “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom,” he claimed. “No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.” Except for my green energy allies, he apparently forgot to add.

The budget also calls for one million electric cars “on the road” by 2015—no matter how long, or how much it takes. So let’s do the math: $10,000 X 1,000,000 cars = $10,000,000,000: $10 billion to make 1/234th of the total light duty vehicles on the road electric, and to reduce oil consumption by less than 1 percent.  If only 10,000 are sold next year, which would be low, it’ll cost taxpayers $100 million. As Iain Murray and I pointed out in a Washington Examiner op-ed last month, these are subsidies for the rich: “The Volt sells for about $40,000, while the Fisker Karma sells for $100,000—well above most Americans’ price range. That means that the federal government is again working to benefit the rich so they can drive cars that ease their environmental conscience.”

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Pythagoras would have been proud of the math muscles The League of Conservation Voters flexed in the calculations for their annual National Environmental Scorecard, which was released last week. For the House of Representatives, more than 20 environmentalist organizations chose 35 votes that were scored for 435 Members.  This week, the Cooler Heads Coalition issued our first ever scorecard, albeit with a relatively simple methodology: 100 – LCV score.  So cue the graduation music as the Cooler Heads Coalition recognizes the members of the House who earned a perfect score as honorary Defenders of Economic Liberty:

Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia,

Rep. Mark Amodei and Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada, and

Rep. Bob Turner of New York

Green energy spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. the Stimulus, a.k.a., the Porkulus, has notched another failure: Energy Conversion Devices, a manufacturer of solar rooftop panel components and recipient of $13 million in Stimulus money, yesterday announced it is going bankrupt.

This blog repeatedly has warned that stimulus spending is a green albatross burdening the President. Indeed, I argue that the green jobs component of the Porkulus—about $60 billion in taxpayer giveaways—was doomed to failure. For starters, the whole idea of the Stimulus was to defibrillate the economy by spending a trillion dollars as fast as possible, and this is a recipe for waste. By way of example, the Energy Department received roughly double its normal budget, and was basically ordered to have the money out the door within two years and ten months. This was an overwhelming mandate. DOE had neither the time nor the manpower to properly vet outlays.

More fundamentally, government is terrible at picking horses. It’s nice to think of disinterested civil servants doing their best to safeguard taxpayer investments, but in reality, powerful political forces are doing everything in their power to influence how this money is spent. When Members of Congress aren’t pushing for pet projects in their respective districts, crony capitalists in the administration are guiding taxpayer money to their portfolios. The headline of an excellent Washington Post story from today says it all: “Venture capitalists play key role in Obama’s Energy Department.” Of course, political expediency and crony capitalism are poor investment strategies. As a result, green energy Stimulus spending is prone to embarrassment.

Solyndra is only the most spectacular failure. Nary a week passes without a politically favored green energy company hitting the skids. See: Amonix, Evergreen Solar, local reporting of “green jobs” training failures, Beacon Power, the ongoing Solyndra saga, underperforming electric vehicle sales, Ener1, Fisker Automotive…and now Energy Conversion Devices.

Mr. President, are you still sure that you want to “double down” on green energy giveaways?