Because of the unproven notion that burning fossil fuels causes global warming, saving energy has become the cultural norm with the expectation that reducing the use of coal-fueled electricity and gasoline will help everyone. More and more wind and solar generation is being installed and cars use less and less gas, with some being all-electric. This should be a good thing, but it ends up costing everyone—and disproportionately penalizes the poor.
Installing an unsubsidized residential solar photovoltaic (PV) system is expensive and the payoff can be decades. As a result, they are typically purchased by only those with substantial disposable income. A few years ago, I participated in a “solar fiesta.” I live in rural New Mexico where we often have snow on the ground from late October through early March. Due to cost, I only heat my home to 58 degrees in the winter. I have a large south-facing roof surface. I figured I was a prime candidate for a solar PV system. I visited different vendors. When I asked about the payoff, one vendor looked down his nose and emphasized: “It is not about the payoff.” I could not afford to go solar. I still burn pellets in my stove and bundle up all winter.
Those, who can afford the up-front costs to take advantage of the free energy from the sun, can avoid paying their utility company anything. They may even feel smug that they have beat the system. With net metering, when they generate extra power, the meter may literally spin backward. When the sun isn’t shining, they use the power they’ve banked. The end of the month total can balance out.
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The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and Natural Resources Defense Council sent a joint letter to members of Congress urging them reject the unprecedented linking of onshore and offshore oil and gas revenue with the Highway Trust Fund. In their letter, the groups note that creating this new revenue stream would undermine the longstanding user-pays/user-benefits highway funding principle that has guided infrastructure investment for nearly six decades. Further increasing the reliance of the Highway Trust Fund on revenue streams not connected to use, they argue, would threaten the future health of America’s highways. My colleague Marc Scribner has made the case against the “drilling for roads” proposal in a previous post.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Transportation Safety Authority project that their proposed Model Year (MY) 2017 and later light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fuel economy standards will engender net benefits ranging from $262 billion (assuming a 7% discount rate) to $358 billion (assuming a 3% discount rate). These projections are based on assumptions regarding vehicle cost, fuel prices, and consumer acceptance that may or may not be borne out by events. Skepticism is justified. If the proposed standards are as beneficial to consumers and automakers as the agencies contend, why wouldn‘t consumers demand and profit-seeking manufacturers produce vehicles built to the same or similar standards without regulatory compulsion? Fuel economy regulation assumes that auto buyers do not want to avoid pain at the pump and automakers do not want to get rich. Experts will likely debate for years the net benefits of the rule as data become available regarding vehicle costs and sales and auto industry profits and employment. In a comment letter on the regulation I sent yesterday to the agencies, I examine a cost most experts have not addressed: the damage the Obama Administration‘s fuel economy agenda does to our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability. Read the letter here.
Greenies hate civilization. Ergo, the Green War on our W.C.s.
Think about it: There is no greater symbol of civilization than the toilet and its various accoutrements. From Mohenjo-Daro to the Roman Empire, civilized life has gone hand in hand with running water and underground infrastructure to wash the refuse of humanity away from our homes and cities. Fire may be the most widespread symbol of Man’s rise from the Serengeti to Starbucks, but the most important is the plunger.
Thus, the Greenies desire to become the commodores of our commodes, from trying to tell us to use one square of toilet paper (which may be enough if all you eat is granola, but is wholly inadequate if your diet consists of, you know, human food), to the so-called “low flush” toilets that are designed to save water but end up wasting water because you have to flush the things a million times to properly exorcise your tank.
Now, those tiger-apologists at the World Wildlife Fund have targeted toilet paper itself. A new WWF report titled “Don’t Flush Tiger Forests: Toilet Paper, U.S. Supermarkets, and the Destruction of Indonesia’s Last Tiger Habitats” claims that, “Americans who use Paseo or Livi brands of toilet tissue are contributing to the destruction of the Indonesian rainforest and tiger habitat,” according to the Environment News Service.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to choose between tigers and toilet paper,” proclaims the WWF’s Linda Kramme. “We’re asking retailers, wholesalers and consumers not to buy Paseo or Livi products until APP stops clearing rainforests in Sumatra.”
Two things. First, tigers kill people. Regularly. Last year in one region in Bangladesh, 53 people were attacked by tigers, with 34 killed and 19 severely injured. In one week the tigers of this forest killed seven people. Shame on the WWF for defending these murderous beasts.
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Last November, I warned the President that he would come to regret green energy Stimulus spending, because venture socialism is inherently wasteful, and therefore prone to failed investments. I predicted that indications of failure would pop up every week in the run up to November 2012, like a slow drip media nightmare. And since I wrote that, I’ve been proven right (see: Amonix, Evergreen Solar, local reporting of “green jobs” training failures, Beacon Power, the ongoing Solyndra saga, underperforming electric vehicle sales, Ener1).
In only the last week:
- The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is reviewing the Port of Los Angeles’s decision to use $489,000 in green energy stimulus funds to retrofit the Angelena II, a 70-ft. Port-owned yacht used for publicity tours.
- Arizona-based First Solar announced plans to idle half of its German factory and put about 1,200 employees there on a part-time work schedule. The reason? Declining subsidies in Europe. This demonstrates the riskiness of predicating your business plan on favorable political winds. Forbes’s Ucilia Wang reports that First Solar stock fell 70 % in 2011. According to the Arizona Republic, First Solar received Stimulus-funded loan guarantees for the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch and the Desert Sunlight projects in California.
In light of the fact that green energy Stimulus spending has been a magnet for bad press, I was shocked two weeks ago during the State of the Union address, when the President announced that he would “double down” on green jobs spending. That’s like doubling down on a six when the dealer is showing an ace. I thought perhaps the President was merely rallying the base with empty rhetoric, but with today’s release of the White House budget, it seems that he is putting our money where his mouth is. According to Politico’s Morning Energy, the Department of Energy—whence the worst, most wasteful stimulus spending—is getting a raise:
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House Ratchets Up Probe of White House Involvement in Solyndra Scandal
Fourteen Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) sent a strongly-worded, five-page letter to the White House on 9th February setting a 21st February deadline for turning over documents related to the White House’s involvement in the Solyndra scandal. The letter also demands that five officials be made available for interviews by 17th February.
The letter notes that the Committee requested the relevant documents five months ago and has made every effort to accommodate the White House’s concerns. As to the reasons why the White House has refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena last fall, the letter notes that the White House has not claimed executive privilege for the withheld documents and demands that if executive privilege is going to be claimed the White House must let the committee know by 21st February.
The Department of Energy made the first renewable energy loan under the 2009 stimulus bill to solar panel maker Solyndra, which is based in Fremont, California. The entire $527 million of taxpayer money was lost in August when Solyndra declared bankruptcy. The largest private investor in Solyndra, George Kaiser, is a major Obama and Democratic Party donor and fundraiser and has been a frequent visitor to the White House during the Obama presidency.
Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up and approved the North America Energy Access Act (H.R. 3548), sponsored by Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.). The bill authorizes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the $7 billion shovel-ready project to deliver up to 830,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude oil to Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries.
Democrats offered five amendments to ‘improve’ (that is, sabotage) the bill. The GOP majority easily defeated the killer amendments, including Rep. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) amendment to ban exports of petroleum products made from Canadian oil shipped via the pipeline. Markey claims consumers would benefit because refiners would be forced to sell more gasoline in U.S. domestic markets, lowering prices.
Earlier on this site, National Journal’s energy blog, and MasterResource.Org, I opined that Markey’s proposal would violate U.S. treaty obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). I also argued that an export ban could backfire. It could drive refining-related investment, production, and jobs out of the USA, increasing pain at the pump by curbing production at home while making higher-priced foreign imports more competitive.
In “Proposed Keystone Export Ban Fraught With Pitfalls,” National Journal reporter Amy Harder quotes two independent experts who offer similar assessments of Markey’s proposal. [click to continue…]
Last week I attended a roundtable discussion hosted by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German-based political foundation and think tank. The topic at hand was, “Sustainability in Energy Policy and Beyond: A Modern Conservative Approach in German Politics,” featuring Dr. Gunter Krings, a member of the German Christian Democratic Party.
I was warned beforehand by my colleague Myron Ebell that the event would most likely be “a lot of (E.U.) rubbish,” and it was, indeed, rubbish. Among the Dr. Krings’s most pressing concerns were the “social justice” aspect of sustainability and the imperative to plant as many trees as you take out and leave the world a better place for the children, etc. His presentation thus had the feel of a Sally Struthers television spot. He endorsed heartily the Precautionary Principle, which argues that even if the affects of global warming (or cooling, or whatever eco-disaster is being prophesied) are not entirely clear, it is better to err on the side of extreme caution and to return us all back to a simpler, more sustainable, caveman-esque lifestyle.
In a strange parallel, the same week that Dr. Krings explained his modern, conservative approach to environmental policy in Germany, Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, considered one of the fathers of Germany’s green movement, published a book denouncing the climate change science “consensus” and the IPCC. The book, titled Cold Sun: Why the Climate Disaster Won’t Happen, points out the abundance of errors in IPCC reports which led Vahrenholt to his skepticism.
How does it happen that when looking for the voice of reason in German climate politics, one must turn away from the self-described conservative, and to a formerly radical, green, self-proclaimed Socialist?
Below is a letter I sent yesterday to ClimateWire, an energy policy trade publication that I usually enjoy, about this article. Normally, ClimateWire requires a subscription, but the article was picked up this morning by RealClearEnergy.
Here’s the back story: In late January, Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy Corp. announced that it was closing six coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The company blamed the closings on environmental regulations, in particular the Mercury and Air Toxics rule. The majority party in the House of Representatives has since used the plant closures as evidence of the economic harm inflicted by EPA’s regulatory war on conventional energy production. Talking points beget response talking points: such is the dialectic of political communication. Accordingly, the minority party claims that the plant closures caused by a number of factors, in addition to environmental regulations. To my eyes, yesterday’s ClimateWire story reported the House minority party’s talking points. Its thesis is that “energy experts” believe that a number of factors caused the closings; ergo, the House majority party is telling half-truths when it claims that FirstEnergy Corp.’s decision to shutter six power plants is evidence of EPA’s regulatory overreach. In the letter below, I question whether the article’s thesis is misguided.
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