2008

Cooler Heads Digest

by William Yeatman on November 14, 2008

in Cooler Heads Digest

In the News

Chevron’s Orwellian Crude Discovery
Sam Kazman, Investor’s Business Daily, 14 November 2008

Greens Pave Way for GOP
Steven Milloy, FoxNews.com, 14 November 2008

Bingaman: Congress Will Wait on Global Warming
AP, 12 November 2008

Put Global Warming on “To Do” List
Lorrie Goldstein, Edmonton Sun, 13 November 2008

Big Carbon Footprint at Schwarzenegger’s GW Summit
Samantha Young, AP, 12 November 2008

Alarmist Tactics
Chris Horner, FoxNews (video), 11 November 2008

Green Jobs Costly for Michigan
William Yeatman, Detroit News, 11 November 2008

Gore: “I’ve Failed Badly”
Claire Cain Miller, New York Times, 7 November 2008

Green Herring
Jacob Sullum, Townhall, 5 November 2008

News You Can Use
Global Cooling

Ten years ago this week, the Clinton administration signed the Kyoto Protocol. On this symbolic occasion, it seems worthwhile to note that the planet has cooled since the U.S.  signed the Kyoto Protocol. It must be working! (Can we go home and relax now?)

Inside the Beltway
Green Jobs
Myron Ebell

Washington is awash in loose talk about rebuilding the economy by moving to renewable energy and creating millions of new "green" jobs. President-elect Obama ran on a 150 billion dollar green jobs program. House and Senate Democratic leaders are talking about making more subsidies for renewable energy and creating green jobs key parts of a second stimulus package.

It's buncombe, as Dr. Gabriel Calzada explained at a briefing today on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition. He detailed the enormous costs to taxpayers of subsidizing renewable energy, such as windmills and solar panels, in Spain.  The electricity produced is much more expensive than conventional power, so rates paid by consumers have been increased dramatically. This is odd. Taxpayer subsidies are normally used to lower the prices of subsidized products for consumers. 

Calzada, who is associate professor of economics and of environmental sciences at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid and president of the free market Instituto Juan de Mariana, said that the calculation was made several years ago that Spain could bear the higher energy costs imposed by global warming policies because economic growth was strong. Now, with the financial crisis, which is much worse in Spain than in the U. S., Spanish leaders are realizing that they cannot afford energy subsidies and higher energy prices.

But our congressional leaders and president-elect think these sorts of economically-damaging policies are just the ticket to put our ailng economy back on its feet. They should listen to Dr. Calzada's presentation, which will be available at www.globalwarming.org in a week or so.

Will Hugo Chavez eventually become America’s Putin?
Julie Walsh

Carbon limits mean gas-fired power plants over coal. This has led to European nations putting themselves under the thumb of Russia. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article, “Putin Threatens to Scrap Gas Pipeline as Talks with EU Leaders Approach,” chronicles how that thumb is currently putting on the pressure.

Carbon limits here in the U.S. could have the same result as they have in Europe, with only a different task master. As in Europe, U. S. environmental pressure groups lobbied successfully to lock up huge federal areas with high gas potential. Natural gas, which emits roughly half the carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of coal-fired power, “only” costs about 70% more than coal power. Gas would become the preferred power source under carbon rationing laws, as in Europe.

As in Russia, Venezuela possesses vast reserves of natural gas, estimated at 3 trillion cubic meters in 1989, the second greatest proven reserves in the Western Hemisphere after the United States.

Venezuela and Russia began drilling the first gas well in the Gulf of Venezuela this month. “Venezuela is now free with allies like Russia… We will be together for ever,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in a recent speech.

Around the World

EU Energy Security

On the eve of this weekend’s European Union-Russia summit, the first since the Georgian conflict, the EU Commission released a report that says reducing dependence on Russian natural gas is “one of the EU's highest energy priorities.” European countries—but especially Germany, the EU’s largest economy—have become increasingly dependent on Russian natural gas in large part because of environmental regulations targeted at the coal and nuclear energy industries. Moscow, however, has demonstrated a willingness to use its energy supplies to coerce and threaten other countries. As a result, the EU is aggressively pursuing the construction of gas pipelines that would deliver fuel from Central Asia and bypass Russian territory, so that Gazprom, Russia’s state owned monopoly on gas exports, could not influence or inhibit the flow of gas. Former Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the report by questioning whether Russia should proceed with a major planned pipeline under the North Sea that would deliver Russian gas directly to European markets.

Developing Nations Fear Climate Commitments

Developing countries are worried that they would face increased expectations to commit to economically harmful emissions reductions if President-elect Barack Obama follows through with a campaign promise to align with the European Union and orchestrate a global response to global warming. To date, developing countries have faced little diplomatic pressure to act on the climate because the Bush administration refused to commit to an international climate treaty. As a result, the EU spent its diplomatic capital trying to convince the U.S. to join and largely ignored developing countries, even though they account for half of current emissions. If, however, President-elect Obama reversed the Bush administration’s international climate strategy, a united EU-U.S. would likely demand that developing countries commit to steep emissions cuts. So it’s no wonder that China and India chose the week after Obama’s victory in the presidential elections to demonstrate their unwillingness to put global warming over economic growth. China’s government unveiled their climate plan this week. The centerpiece is to exact a commitment from developed countries to give 1% of their GDP—about $300 billion annually—to building a clean energy infrastructure in China and other developing countries. India’s government held a conference in New Delhi, called Climate Change: Business Sustainability and Society, during which Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal announced that a global action plan to fight climate change was unworkable.

The EU’s Climate Policies

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2008

Calzada Ppt

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Put Global Warming on “To-Do” List

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2008

Fellow Canadians, it's time to start thinking of "fixing" global warming the same way we do "ending" child poverty. Or "settling" native land claims. Or "shortening" medical wait times.

Big Carbon Footprint at Schwarzenegger’s GW Summit

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2008

in Blog

His conference, announced six weeks ago, itself will be a sizable source of the gases blamed for contributing to global climate change, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Kyoto Cooling

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2008

On this symbolic date, it seems worthwhile to reflect that the planet has not only cooled since George W. Bush took office – pause and let the significance of that one sink in – but began to chill significantly at almost precisely the moment that we signed the Kyoto Protocol, exactly ten years ago today.

Lower Troposphere Global Temperature

 

It’s too bad President Bush didn’t really “unsign” or otherwise “withdraw [sic] from” it. We might have been able to avert this disturbing trend. But of course, you're very well read and already knew that.

 

 

 

New Study Shows Why Obama’s Electricity Plan Is a Bad Deal

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2008

Included in President-elect Barack Obama’s energy plan, “New Energy for America,” is a requirement that utilities generate at least 25%  of the country’s electricity from renewable sources of energy like solar and wind power by 2025.

Last year, CEI published a report, Gone with the Wind, explaining why such a requirement, known as a renewable portfolio standard, is unfair to states in the southeast, where electricity is cheap and the potential for renewables is low.

Yesterday, the Cato Institute published a report that asks how policymakers could favor a policy so politically correct and so economically suspect. The report further demonstrates that support for a national program largely stems from misleading claims about state-level successes, misunderstandings about how renewables interact with other environmental regulation, and misinformation about the actual benefits renewables create.

Green Energy Investment Falls Sharply

by William Yeatman on November 12, 2008

in Blog

Investment in low-carbon technologies is suffering its first reversal after several years of record growth, as the financial crisis dims the sector’s prospects.

How the Election Affects Energy and GW Policy, Part 1: The President

by William Yeatman on November 12, 2008

Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was elected President by a substantial but not overwhelming margin in the popular vote.  It makes me wonder how close Senator John McCain (R-Az.) might have come to winning if he had run a modestly competent campaign instead of the strategically incoherent and managerially disorganized one that he did run or if he had voted against the wildly unpopular Wall Street bailout.

On the global warming issue, President Obama will be a big change rhetorically from President George W. Bush and only slightly less of a change on policies.  Obama supports re-engaging in the U. N. negotiations for a treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol when it expires on December 31st 2012, but the Bush Administration is fully engaged in those negotiations now.  What could be different is if President Obama reverses U. S. negotiating policy and agrees to cut emissions unilaterally without similar commitments from other major economies, such as China.  Such a move would put the U. S. at a huge competitive disadvantage.     

The President-elect also supports enactment of cap-and-trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.  McCain is the chief sponsor of similar legislation with a 60 % mandatory reduction by 2050.  However, unlike McCain, Obama has not taken an extreme leading position on the issue and even joked about the fanaticism of some global warming true believers at his rallies.  His main concern will probably be to satisfy the special interests supporting him without spending too much political capital, so I think he will try to advance energy rationing indirectly or by stealth rather than through a big public debate on energy rationing.

One stealthy way would be to begin implementing regulation of carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act.  The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA does have authority to do so, and the campaign indicated last month that Obama would go ahead and begin to regulate.  Using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions will create numerous bureaucratic nightmares for millions of people and cripple the economy (see my colleague Marlo Lewis’s analysis here), but it can be done without attracting much public attention and it would be many years before the proposed rules were fully litigated and implemented. 

Another less direct approach would be to try to push through a big new “green jobs” program early in his administration and put off the heavy lifting required to pass cap-and-trade until later—possibly much later or never.  That makes sense for several reasons.  First, Obama hardly mentioned cap-and-trade in his campaign, but found that talking about creating green jobs was a crowd pleaser.  Second, as I will discuss in a following piece on the congressional elections, even with significant Democratic gains in the House and Senate, it is not going to be easy to pass a cap-and-trade bill.  Moreover, the continuing credit crunch and looming recession provide difficult conditions for enacting legislation to raise people’s energy prices.

Candidate Obama has been commendably forthright and realistic about the fact that cap-and-trade will raise energy prices significantly.  He remarked during the campaign that the problem with high gas prices wasn’t that they were high, but that they had gone up too quickly.  People needed more time to get used to paying more because they were indeed going to have to pay more and use less in order to solve global warming.  It also came to light late in the campaign that Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle in January that under his cap-and-trade plan building new coal-fired power plants would bankrupt electric utilities.  Understanding that cap-and-trade is going to be very costly may make him quite cautious about pushing for it right away.   

A major difference between McCain and Obama on cap-and-trade is that Obama supports auctioning all emissions coupons rather than giving some of them away to special interests.  Although CEI opposes cap-and-trade and all other energy-rationing policies, we agree with Obama and environmental pressure groups that, if there is going to be cap-and-trade, then all coupons should be auctioned.  But many companies that support cap-and-trade are going to oppose auctioning because they hope to make windfall profits by using their political influence to get more coupons than their fair share.  If Obama really does want to enact cap-and-trade at some point in his term, he is probably going to have to give some ground and buy off some special interests with free allowances. 

To sum up, my guess is that President Obama will pursue a number of global warming initiatives starting early in his administration, but may well decide to put off cap-and-trade legislation for a year or two or three.  And in politics three years is forever.

Reality hits Gore’s world

by Julie Walsh on November 11, 2008

Juxtapose this from the Washington Post–

Gore envisions a nationwide “Smart Grid”–a massive underground network of electrical power lines that would be powered by massive solar panel installations in the Southwest, and huge wind turbine installations in the Pacific Northwest. The Smart grid would dole out power and regulate itself using 21 Century computer technology, Gore said. Gore said such a system would cost $600 billion to build, but that it would pay for itself quickly.

With this from E and E–

California’s bold bid to boost renewable energy use to 33 percent of total power generation over the next decade would cost the state $60 billion between 2012 and 2020, according to a new analysis by the state’s Public Utilities Commission. The PUC’s report, which was released Friday, found that a 33 percent renewable portfolio standard (RPS) would require construction of 70,000 gigawatt-hours of new generation powered by renewable sources by 2020, in addition to seven major new power lines at a cost of $6.4 billion. This means a drain on a state Treasury already running a $15 billion deficit.

Besides the new transmission line costs to build, neither of these articles mention how much solar and wind energy costs compared to that from coal, which a Cato study elaborates:

According to analysis by Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf, stripping out the subsidies, the regulatory distortions and the taxes, the “levelized cost” of building a new conventional coal-fired power plant (that is, the cost associated with building the plant and buying coal over the lifetime of the plant divided by the energy output that one might expect from the facility over its lifetime) works out to cost 3.10 cents per kWh to build. By means of comparison:

• a new clean coal plant costs 3.53 cents per kWh,

• a nuclear power plant costs 4.57 cents per kWh,

• a wind power plant costs 4.95 cents per kWh,

• a biomass-fired power plant costs 4.96 cents per kWh,

• a natural gas power plant costs 5.29 cents per kWh,

• a solar thermal power plant costs 13.84 cents per kWh, and

• a solar photovoltaic power plant costs 26.64 cents per kWh.

That Mr Gore is the real world.

Tactics of Global Warming Alarmists

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2008

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Greenpeace calls him a climate criminal, but some think Chris Horner is the only one uncovering the truth about global warming. His new book, "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmist Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed." That's what it's called. Horner warns of the alarmist green agenda, which he claims may reach new heights under the new administration

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