William Yeatman

New York State Geologist Rebuts Fracking Alarmism

by William Yeatman on March 21, 2011

in Blog, Features

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In an interview last week with the Albany Times Union, New York’s state geologist, Dr. Taury Smith, a self-described liberal Democrat, called the state’s natural gas deposits “a huge gift.” Over the last decade, the natural gas industry has been revolutionized by the rapid development of a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing. In that time, economically recoverable reserves in the U.S. roughly doubled. New York could be among the biggest beneficiaries, as it sits upon huge deposits of gas, known as Marcellus Shale, that are now recoverable. Environmentalists, however, oppose hydraulic fracturing because they oppose all fossil fuels, and they have waged a misinformation campaign against the practice. They allege, without evidence, that it threatens to contaminate water supplies. On the basis of these unsubstantiated claims, environmentalists frightened New York lawmakers into enacting a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. Dr. Smith dismisses the environmentalists’ allegations as being “exaggerated,” and “the worst spin.”

Wind Turbines: A National Security Threat

by William Yeatman on March 20, 2011

in Blog, Features

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According to the Industrial Wind Action Group, wind farms degrade the performance of 39 percent of radar stations operated by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Cooler Heads Digest 18 March 2011

by William Yeatman on March 18, 2011

in Blog, Cooler Heads Digest

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In the News

The Truth about Obama and Nuclear Power
Chris Horner, Big Government, 18 March 2011

How Washington Ruined Your Washing Machine
Sam Kazman, Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2011

Advice for Mr. Obama on Energy
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, RealClearMarkets.com, 17 March 2011

Chevy Volt: the Car from Atlas Shrugged Motors
Patrick Michaels, Forbes.com, 17 March 2011

Putting Chernobyl in Perspective
Josh Gilder, RealClearScience.com, 17 March 2011

EPA’s Utility MACT Proposal: Negative Economics for What?
Scott Segal, MasterResource.org, 17 March 2011

Global Warming Alarmism Continues To Backfire
James Taylor, Forbes.com, 16 March 2011

New Light on Hide the Decline
Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 15 March 2011

Two States Bail out of Global Warming Lawsuit
Russell Cook, American Thinker, 15 March 2011

Pawlenty’s Flip-Flop on Energy & Environment
Don Shelby, Minnesota Post, 15 March 2011

Risk-Free Energy? Surely, You Must Be Joking
Alex B. Berezow, RealClearScience.com, 15 March 2011

Waxman, Markey, Inslee Put Greenhouse Agenda Ahead of Constitutional Principle
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org, 14 March 2011

Engines Beware! Gas with 15% Ethanol Is Coming
Shane McGlaun, Daily Tech, 14 March 2011

Green Injustice
Niger Innis, Washington Examiner, 14 March 2011

News You Can Use

Wind Turbines: A National Security Threat

According to the Industrial Wind Action Group, wind farms degrade performance of 39 percent of radar stations operated by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

EPA Pre-Emption Bill Heads to House Floor

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday marked up and passed H. R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, by a 34 to 19 vote.  All 31 Republicans on the committee supported Chairman Fred Upton’s (R-Mich.) bill.  They were joined by three Democrats—Representatives John Barrow (D-Ga.), Jim Matheson (D-Utah), and Mike Ross (D-Ark.).

The mark-up started on Monday afternoon with opening statements from members of the committee and then lasted most of Tuesday.  A number of amendments offered by Democrats were variations on the theme that the Congress accepts that global warming science is settled and that it’s a crisis.  All these amendments were defeated easily, but, as my CEI colleague Marlo Lewis points out, Republican supporters of the bill for the most part didn’t defend the bill very well against the Democrats’ attacks.

What the proponents should argue, but did not in committee mark-up, is that H. R. 910 is not about the science or what we should do about potential global warming.  The bill simply says that the EPA cannot use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions until the Congress authorizes it to do so.  Chairman Upton’s bill is designed to re-assert congressional authority to make laws (which the Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to do) and rein in an out-of-control executive branch.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said that passing the Upton bill is a priority.  It is now expected that the bill could be debated on the House floor as soon as the week of 27th March.  On 26th June 2009, the House Democratic leadership railroaded the mammoth Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill through the House in a single day of debate with only one Republican amendment allowed to be offered.  The Republican leadership under Boehner is doing things differently, so there will probably be several days of debate with numerous amendments considered.  The bill should pass easily, with almost unanimous Republican and significant Democratic support.

Senator McConnell’s Surprise

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) surprised everyone on Tuesday by going to the Senate floor and offering the EPA pre-emption bill sponsored by Senator James M. Inhofe, S. 482, as an amendment to S. 493, the Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer Programs Re-Authorization Act.  Inhofe’s bill is identical to H. R. 910, which the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up this week.  The Energy Tax Prevention Act (S. 482/H. R. 910) would block EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions until authorized to do so by Congress.

House Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) initially indicated that there would be a vote on McConnell’s amendment later on Tuesday.  And Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) initially indicated that he would not offer his bill to delay EPA regulations for two years as a counter-amendment.  Rockefeller’s bill is intended to provide cover for Democrats, so is trotted out whenever it looks like the Senate might pass a permanent pre-emption.

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Does Sen. Jay Rockefeller Serve West Virginians or Harry Reid?

by William Yeatman on March 17, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Late in the 111th Congress, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was building bipartisan support for a Resolution of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Due to a parliamentary quirk, the Resolution needed only a majority to pass (that is, it wouldn’t necessitate 60 votes to beat a filibuster) and it was entitled to a vote, so the Democratic leadership in the Senate could not sweep it under a rug. Moreover, there are 23 Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2012, and the political mood of the country in the summer of 2010 was shifting right. (This was evidenced by the GOP’s success in last November’s elections.) As such, an EPA reform bill was an attractive vote for many Senate Democrats from purple states, where the EPA is held is lower esteem than in, say, California or New York. As a result of these factors, Sen. Murkowski’s Resolution appeared to have good prospects.

Enter Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Just as Sen. Murkowski’s Resolution was gaining steam, Sen. Rockefeller introduced legislation that would delay the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases for two years, rather than repeal its authority outright (as Sen. Murkowski’s Resolution would have done).

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News Roundup

by William Yeatman on March 17, 2011

in Blog

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Advice for Mr. Obama on Energy
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, RealClearMarkets.com, 17 March 2011

Chevy Volt: the Car from Atlas Shrugged Motors
Patrick Michaels, Forbes.com, 17 March 2011

Putting Chernobyl in Perspective
Josh Gilder, RealClearScience.com, 17 March 2011

EPS’s Utility MACT Proposal: Negative Economics for What?
Scott Segal, MasterResource.org, 17 March 2011

Anti-Nuke Groups Work the Press
Lou Dolinar, National Review Online, 16 March 2011

Global Warming Alarmism Continues To Backfire
James Taylor, Forbes.com, 16 March 2011

How Washington Ruined Your Washing Machine

by William Yeatman on March 17, 2011

in Blog, Features

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My CEI colleague Sam Kazman has a great oped in today’s Wall Street Journal, on how federal regulators are making us dirtier…literally.

Here’s the gist:

In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were “excellent” and five were “very good.” By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were “fair” or “poor.” This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as “often mediocre or worse.”

How’s that for progress?

The culprit is the federal government’s obsession with energy efficiency. Efficiency standards for washing machines aren’t as well-known as those for light bulbs, which will effectively prohibit 100-watt incandescent bulbs next year. Nor are they the butt of jokes as low-flow toilets are. But in their quiet destruction of a highly affordable, perfectly satisfactory appliance, washer standards demonstrate the harmfulness of the ever-growing body of efficiency mandates.

Read the whole thing here.

Primer: EPA’s Power Plant MACT for Hazardous Air Pollutants

by William Yeatman on March 16, 2011

in Blog, Features

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Today, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a major rule to regulate power plants under the Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) Section 112 of the Clean Air Act.

This post is a primer on this consequential and controversial decision.

Section 112 of the Clean Air Act

  • In 1970, the Congress added Section 112 to the Clean Air Act, requiring that the EPA list and regulate Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) that could “cause, or contribute to, an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible or incapacitating reversible illness.” The Congress ordered the EPA to establish standards for HAPs that provided “an ample margin of safety to protect public health.”
  • Due to difficulties interpreting what should constitute “an ample margin of safety,” the EPA largely ignored Section 112 for two decades.
  • In 1990, the Congress, frustrated with the slow pace of HAP regulation, amended the Clean Air Act to remove much of EPA’s discretion over the implementation of Section 112. Lawmakers listed 189 pollutants for regulation. They also legislated HAP pollution controls, known as Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. The Clean Air Act amendments set a “MACT floor” (i.e., a minimum HAP pollution control) at “the average emission limitation achieved by the best performing 12 percent of the existing sources.”
  • Section 112 MACT standards apply to both new and existing stationary sources.
  • Notably, the Congress required the EPA to proceed with caution before it regulated Electricity Generating Units (“EGUs,” or power plants). The 1990 Clean Air Amendments mandated a study on the public health threats posed by EGU HAP emissions, and the EPA Administrator was authorized to proceed with the regulation of HAPs from EGUs only after evaluating the results of this study, and concluding that “such regulation is appropriate and necessary.”

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News Roundup 15 March 2011

by William Yeatman on March 15, 2011

in Blog

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Japan Nuclear Update
Iain Murray, National Review Online, 15 March 2011

Nuclear Overreactors
William Saletan, Slate, 15 March 2011

New Light on Hide the Decline
Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 15 March 2011

Two States Bail out of Global Warming Lawsuit
Russell Cook, American Thinker, 15 March 2011

Pawlenty’s Flip-Flop on Energy & Environment
Don Shelby, Minnesota Post, 15 March 2011

Risk-Free Energy? Surely, You Must Be Joking
Alex B. Berezow, RealClearScience.com, 15 March 2011

Engines Beware! Gas with 15% Ethanol Is Coming
Shane McGlaun, Daily Tech, 14 March 2011

Green Injustice
Niger Innis, Washington Examiner, 14 March 2011

President Obama’s War on Western Coal Demand

by William Yeatman on March 15, 2011

in Blog, Features

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The Environmental Protection Agency is using an obscure aesthetic regulation in the Clean Air Act to run roughshod over western states.

East of the Mississippi, President Barack Obama’s regulatory crackdown on coal threatens to shutter up to 40 gigawatts of electricity generation. Yet due to a variety of factors (the low sulfur content of western coal, low population density, and newer plant stock), coal-fired plants west of the Mississippi are in a much better position to withstand the regulatory onslaught .

In order to target western coal, the Environmental Protection Agency is leveraging a long ignored provision of the Clean Air Act designed to improve visibility, known as the Regional Haze rule. Notably, this is an aesthetic regulation, not a health-based regulation. In practice, eastern states are exempt from Regional Haze requirements, because the EPA allows states to meet this aesthetic regulation in the course of complying with health-based regulations.

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Update on the States

by William Yeatman on March 14, 2011

in Blog

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Minnesota

In 2007, then-Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) championed and ultimately signed the Next Generation Act, which effectively imposed a moratorium on coal-fired power plants in the State. Evidently, the legislature is having second thoughts about a future without coal, because last week both the House and the Senate moved legislation that would overturn the coal ban. By a 15 to 6 vote, the House Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance committee passed H.F. 72, “A bill for an act relating to energy; removing ban on increased carbon dioxide emissions by utilities.” The Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Telecommunications passed a companion bill, by a 9 to 3 vote.

West Virginia

Last Tuesday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a section 404 Clean Water Act permit to a Massey Coal subsidiary for the Reylas Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The permit was originally issued in 2007, but it became ensnared in the Obama Administration’s war on Appalachian coal (click here or here for more information on that subject). In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency recommended against granting the permit, so there is a good chance that the EPA will veto this permit. In January, the EPA exercised this authority for the first time in the history of the Clean Water Act in order to veto the Spruce No. 1 mine, which is also in Logan County. Notably, the EPA objects to these mines because they allegedly harm an insect that isn’t an endangered species. But before the EPA could act, environmentalist lawyers won an injunction in a West Virginia federal court.

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