I keep coming back to this topic because fuel economy zealots are trashing our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability. Only Congress can make them stop. Leading the counter-offensive is House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who has been watch-dogging the Obama administration’s fuel economy agenda since 2009. [click to continue…]
The Senate Finance Committee gathered this week to discuss whether the time has finally come to cut the umbilical cord of tax incentives from the mollycoddled alternative energy industry. This may sound childish, but many of the witnesses pushing for an extension of expiring tax incentives for renewable energy characterized their allegedly up-and-coming market in such terms. Venture capitalist Will Coleman for Mohr Davidow Ventures maintained that despite alternative energy’s “rapid growth,” such as in wind, “it is still in its infancy.” Paul Soanes, President and CEO of Renewable Biofuels, testified: “The industry is like a child that needs some nurturing.” The question then becomes: will a renewed tax extension fund a future pride-and-joy of profit or a prodigal embarrassment (I.e. Solyndra).
Multiple testimonies that lauded the progress of alternative industries like wind, solar, and ethanol as job creators and strong global competitors were belied by an overwhelming sense of immediacy. Coleman insisted that without continued subsidies, “We may in fact cripple America’s ability to compete.” Soanes urged, “Congress needs to act now to extend the PTC (production tax credit).” Martha Wyrsch, President of Vestas-American Wind Technoloy warned, “If the PTC is not extended immediately, we will have to make tough choices…Our future is in jeopardy.”
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) proposes to amend its Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) program to help the state meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Under the proposal, ZEVs — plug-in hybrids, battery-electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles — would account for 15.4% of all new cars sold in California by 2025 and nearly 100% by 2040. By 2050, 87% of all vehicles on the road will be ZEVs, CARB estimates.
It’s déjà vu all over again. [click to continue…]
You have probably heard or read the talking point many times: The United States consumes nearly one-quarter of the world’s oil but we have only 2-3% of the world’s proved reserves (here, here, here), hence we cannot drill our way out of high gasoline prices (here, here, here), and should instead adopt policies (cap-and-trade, biofuel quota, fuel-efficiency mandates) to accelerate America’s transition to a low-carbon future.
A new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), North American Energy Inventory (December 2011), demolishes the gloomy assessment underpinning demands for centralized planning of America’s energy future. [click to continue…]
Billionaire natural gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens says he wants an energy plan that will benefit all Americans. After Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the NATGAS Act, Pickens praised the effort. “On behalf of the American people,” he said, “I ask the Senate to do what is unquestionably in America’s best interest: seize this unique and powerful opportunity and pass this bill.” While NATGAS is not unquestionably in America’s best interest, it’s definitely in Pickens’s interest.
T. Bone Pickens is major shareholder in Clean Energy Fuels—a natural gas company—that stands to reap a windfall from the bill. The NATGAS Act “would allow consumers purchasing natural gas vehicles or investors developing natural gas refueling stations to claim between $5 billion and $9 billion in federal tax credits over the next five years.” Pickens’ Clean Energy Fuels is counting on the bill’s passage. According to their SEC filing, “Our business plan and the ability of our business to successfully grow depends in part on the extension of the federal fuel excise tax credit for natural gas vehicle fuel, the reinstatement and extension of the federal income tax credit for the purchase of natural gas vehicles and the passage of legislation providing for additional incentives for the sale and use of natural gas vehicles.”
Pickens derides the “special interests that only care about themselves [who] will attempt to create false arguments and false choices to stop this legislation.” Yet this portrayal to a word describes Pickens himself. As the Washington Examiner reported: “Pickens owns options to buy 15 million shares of Clean Energy Fuels at $10 per share…. The NATGAS Act might drive Clean Energy shares to at least $17. Pickens, in that case, could exercise his 15 million options at $10 per share, and make more than $100 million risk-free on the options (plus another nine figures on the shares he already owns outright).
In his January 2011 State of the Union speech, President Obama called for “more research and incentives” so that America could “become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” In yesterday’s Washington Post, Carol Leonnig and Joe Stephens report that the Obama Administration “has poured roughly $5 billion dollars in taxpayer funds into the electric car industry, offering incentives to manufacturers, their suppliers and even car buyers who might want to go green.” This included $2.4 billion in Stimulus support to develop advanced batteries for all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
How’s it all working out — will America have million electric vehicles on the road by 2015? It’s doubtful we’ll see anything close to that. [click to continue…]
Reason’s science correspondent Ronald Bailey titles his first dispatch from the UN Climate Conference “Delusional in Durban.” He reports that one of the “more moderate” proposals making the rounds demands that industrial countries reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 50% below 1990 levels by 2020. To help clarify the scale of effort required, Bailey links to EPA’s April 2011 report, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2009.
Here’s the relevant table, from p. 18 of the report:
Let’s give Durban’s ‘moderates’ the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re talking about a 50% reduction in net emissions, taking into account emissions sequestered by sinks such as forests and soils.
For years the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been used to block development and economic growth. But on December 1, 2011, people and jobs were given a small victory.
Midday, Thursday, December 1, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced a 6-month extension for the final determination for the proposed listing of the dunes sagebrush lizard (also known as the sand dune lizard). This may sound insignificant to those not impacted by previous ESA listing decisions or those not engaged in this fight, but it is surely something to cheer about in an era of bad economic news. (In this case, the proposed ESA listing of the dunes sagebursh lizard has the potential to “decimate” a large percentage of America’s oil and gas production.) Additionally, it represents a rare instance of bipartisan action and Congress doing the right thing.
One year ago, the FWS published their intention to consider the proposed listing of the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species under the ESA. This set into place a year-long process of public hearings, data gathering, and citizen rallies.
A rare moment of common sense rang supreme in the bill markup with the bipartisan approval of Kristi Noem’s (R-SD) Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011 (H.R. 1633) by the House Energy and Commerce committee on 33 to 16 vote. This bill prevents EPA from regulating particulate matter (PM) with an aerodynamic diameter greater than 2.5 micrometers under section 109 of the Clean Air Act, limited to one year starting from the date the bill is passed. EPA’s regulation would be exempt where this PM standard is already regulated by the state or local government. The agency would have to prove coarse particulate matter poses a serious health risk; if EPA were to initiate a new PM standard related to farm dust, it would have to pass a cost-benefit test.
However, leading up to this triumph in the interest of rural America, several of the Democrats’ platforms were armed with ironic and ignorant castigation, regardless of the amendment made in the name of the “overly broad” term of “farm dust,” or “nuisance dust.”
From the genesis of the bill’s introduction, Democrats have had issue with the definition of “farm dust.” In the Section 3(c) of the initial bill, “nuisance dust” is defined as particulate matter “(1) generated from natural sources, unpaved roads, agricultural activities, earth moving, or other activities typically conducted in rural areas; or (2) consisting primarily of soil, other natural or biological materials, windblown dust, or some combination thereof.” To appease the concern over the vague language, an amendment was successfully passed, sharpening the term so that nuisance dust “(3) is not emitted directly into the ambient air from combustion, such as exhaust from combustion engines and emissions from stationary combustion processes.” This addition clearly excludes fossil fuel combustions such as coal combustion residuals from the definition of farm dust.
Congressional Republicans Move on Keystone Pipeline
President Barack Obama’s announcement last month that he would delay making a decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election is provoking strong opposition in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and 36 Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill on Wednesday, 30th November, that would require the President to approve the project within sixty days unless he decides that it would not be in the national interest.
Representative Lee Terry (R-Neb.) introduced a bill on Friday, 2nd December, that would transfer the decision from the State Department to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and give FERC a thirty-day deadline to issue the permit after final agreement has been reached between the State of Nebraska and Trans Canada Corporation, the company that would build the pipeline, on a new route that goes around Nebraska’s Sand Hills.
Terry introduced his bill at a press conference just before the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on it. He said that House Speaker John Boehner was considering including the bill in a larger package supported by President Obama and Senate Democrats that would extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut. Including the Keystone bill in the larger bill would make it much harder for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to block in the Senate and for President Obama to veto.
Rep. Terry has been a strong backer of the 1,700 mile pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands to U. S. refineries in the Gulf, even while most of his state’s political establishment has objected to the route. That dispute has now apparently been resolved. The pipeline would carry over 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the oil sands in northeast Alberta and from the Bakken field in North Dakota. Bakken production is going up rapidly, and much of the oil is currently being transported by rail to refineries in the lower Midwest.
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