Bloomberg New Energy Finance reports that the U.S. has overtaken China as the world’s most reckless energy investor. This race to the bottom will end poorly for both nations.
Since 2008, China has been global leader in government subsidies to renewable energy like solar and wind power. To be sure, the Chinese government isn’t investing in green energy for its people to use–China is building 1,000 megawatts of coal power every three weeks to satisfy the demand for electricity within its borders. Instead, these subsidies are meant primarily to spur the manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines that are needed to meet Soviet-style green energy production quotas enacted by the U.S. and European countries. To put it another way, China is subsidizing the supply of green energy, while the U.S. and Europe are mandating its demand.
CBS News is reporting that there are 11 more Solyndras in the Obama Administration’s green-energy program:
CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra. . .Standard and Poor’s had given the [Beacon] project a rating of ‘CCC-plus.’
(A CCC rating is also shared by Greece, a virtually bankrupt nation embroiled in a massive debt crisis).
A liberal Congress must share the blame for this fiasco, since the massive $800 billion stimulus package it passed in 2009 funded these boondoggles. As a Solyndra stakeholder exulted, “there’s never been more money shoved out the government’s door in world history.” But as the Washington Post noted, energy programs were “infused with politics at every level” under Obama. His Administration hastily approved subsidies for Solyndra, whose executives are now pleading the 5th Amendment, despite obvious danger signs and warnings about the company’s likely collapse. (Later, federal officials successfully pressured Solyndra to delay its announcement about upcoming layoffs until just after the 2010 election, to avoid embarrassing the Obama Administration).
Not long ago, I blogged about how Energy Secretary Steven Chu was being unfairly scapegoated by the House of Representatives for the spectacular collapse of Solyndra. As I explained then, Members of Congress were the ones who passed the porkulus, a.k.a. the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which required the Department of Energy to spend almost $30 billion on “green jobs” as soon as possible. Moreover, the Energy Department received over 500 letters from Members of Congress on behalf of loan guarantee applicants (presumably constituents). In playing fast and loose on risky energy investments, Secretary Chu was following the Congress’s orders.
This week, the Congress further bolstered my defense of Secretary Chu. Today’s Politico Morning Energy reports:
The collapse of efforts in the House to save the uranium enrichment firm USEC through legislative tactics has left lawmakers in an awkward position with Energy Secretary Steven Chu: They need a favor. After legislators in both chambers raced — and ultimately failed — to insert measures into last month’s omnibus spending bill to prop up USEC’s multibillion-dollar American Centrifuge project in Piketon, Ohio, leaders in the House are now urging Chu to use his existing powers to help the project, according to a draft copy of a letter obtained by POLITICO.
According to the Hillsboro Times Gazette, the future of the American Centrifuge project depends on a $2 billion loan guarantee from the Energy Department Loan Programs Office (whence Solyndra). The deal was near completion at the end of the George W. Bush administration, and but it has been in a holding pattern under the Obama administration. Evidently, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation (USEC)—the parent company—cannot wait much longer for the loan to come through. BusinessWeek recently reported that USEC might have to lay off about 450 workers in Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland if uncertainty about funding meant it had to stop most activity on the project. That warning prompted a bipartisan push in the Congress last month to throw American Centrifuge a lifeline, in the form of a $150 million bailout, to keep it above water until the loan guarantee materializes.
In theory, environmentalism is about protecting the poor and middle class from the careless capitalists. In reality, it amounts to persistent attacks on all those groups—capitalists on down. The Clean Water Act is commonly used to deprive families of their property without due process. The Endangered Species Act is similarly abused to violate property rights with little benefit to wildlife. Cities fine residents millions for violating their mandatory recycling programs. Energy taxes, renewable energy mandates, ethanol tariffs, cap-and-trade schemes, energy rationing, and a host of other programs raise the price of electricity and fuel, which primarily hurts the poor.
In an opinion article in today’s Washington Examiner, Iain Murray and I document how the current Commerce Secretary has repeatedly advocated not just the policies that lead to higher energy prices, but the higher prices themselves.
Greenwire (subscription required) reports that EPA has sent its proposed regulation establishing greenhouse gas (GHG) New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for new and modified power plants to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review.
The stringency of the regulation is unknown to outsiders at this time. Environmental lobbyists hope EPA will set the bar so high that only natural gas power plants, or coal-fired plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, can comply. Industry representatives want EPA to propose separate standards for coal- and gas-fired electric generating units reflecting the different carbon intensities of coal and natural gas.
No previous NSPS has ever required new power plants to use natural gas rather than coal, and none has ever required modified plants to switch from coal to natural gas. Industry representatives contend that Congress never intended the NSPS program to block construction of coal power plants or mandate fuel switching. They’re right. [click to continue…]
There is no question that the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for natural gas in New York State’s Marcellus Shale Formation is the current dividing issue among New Yorkers. There are those who spout environmental litanies of an outright ban on the process and those who lionize economic growth over such anti-risk hysteria. But amongst all of this potent polarization, Gov. Andrew Cuomo neglected the issue entirely in his second State of the State Address he made last week, leaving both groups dumbfounded.
Cuomo stated, “Our challenge for 2012 is this: How does government spur job creation in a down economy while limiting spending and maintaining fiscal discipline? The answer is forging public-private partnerships that leverage state resources to generate billions of dollars in economic growth and create thousands of jobs.” You would think fracking would be a no-brainer in his economic blueprint since itwould “spur job creation” without costing taxpayers a dime; however, fracking took form of the elephant in the room as Cuomo outlined his plans for “economic development:”
Not many news reports have been used so effectively to incite fear on entire populations, demand immediate government action and cause concern among people the world over, than the alleged melting of the Himalayan glaciers.
Energy and Climate Wars was released in 2010
Chapter 10 of the 2007 IPCC report stated: “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at its current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035.”
To put it in starker terms, among other calamities it presaged, India’s great rivers would dry out, and all associated agricultural, cultural and religious impacts associated with them. To begin with, the IPCC’s geography is appalling. 500,000 square kilometers is probably the area covered by all glaciers throughout the world. But it is fascinating how this gem made the IPCC report and how it has spawned, at a cursory count, 7,000 news stories and commentaries.
It has since emerged that the IPCC statements on Himalayan glaciers was entirely fictitious, based as it turns out on thoroughly misleading information from a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, which itself was taken from an article published in the “eminent” and popular UK science journal, The New Scientist in June 1999. That article, “Flooded Out,” was written by an Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain who speculated that Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.
Federal agencies are increasingly defining dry land as “wetlands” and “waters of the United States” based on sweepingly expansive interpretations of the Clean Water Act. They then send compliance orders to property owners, restricting use of their property. The test for what is a wetland has become so vague that owners often cannot figure out the status of their property without a court ruling. But the government claims that courts cannot decide this issue unless the owners first go through lengthy permit proceedings or unless they’ve been hit with potentially ruinous enforcement proceedings.
The government’s claim is now being contested in a case before the Supreme Court. In Sackett v. EPA case, landowners Mike and Chantell Sackett hoped to build a home on their half-acre lot in the Priest Lake area of Idaho’s Panhandle, but four years later found themselves in an unexpected legal battle with EPA. The agency claimed the property was a wetland even though it was in a residential neighborhood with houses on either side of it. EPA told the couple they would have to return the property to its original state and seek a costly development permit, or else be slapped with a fine in the tens of thousands of dollars. What’s more, the agency refused to grant the Sacketts a hearing on its ruling.
For a primer on the President’s Clean Water Act power grab, click here.
To read CEI’s amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to allow property owners to promptly contest federal agency directives imposing wetland restrictions on private land, click here.
Two nights ago on Glen Beck TV, CEI’s Chris Horner discussed the case. See video of his appearance below.
Just over half our electricity is produced by coal. For decades, greens have tried in vain to reduce the use of coal, lobbying for regulations on how it is mined and the chemical compounds it emits when burned. But the global warming scare seems to have finally given them some traction.
For the first time, applications to build new coal-fired power plants are being rejected based on their emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)—and not just a few plants. Of more than 150 coal plant proposals submitted to regulators for approval in recent years, by the end of 2007 just thirty-five had either been built or were under construction. An astounding fifty-nine of the proposed plants were cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold because of concerns over CO2 emissions. Many coal plants are falling victim to aggressive legal challenges by the Sierra Club, whose “Stopping the Coal Rush” website sports a database and map proudly showing the various plants being attacked by green groups.
And lawsuits aren’t the greens’ only weapon in this campaign, as they now insert themselves directly into big business deals. Incredibly, greens played a key role in the $45 billion buyout of the electric utility TXU Corp by a group of led by the private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts in 2007. Prior to the buyout, TXU had angered greens by planning to build eleven new coal-fired power plants. So the KKR group reached out to the activists, who agreed to end their campaign against TXU and to support the buyout in exchange for KKR’s capitulation to two green demands: not building eight of the eleven plants, and having TXU support federal carbon-reduction legislation.
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