PJM Interconnection is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. My colleage, Troutman Sanders attorney Peter Glaser, just sent around a memo on the impacts of EPA’s regulatory surge on electricity prices. The memo is based on PJM auction reports (here and here).
Peter’s memo is too juicy not to share with a wider audience. I reproduce it below with his permission. — Marlo
Reality has interceded in EPA’s attempt to play down the impact of its train wreck regulations on the electric utility industry. First came the widely reported news that Louisville Gas & Electric had filed for a 19% rate increase by 2016 to pay for the upgrades that the regulations will require.
Now, we have the results of the capacity auction that PJM just conducted for the 2014-15 capacity year. The resulting capacity prices were about 4.5 to 8 times as high as prices paid in the last two auctions and 2.5 to 3 times as high as market analysts had predicted.
According to PJM, most of this increase can be laid at the feet of EPA. Based on PJM information, we calculate that the portion of the increase attributable to EPA will cost load (customers) in the PJM region $2-3 billion just in capacity costs and just for a one-year period (2014-15).
Here are the details.
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Repeat after me: “the media is too balanced on global warming, the media needlessly gives two-sided reports on global warming…..” When ordinary people learn why mainstream media journalists repeat this and where it originates, they will understand how the overall smear of skeptic scientists threatens to turn from the success it is into a failure that can bring the whole so-called global warming crisis to a halt.
What “balance”?! We’ve heard non-stop, one-sided coverage of our certain demise from man-caused global warming for the last decade! In my first American Thinker blog on this in late 2009, I pointed out the sheer lack of skeptic scientists appearing on the PBS NewsHour, while noting instances of this repeated ‘too much balance’ assertion going back to 1995. Eight months later, I was amazed to see a blogger link to a set of graphics supposedly proving skewed media reporting of global warming compared to an ‘overwhelming scientific consensus’, yet when I looked into it, I found immediate problems with the citation about the media researchers, the Boykoff brothers, and what certainly looked like a circular reference between the Boykoffs and the main promoter of the accusation saying skeptic scientists are corrupted by fossil fuel industry money, Ross Gelbspan. In a 2004 paper, the Boykoffs not only cited Gelbspan’s work four times, they also thanked him for his help in their acknowledgments section. I wrote about those problems at a pair of Heartland Institute blogs.
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General Wesley Clark and Congressmen Bruce Braley have teamed up with a Huffington Post op-ed to remind Americans that they still want you to care about those darned oil imports (we also import olive oil).
Right now, the United States has an addiction to foreign oil — an addiction that is not only crippling our economy, but is also funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign governments and corporations. It’s the biggest problem in America that no one seems serious about discussing and solving.
Part of breaking that habit is acknowledging just what kind of problem we have, and who benefits from it. That’s why we’ve been working together to build support for country-of-origin labeling at the pump — so that we know where that $4/gallon is coming from, and move beyond acknowledging our problem to solving it. [click to continue…]
Federal Asset Privatization, Not a Higher Debt Ceiling (SPR a good place to begin)
Robert Murphy, Master Resource, 2 June 2011
Twisted Scripture and Science
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 2 June 2011
Michigan Target of EPA Diktat
Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 1 June 2011
Free up Oil Drilling in Alaska
James Baker, USA Today, 1 June 2011
UEA—General Ledger Summary Provided, Invoices Refused
Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 1 June 2011
Commerce Nominee Bryson Brings Long Green Tail
Darren Samuelsohn, Politico, 31 May 2011
Today, I participated in a telephone press conference on the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office and a proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration. They are similar, in that they both are tasked with using taxpayer money to subsidize financing for “clean” energy sources. Each is intended to function like a green bank.
My colleagues on the call were: Ryan Alexander, President of Taxpayers for Common Sense; Henry Sokolski, Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; Andrew Moylan, Vice President for Government Affairs at the National Taxpayers Union; and Jack Spencer, Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Here’s the attendant press release, with a link to audio from the press conference; here’s a coalition letter we (and others) signed to urge the Congress to shelve the proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration, which is under consideration in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Below are my introductory remarks.
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Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth bombarded audiences with image after image of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, forest fires, and drought, creating the impression of a world in climate chaos. Gore blamed the alleged upsurge in extreme weather on global warming, that is, mankind’s sins of emission. One of Gore’s mighty pieces of evidence was a dramatic increase in insurance payments for weather-related damages. As he writes in his best-selling book of the same title:
Over the last three decades, insurance companies have seen a 15-fold increase in the amount of money paid to victims of extreme weather. Hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes, wildfires and other natural disasters have caused these losses [An Inconvenient Truth, p. 101].
Gore presented a chart similar to this one:
Seeing is believing, right? The problem, of course, is not merely that correlation (warmer weather/bigger losses) does not prove causation. More importantly, the economic data depicted in the chart have not been adjusted (“normalized”) to offset increases in population, wealth, and the consumer price index.
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A week ago, I poked fun at Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) for acting the fool during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Republican legislation that would speed the permitting process for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Yet I also noted,
“While I disagree with everything he does, I nonetheless esteem Rep. Waxman as a master tactician. More than once, I’ve wished that the other party had someone as cunning as the Congressman from Beverly Hills.”
Last week, Rep. Waxman was off his game; this week, I’m sad to say, he has returned to form. Energy and Environment News (subscription required) reported this morning that Rep. Waxman and Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) yesterday fired off a letter to Committee Republicans, demanding the holdup of the “Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation Act” (a.k.a., the TRAIN Act) over some arcane procedural matter. This sort of nitpicky stonewalling is classic Waxman.
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She gets something right:
“I think that all of our energy subsidies need to be relooked at today and eliminated,” Palin told RCP during a quick stop at a coffee shop in this picturesque town tucked into the south-central Pennsylvania countryside. “And we need to make sure that we’re investing and allowing our businesses to invest in reliable energy products right now that aren’t going to necessitate subsidies because, bottom line, we can’t afford it.
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Skeptic Don Boudreaux Makes Climate Bet
Jonathan Adler, Opposing Views, 31 May 2011
The New Military War against Climate Change
Larry Bell, Forbes, 31 May 2011
What with Immelt Sounding a Little Squishy
Chris Horner, AmSpecBlog, 31 May 2011
California High Speed Rail All Strung out on the Outskirts of Town
Marc Scribner, Open Market, 31 May 2011
Palin: Eliminate All Energy Subsidies
Scott Conroy, Real Clear Politics, 31 May 2011
On Global Warming, Gov. Christie Needs To Visit a Doctor
Paul Mulshine, New Jersey Star Ledger, 30 May 2011
Someone alert the Guinness Book of World Records! In 2010, humans set a new all-time high for global greenhouse gas emissions, according to an International Energy Agency analysis released yesterday.
If you are an alarmist, then this is one of your many causes for concern. If, however, you are a global warming “denier” like me, then this is a cause for celebration, because more emissions translate into more wealth creation!
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