Guest Post by Dave Juday*
Yesterday the Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the EPA’s implementation of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volumes for 2014. The RFS is a schedule, which prescribes the volume of biofuels – corn ethanol, biodiesel, and so-called advanced biofuels, like cellulosic ethanol – that must be blended into the nation’s fuel supply each year. The RFS was established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and greatly expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007. EPA’s track record is abysmal, hence the hearing.
According to the statute, EPA’s confirmation of biofuels volumes is to be announced by November 30 of the preceding year – i.e. after the corn harvest and before the compliance year – in order to give some clarity to both the food and fuel markets. Now in December, more than a year late, EPA has still not set the volumes for 2014. And, according to Acting Assistant Administrator, Janet McCabe, probably won’t be until sometime 2015.
McCabe told lawmakers that “issuing rules every year has proven to be a significant implementation challenge.” That’s an understatement. Consider the agency’s record.
Each year since 2009, EPA has missed its deadline. In the 60 months since November 30, 2009 – the last time the deadline was met – EPA has been tardy in announcing the final volumes by a cumulative total of 27 months, so far. By next year, the EPA will likely be 40 months late – or more – in meeting its annual deadline. That means that for 72 months since 2009 when fuel blenders and refiners were to be in compliance they did not know the actual compliance target for more than half that time. As the Government Accountability Office has reported, these late rulings “contribute to industry uncertainty, which can increase costs because industry cannot plan and budget effectively.” Indeed, when the new 114th Congress convenes in January, RFS reform should be a pressing issue.
* Dave Juday is the principal of The Juday Group a commodity market and policy analytical firm in Washington, D.C. [click to continue…]
In recent comments submitted to EPA, University of Alabama in Huntsville atmospheric scientist John Christy challenges the physical science basis of the agency’s Clean Power Plan.
EPA assumes that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide (CO2) from energy use, are the driving force behind recent climate change. It thus further assumes that regulating CO2 emissions can mitigate future climate change, providing substantial health benefits to the American people.
Christy does not dispute the reality of climate change. The climate is always changing on multiple time scales. However, the Earth has experienced climatic “fluctuations in the past centuries similar to and even greater than what has occurred in the past 50 years.” Scientific instruments measure what the climate is doing; they don’t tell us why it behaves as it does.
To understand what drives climate change, scientists must test hypotheses against data. EPA assumes CO2 emissions are the chief driver because that’s what state-of-the-art IPCC climate models assume.
But, Christy points out, data from six independent global temperature monitoring systems “demonstrate that the models do not yet have the ability to discern ‘why’ a climate variation may have occurred simply because they cannot even reproduce ‘what’ has occurred.” The chart below compares climate model projections with observed temperatures over 35 years in the tropical troposphere, the portion of the atmosphere where models project a “highly consistent and significant” warming response to rising CO2 concentrations.
[click to continue…]
RenewableEnergyWorld.com (“The World’s #1 Renewable Energy Website”) on Monday reported that the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System was named the 2014 Renewable Energy Project of the Year at the PennWell Annual Awards Gala.
I greet this news with a query: Are you serious!?!
Southern California-based Ivanpah, which uses 350,000 heliostat mirrors that focus sunlight on several centralized power towers in order to power steam turbines, was completed in April, and has since suffered a spate of awful news. For starters, the project is exorbitantly expensive. And upon becoming operational, certain unintended consequences came to light, including the project’s propensity for incinerating birds midflight and also blinding pilots. The final insult is that the power plant is on pace to generate only 40 percent of its year-one goal.
Simply put: Ivanpah is an expensive, bird-frying, under-performing mess…and also the “2014 Renewable Energy Project of the Year.” If this is the best that renewable energy had to offer in 2014, then the industry is in deep doo-doo.
There were official sessions at COP-20 in Lima on Saturday and Monday to assess the progress made by seventeen developed nations to implement policies and programs to address climate change. The seventeen governments earlier submitted written reports, which were then open to questions and comments by all the member parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Then here at COP-20, each of the 17 gave a short slide show summarizing its efforts and plans. Each presentation was followed by an oral question and answer period. Surprisingly, this is the first such multi-lateral assessment of national climate programs since the UNFCCC was signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
I wasn’t here on Saturday, but listened to several of the presentations on Monday by New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States. New Zealand’s slide show had the prettiest photos (of new Zealand’s breathtaking scenery), but the U. S. presentation by Rick Duke of the White House Council on Environmental Quality was the most detailed and impressive. But it did attract several highly critical questions. To Mr. Duke’s claim that one of three key parts of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan was the the U. S. would lead international efforts, South Africa questioned how the U. S. Could lead when it’s own domestic efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions had been so insufficient.
But no questions were raised about what I consider to be two highly misleading points in the U. S. presentation. First, Mr. Duke listed the EPA’s proposed rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants without mentioning that they are both subject to serious legal challenges and to serious attempts to block them in the 114th Congress. Second, Mr. Duke attributed significant future reductions in fossil fuel use to the increasing use of cellulosic ethanol. He then went on to claim that federal government investments in technology research and development had lowered the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol from $13 a gallon to $2. This claim was backed up on the slide by noting that the $2 per gallon figure was based on modeling projections. [click to continue…]
My first day at the twentieth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-20) in Lima, Peru was pleasant, but a little dull. The energy level of leaders, delegates, and environmental NGOs seems a little low. And I missed what sounds like the most interesting event of the day–a side event on carbon capture and storage (CCS).
350.org, other environmental pressure groups, and indigenous people’s groups from Colombia, Peru, and Canada staged a protest that delayed the event. They called on the UNFCC to ban fossil fuel lobbyists from attending the COP and all future climate negotiations. Spokesmen for indigenous communities accused Shell and Chevron of environmental crimes and human rights violations. 350.org’s point is that fossil fuels should not be used even with carbon capture and storage.
The event was sponsored by the Global Carbon and Capture Storage Institute. Speakers from the World Coal Association and Shell were—astonishingly and amusingly—joined by Nicholas, Lord Stern (of Stern Review infamy). The protesters tried unsuccessfully to convince Stern not to speak. Perhaps he was being paid.
The session on CCS was part of a series sponsored by the International Emissions Trading Association, whose corporate members hope to get rich off of energy-rationing policies that impoverish people. IETA is a strong supporter of the UN climate agenda. Shell Oil supports a carbon tax in the U S.
Every Friday afternoon for seven years, we’ve sent out an electronic newsletter on the latest energy and environment happenings, known as the Cooler Heads Digest. Click here and here to read copies of the most recent issues. If you enjoy Globalwarming.org, then you’ll love the Cooler Heads Digest. Even if you hate Globalwarming.org and everything we stand for, then you should still sign up, in order to keep tabs on us. Either way, it’s free and easy: All you have to do is input your name and email address into the box titled “Cooler Heads Digest” at the top right corner of this website, directly below the “search” function.
Upon noticing that it was raining this morning, I checked The Weather Channel’s website. Lo and behold, there’s a banner ad atop the TWC’s front page, reading: “The dark secret behind low oil and gas prices.” And at the bottom left of the page, there’s a thumbnail, which reads, “The Dark Side to Your Cheap Gas.”
I’ve reposted a screenshot of the website, so you can see for yourself:
Of course I clicked through, and the result was remarkable. It’s a TWC story titled, “Boom: North America’s Explosive Oil-by-Rail Problem.” It features a video, whose opening image—a derailed oil train—is frozen across much of the screen. Because The Weather Channel evidently knows no subtlety, this video with its arresting still representation is only the foreground to an enormous, screen-wide background composed of a looping GIF depicting an oil train aflame at night. Tucked away at the very bottom of the page—you have to scroll down past yellow titles and pictures of derailed/burning trains for some time—there’s a breathless investigative report matching the attendant imagery in tone.
[click to continue…]
On November 24th, EPA Region 6 issued a pre-publication version of a proposed federal implementation plan that would seize Regional Haze programs run by Texas and Oklahoma pursuant to the Clean Air Act. A final proposal will be published in the Federal register any day now.
I’ve only started acquainting myself with the document, but media reports indicate that the costs of these FIPs would be $2 billion. When I’m up to speed on the rule, I’ll post a summary. Given EPA’s history of Regional Haze FIPs, about which I wrote a study, there’s a high probability that this rule would achieve literally invisible “benefits” in exchange for the billions it would cost.
Globalwarming.org has been keeping a running tally of Obama-era Clean Air Act FIPs (below). The president is up to 54, which is almost 11 times the sum of his three predecessor administrations!
Living green
It’s been an uncomfortable news-cycle for sustainable living, as both the New York Times and Wired have penned reports in the last 24 hours on the practical difficulties of the eco-lifestyle. Below, I’ve posted the titles and key pull quotes from both stories.
- New York Times, “Exhausted by a House That Saves Energy,” 12/3/2014
Key quote: “I was an idiot and built a house that was way too complicated and labor-intensive. Only a masochist could enjoy it.”
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
CEI.org 