This year marks the complete phase-out of the traditional incandescent light bulb. Starting on January 1, it effectively became illegal to manufacture or import the good old-fashioned light bulb in the United States, though stores are still allowed to sell down their pre-existing inventories. Specifically, provisions in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act phased in energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs of various wattages that incandescent bulbs can’t achieve. The...
Continue Reading...

On March 21, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the American Trucking Associations (ATA), and the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The LCFS came about in 2006, after the California Legislature passed and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 32 , the Global Warming Solutions Act. AB 32 set a goal of reducing...
Continue Reading...

Start Sending them Wind Turbines, Solar Panels, and the Tiny Cars that no Americans Want to Buy

“It’s about time we really help the Ukrainians out of their energy jam by restricting access to their own oil and gas and making them subsidize expensive and unreliable energy.”

Washington, D.C. – As the President and leaders in Congress continue to discuss steps to help the Ukrainian people keep Russian President Vladimir Putin in check, Thomas Pyle, President of the American Energy...
Continue Reading...

U.S. oil production averaged 7.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2013, reaching the highest levels since 1989, according to new data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Domestic oil production hit 7.9 million bpd in December 2013, an 11 percent increase compared to December 2012. The following chart shows U.S. oil production between 1989 and 2013. Meanwhile, on the federal OCS, production again went down. Domestic oil output rose by 966,000 bpd—15 percent—between...
Continue Reading...

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) has formally submitted its Comment  to the Office of Management and Budget on the Obama Administration’s use of the “social cost of carbon” as an input for federal regulatory action. This is a crucial topic that may significantly influence energy policy. Those who want the full details should click the link and read our full Comment, but in a series of posts I will walk IER readers through the most important points we raised. In our Comment, we...
Continue Reading...

President Obama just released his fiscal 2015 budget[i]  that spends lavishly on his pet projects including his epically-misnamed “all of the above” energy program. But, instead of keeping miners in their coal jobs that historically supplied the nation with most of its electricity, he is putting his dollars on ‘clean coal and natural gas’; instead of opening more federal lands to oil and gas drilling, he is taking away standard tax deductions as applied to the oil industry and...
Continue Reading...

On Monday, March 3, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its Tier 3 regulations requiring U.S. refineries to further reduce their sulfur emissions from 30 parts per million to 10 parts per million beginning in 2017. EPA claims that to further reduce sulfur emissions would only increase gasoline prices by a fraction of a cent, but gasoline prices in the real world and the refinery industry refutes that claim. EPA says this plan follows California—and California has the...
Continue Reading...

A recent article in the LA Times by Jon Healey discusses the proposal by California State Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to exempt fossil fuel producers from California’s cap-and-trade system, and instead impose a carbon tax on fuels. Even though this move (in theory) might make energy prices less volatile, it would still raise them, and thereby hurt California residents. Moreover, any carbon scheme (whether cap-and-trade or a straight tax) would do little to curb...
Continue Reading...

Last summer I testified before a Senate subcommittee on the numerous problems with the estimates issued by the Administration’s Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon. The Working Group’s estimates of the “social cost of carbon” were artificially inflated because of several modeling decisions that it made, including the very significant omission of a 7 percent discount rate as OMB (the regulatory overseers within the White House) requires (as I explain here ). In the current...
Continue Reading...

WASHINGTON -- American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle issued a statement today on House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp's (R-MI) draft tax reform legislation. Chairman Camp's plan would repeal a number of green energy tax incentives, including the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC). Pyle's statement reads:
Continue Reading...