News - American Energy Alliance

Leno Roasts Costly Ethanol Mandate

March 9, 2015 by Alex Fitzsimmons 4 Comments

Jay Leno has some harsh words for ethanol lobbyists: “big growers of corn have sold us a bill of goods.” Writing for Autoweek.com, the former Tonight Show host, who collects and restores vintage cars, discussed how ethanol can damage vehicles and foul up engines:

As someone who collects old cars, and keeps them up religiously, I am now replacing fuel-pressure regulators every 12 to 18 months. New cars are equipped with fuel lines that are resistant to ethanol damage, but with older cars, the worst can happen—you’re going down the road, and suddenly your car is on fire.

[…]

Ethanol will absorb water from ambient air. In a modern vehicle, with a sealed fuel system, ethanol fuel has a harder time picking up water from the air. But in a vintage car, the water content of fuel can rise, causing corrosion and inhibiting combustion.

It gets worse. Ethanol is a solvent that can loosen the sludge, varnish and dirt that accumulate in a fuel tank. That mixture can clog fuel lines and block carburetor jets.

Blame the Renewable Fuel Standard.

As Leno explains, the RFS requires fuel refiners to blend rising amounts of ethanol and other biofuels into gasoline. Currently, the ethanol content of regular gasoline is 10 percent, which is safe for use in most modern vehicles. Older vehicles, however, were not designed to run on gasoline that contains ethanol. That spells trouble for anyone trying to maintain an older car, as well as people who own boats, motorcycles, and lawnmowers—those small engines are also not equipped to handle ethanol in gasoline.

The RFS could also soon harm the hundreds of millions of Americans who drive regular cars, trucks, and SUVs. As the RFS mandate rises, refiners could soon be required to blend gasoline with more than 10 percent ethanol. But the vast majority of passenger vehicles are not certified to use gasoline that contains more than 10 percent ethanol, according to AAA. In other words, Jay Leno’s problems could soon become yours.

Click here to read “10 Reasons Why Congress Should Repeal the RFS.”

Filed Under: Products and Power, Renewable Fuel Standard Tagged With: biofuels, ethanol, Jay Leno, rfs

Potential candidates should oppose RFS

March 9, 2015 by AEA Leave a Comment

This weekend, American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle penned an opinion piece at the Des Moines Register on the Renewable Fuel Standard. The text of the piece is below:

Among the many hot button issues presumed Republican presidential candidates will address at the Iowa Ag Summit will be the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal mandate requiring that fuel refiners use a rising amount of biofuels each year.

While it may be tempting to praise the RFS while in town, these presidential hopefuls should stand firm and reject this federal mandate for at least three principled reasons.

First, the problem that RFS backers said they were trying to solve — America’s perceived over-dependence on foreign oil — is no longer an issue. When Congress created the RFS in 2005, domestic oil production accounted for only 40 percent of total U.S. oil consumption.

Fast-forward 10 years and the RFS is a solution in search of a problem. Domestic oil production now accounts for more than three-quarters of total U.S. consumption — nearly double the level at the time of the RFS’ 2005 creation.

The RFS also increases fuel and food prices to the detriment of Iowa families.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office found the RFS could increase diesel prices by 30 to 51 cents per gallon by 2017. Regular gasoline could jump by up to 27 cents, more than a 10 percent increase over today’s $2.46 per gallon statewide.

The RFS also drives up food prices. When farmers are selling their corn, soybeans, and other crops to RFS producers, there is less available for us to eat. A top U.N. official has even gone so far as to call the use of food-based biofuels a “crime against humanity.”

This is the reality of the RFS: an unnecessary federal mandate that raises fuel and food prices on American families. Presidential candidates like to boast they stand on principle. They can practice what they preach by opposing the RFS.

Filed Under: Blog, Renewable Fuel Standard Tagged With: Des Moines Register, ethanol, Iowa, Renewable Fuel Standard, rfs

Show Your Work

March 6, 2015 by Mike Morrison 4 Comments

While the EPA is aggressively pushing its new regulatory agenda, they’re still happy to hide the science behind these decisions from the American people. Many of these regulations could cost billions of dollars, by the EPA’s own estimates, but they still refuse to make the basis for their new rules public. It’s time for the EPA to show their work and stop hiding from the citizens they supposedly serve.

Filed Under: Cartoons Tagged With: Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Secret Science

STUDY: EPA Ozone Rule Would Negatively Impact Every State in U.S.

March 4, 2015 by AEA 4 Comments

According to a recent study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), EPA’s proposed ozone rule would result in significant job losses and a considerable rise in energy costs for hard-working Americans. In a recent segment of E&E News’ OnPoint, Greg Bertelsen also outlined multiple discrepancies in EPA’s economic analysis of their proposed rule. Click below to view the segment in full.

Filed Under: Ozone Rule, Products and Power Tagged With: EPA, NAM, Ozone

Obama’s Keystone XL Claim Earns Four Pinocchios from Washington Post

March 2, 2015 by AEA 2 Comments

President Obama has delayed a decision over the Keystone XL pipeline for more than six years and just last week he vetoed a bill that would have approved the pipeline. Despite years of delay and study by the State Department, the president recently
failed to make a reasonable argument against Keystone. Either he is deliberately not telling the truth about the pipeline or he is ignorant of what the pipeline would do. Either reason is scary given that he just vetoed a bill on the pipeline.

Today, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler called out President Obama for his misleading rhetoric, giving him four Pinocchios for his claim that Keystone XL oil “bypasses the U.S.” Kessler explains:

President Obama, seeking to explain his veto of a bill that would have leapfrogged the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline, in an interview with a North Dakota station repeated some false claims that had previously earned him Pinocchios. Yet he managed to make his statement even more misleading than before, suggesting the pipeline would have no benefit for American producers at all…

As we have noted before, when the president says “it bypasses the United States,” he leaves out a very important step. The crude oil would travel to the Gulf Coast, where it would be refined into products such as motor gasoline and diesel fuel (known as a distillate fuel in the trade). Current trends suggest that only about half of that refined product would be exported, and it could easily be lower.

A report released in February by IHS Energy, which consults for energy companies, concluded that “Canadian crude making its way to the USGC [Gulf Coast] will likely be refined there, and most of the refined products are likely to be consumed in the United States.” It added that “for Gulf refineries, heavy bitumen blends from the oil sands are an attractive substitute for declining offshore heavy crude supply from Latin America.” It concluded that 70 percent of the refined product would be consumed in the United States.

Environmentalists dismiss IHS as a biased source, but the analysis mirrors the conclusions of the State Department’s final environmental impact statement on the Keystone XL project. This is what is especially strange about Obama’s remarks, as he appears to be purposely ignoring the findings of the lead Cabinet agency on the issue.

While these findings are significant, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. IER has shown that the President is perfectly willing to ignore reports from the State Department if they do not align with his misguided agenda. It is with this ignorance in mind that the Post saves its harshest criticisms for last:

The president’s latest remarks pushes this assertion into the Four Pinocchios column. If he disagrees with the State Department’s findings, he should begin to make the case why it is wrong, rather than assert the opposite, without any factual basis. Moreover, by telling North Dakota listeners that the pipeline has no benefit for Americans, he is again being misleading, given that producers in the region have signed contracts to transport some of their production through the pipeline.

You can read the rest of the Washington Post’s fact check here.

Filed Under: Keystone XL Tagged With: Keystone XL, State Department, Washington Post

Divestment Activists and Anti-Vaxxers Cut from the Same Cloth

February 27, 2015 by AEA Leave a Comment

American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle penned a letter to the editor of The Dallas Morning News. The text of the letter is below:

The recent measles outbreak at Disneyland helped shine a light on the lethal ideology of anti-vaxxers who deny the science on vaccines.

Another group of activists recently descended on cities across the country to peddle a potentially more dangerous notion: to pressure Americans into divesting any stocks or bonds they own in companies that produce natural gas, oil or coal.

If successful, the fossil-fuel divestment movement would take America back to a time before modern medicine could control the spread of deadly viruses like measles and polio. In other words, divesting from fossil fuels means divesting from modern medicine — and modern life.

Natural gas, for instance, generates 46 percent of Texas’ electricity, but the fuel is also a key feedstock for many medical devices. As just one example, polymers made from natural gas are used to create the syringe tips that administer life-saving vaccines.

The same is true of oil. In addition to fueling our cars, petrochemicals are used to make acetylsalicylic acid — aspirin — the main ingredient in many over-the-counter pain relievers.

Finally, coal supplies 32 percent of Texas’ electricity. It also has numerous public health applications: Kidney dialysis machines, for example, are made from activated carbon, which comes from coal. The list goes on.

Anti-vaxxers and divestment activists are cut from the same cloth. Their ideas deny reality and cause needless pain and suffering. Texans should inoculate themselves against the divestment delusion.

Filed Under: Divestment Truth Tagged With: divestment, electricity, vaccines

Obama Used His Pen

February 27, 2015 by Mike Morrison 1 Comment

Filed Under: Cartoons, Energy Development, Keystone XL Tagged With: Keystone XL, Obama

AEA Statement on Keystone XL Veto

February 24, 2015 by AEA 2 Comments

WASHINGTON — American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement on President Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline bill:

“The White House said President Obama would veto the Keystone bill ‘without drama or fanfare or delay.’ That’s rich coming from a president who has spent the last six years turning a routine decision over an infrastructure project into a media circus.

“Instead of listening to the American people, who overwhelmingly support the pipeline, the president continues to carry water for the national environmental lobby. Keystone XL is an economic no-brainer that would create thousands of jobs and strengthen America’s relationship with Canada, our strongest energy partner. Along with the administration’s methane rules, plans to lock up ANWR, and permitting delays on federal lands, this veto sends a clear message to OPEC that help is on the way.

“The only drama here is that of the president’s own doing.”

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Filed Under: Press Releases Tagged With: Keystone XL, Obama, veto

STUDY: Assessing Emerging Policy Threats to the U.S. Power Grid

February 24, 2015 by AEA Leave a Comment

According to a new report from the Institute for Energy Research, the biggest threat to our power grid isn’t a cyber or physical attack – it’s government policies. IER’s new study examines numerous threats to our incredibly dependable power grid, which stem from policies at both the federal and state level. Below is the executive summary of the report:

Executive Summary

Abstract

Reliable, affordable electricity is critical to our well-being and essential to modern life. But today, threats to the reliability of the power grid are numerous: cyber-attacks, weather, and accidents. Fortunately, the most significant threat is also the most avoidable—bad policy. Federal and state policies are already increasing electricity bills around the country, and the worst effects are yet to come. The federal government, and particularly the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is promulgating regulations that will reduce the reliability of the power grid with little thought of the consequences. In fact, these policies threaten to take offline 130 gigawatts of reliable electricity generation sources—enough to meet the electricity needs of more than 105 million Americans, or one-third of the population of the entire United States. Reforming policies that threaten grid reliability should be a top priority for policymakers.

Overview

American homes and businesses depend on reliable electricity. We use it to energize everything from our lights and appliances to our computers and the data centers that give us the Internet. Because so much of what we do every day depends on having access to reliable power, threats to the consistent delivery of electricity put modern life itself at risk. Such threats take many forms. Some originate from things beyond our control— such as cyber attacks and extreme weather —and we can seek to defend against and mitigate those threats. Others result from accidental error, such as the transmission line failure that resulted in a major blackout of the Northeastern U.S. in 2003. Smart planning and the use of best practices in the electricity industry can minimize these accidents, but they are an unavoidable part of a society powered by a complex system of electricity delivery.

In contrast, some emerging threats are completely avoidable. These threats come from a different kind of error—bad policy. Currently, a host of federal and state regulations, subsidies, and mandates threaten to undermine the reliability of the U.S. power grid by taking offline over 130 gigawatts of reliable power, which is enough to meet the residential electricity needs of more than 105 million Americans. New stresses on the electricity delivery system are coming primarily from two types of policies:

1) Regulations that directly shut down reliable sources of electricity, such as coal and nuclear power, and

2) Subsidies and mandates that force increased amounts of unreliable sources of electricity on the grid, such as wind and solar power, and undermine the normal operation of reliable power plants.

Together, these two types of policies create a much less reliable grid and increase the chances of a major blackout.

This year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is slated to finalize a regulation that closes reliable power plants and forces the use of unreliable sources of electricity. With this wide-ranging carbon dioxide regulation under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act—called the Existing Source Rule—EPA threatens simultaneously to shut down vast swaths of reliable electricity generation across America and impose a federal mandate for renewable energy. Affected utilities and grid operators are pushing back on the rule and asking for extra time to comply. However, pushing back deadlines does not solve the most important problem with the Existing Source Rule, which is EPA’s disregard for electric reliability.

With this one regulation, EPA will be able to exercise unprecedented control over the electric grid. In turn, grid reliability will suffer because reliability is neither a priority for EPA nor one of EPA’s statutory obligations. Some have referred to the Existing Source Rule as a federal takeover of the electric grid because EPA is proposing to turn electricity markets on their head by mandating a radical shift away from economic dispatch (the tried-and-true method of balancing the grid while minimizing costs by selecting reliable generators on a least-cost basis) and towards environmental dispatch (choosing generation sources based on their carbon dioxide emissions rather than their reliability and cost).

EPA is charging ahead with the Existing Source Rule and other grid-threatening regulations despite vocal opposition from independent grid experts. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation— the group of reliability experts designated by the federal government to oversee the power grid—continues to raise questions about the effect of EPA rules on the grid. It is unclear whether EPA will address these reliability problems before finalizing its rules. Electricity policy in the U.S. deserves to be reevaluated. In fact, if federal and state policymakers intentionally set out to cause havoc for grid operators and hurt grid reliability, they would be hard pressed to do better than the current policy trajectory.

Dozens of policies handicap electric reliability by favoring unreliable sources of power, undercutting reliable sources, or both. From state-level renewable energy mandates, to the wind production tax credit, to multiple EPA rules targeting coal-fired power plants, to—yes—blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, bad policy threatens to wreck America’s power grid. Fortunately, policymakers have every opportunity to address these threats.

For those who want to ensure that Americans have access to reliable electricity long into the future, the time has come to push back against policies that hurt grid reliability. It is time to repeal regulations that shut down reliable sources of power and to remove massive subsidies for unreliable power sources. Today’s electricity policy is a risky nationwide experiment in burning the candle at both ends— something has to give. That means reliability problems and blackouts if emerging policy threats go un-checked. Policymakers should choose now to put the U.S. power grid back on track and to ensure reliable electricity for years to come.

Filed Under: Blog, Studies Tagged With: coal power, electricity, EPA, natural gas, nuclear power, power grid