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By EPA’s own conservative estimates, their ozone proposal would be the single costliest regulation in U.S. history. Besides carrying a $90 billion a year price tag, EPA’s proposed rule would also put pristine national parks like Big Bend, Texas out of compliance. If national parks like Big Bend and Yellowstone can’t comply with EPA’s new rule, who can?
A new report raises questions about dealings between Sen. Harry Reid and green energy companies seeking federal subsidies. These companies received billions in taxpayer dollars after donating to an organization run by Reid allies, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader from 2007–2015, has bragged about steering federal grants and loans to green energy companies in Nevada. Each of these companies happened to receive subsidies after donating to a nonprofit group founded by former Reid staffers, the Clean Energy Project (CEP).
Below is a partial list of the companies that donated to the Reid-tied CEP and also received preferential treatment from Sen. Reid and the Obama administration:
Sen. Reid exploited the gusher of taxpayer funds made available by the federal stimulus in 2009. The stimulus funneled billions of dollars to green energy companies, many of which went bankrupt after receiving federal support.
Some of the biggest green-energy failures have come from the biofuel industry. For example, one of Reid’s favored solar companies, Spanish-based Abengoa, also received $132 million in subsidies for a biofuel facility in Kansas. That plant was supposed to open in 2013 with an annual capacity of 25 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel. However, the plant didn’t open until October 2014 and hasn’t come anywhere close to meeting production targets. In fact, all of the cellulosic biofuel facilities in the country produced just 728,509 gallons of biofuel last year, according to EPA data, despite a federal Renewable Fuel Standard mandating millions of gallons per year.
Abengoa’s woes pale in comparison to those of KiOR, another politically-connected biofuel company. KiOR was founded by Vinod Khosla, a billionaire investor and Obama donor. The company received a $75 million loan from the state of Mississippi to build a biofuel facility in Columbus. In November, KiOR filed for bankruptcy after years of cost overruns and missed production targets. Court papers show KiOR’s revenue totaled just $2.25 million compared to $629.3 million in losses, leaving creditors, including Mississippi taxpayers, on the hook. KiOR is also facing a class-action lawsuit for allegedly making “false and misleading statements” to investors about the “timing of projected production levels” at its Columbus facility.
The government can’t simply subsidize or mandate a product to be cost effective. Despite lavish subsidies and mandates, the cellulosic biofuel industry has failed to get off the ground, with troubled companies like Abengoa and KiOR securing billions of dollars in federal and state subsidies to build production facilities that often fail to live up to the hype. These companies also benefit from the RFS, a federal mandate that requires refiners to purchase and blend millions of gallons of biofuels into gasoline each year.
The solution is to let Americans – not politicians – make their own energy choices. While Sen. Reid brags about giving preferential treatment to companies that support his political allies, American families suffer the consequences. This system of cronyism creates inefficiencies by propping up failing companies at the expense of successful ones. As a result, the public ends up paying higher energy costs and taxpayers are left picking up the tab. The success or failure of energy sources shouldn’t depend on their ability to trade donations for handouts, but rather on their ability to provide a valuable product to American families.
The case against the federal biofuel mandate, the Renewable Fuel Standard, is mounting. In the last two days, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have run opinion pieces criticizing the costly RFS and its proponents. The New York Times op-ed focused on how forcing Americans to blend ethanol with gasoline is really a hidden tax:
Since 1982, the price of an energy-equivalent amount of ethanol has, on average, been about 2.4 times the price of gasoline. Furthermore, for eight full years between 1986 and 1998, ethanol cost at least three times more than an energy-equivalent amount of gasoline. In fact, since 1982, ethanol has always been more expensive than gasoline.
The same energy-equivalent prices allow us to estimate the annual cost of the ethanol tax. Between 2007 and 2014, about 92.5 billion gallons of ethanol were mixed into domestic gasoline supplies. Over that eight-year period, the energy-equivalent cost of ethanol averaged about 90 cents per gallon more than gasoline.
Motorists thus incurred about $83 billion — roughly $10 billion annually — in additional fuel costs over and above what they would have paid for gasoline alone.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal editorial board eviscerated Republican presidential candidates for going to Iowa and toeing the pro-ethanol line:
Political cynics will say we’re, well, tilting at windmills by expecting politicians to swear off energy subsidies, but that merely proves our point about the Iowa caucuses. If they were thinking bigger, Republicans would understand that they’ll have more credibility to reform social welfare if they oppose corporate welfare.
You can read the rest of The Wall Street Journal editorial here.
You can also find the rest of The New York Times op-ed here.
Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require states to generate a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. Currently 29 states and the District of Columbia have an RPS program. A new study shows that Americans in these states are paying a hefty price for their RPS.
The study from Utah State University and Strata Policy looks at Kansas’ RPS and the costs incurred by Kansans since the Sunflower State adopted the mandate in 2009. Key findings include the following:
The authors of the study also project that these costs will continue to rise as Kansas’ RPS requires more electricity generation to come from renewable energy sources. The RPS is an unnecessary, costly mandate that Kansans and all Americans simply can’t afford.
Printing Hillary Clinton’s 55,000 pages of emails emitted nearly 40,000 pounds of greenhouse gases, about as much as the average American produces in one year. Clinton’s extravagant print job comes less than six months after her stump speech to national environmentalist groups about the urgent need for reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, following in the long line of Obama Administration transparency issues, has finally released at least a partial record of her emails to the State Department. Clinton had previously kept the emails on a homebrew email server, thus avoiding both government email security measures and FOIA requests. This may also violate federal law if any matters that were deemed “Classified” or “Sensitive But Unclassified” were sent to her email – or if she sent any sensitive emails.
Unfortunately, the incomplete emails the Clinton camp released were actually physically printed, using over 55,000 pieces of paper and making it more difficult for investigators to search through them. Though many older politicians may find modern technology like PDFs, email, and flash drives befuddling, we imagine leftist politicos like Hillary Clinton would at least understand the environmental consequences of their actions. To that end, we’ve done a rough calculation of just how much CO2 the Clintons’ released by printing out tens of thousands of emails.
A study from Print Greener, a software company that strives to eliminate wasted paper, ink, and energy, estimated the GHG emissions of printing in a 2008 study:
Based on the pilot results, Savills could significantly reduce its carbon footprint by using GreenPrint. In one year it would save over 259 million pages. The equivalent environmental impact is shown in Figure 832:
Using this ratio of 186 million pounds of GHG’s for 259 million pages (about 0.71 lbs per page), Hillary’s “disclosure” of her emails created nearly 38,824 pounds of greenhouse gasses (according to Print Greener’s assumptions) or 17.6 metric tons, compared to the average American’s 17.6 metric tons.
It is difficult to take claims by Hillary that greenhouse gas emissions are a priority very seriously when she prints emails instead of just making them into PDFs or other electronic formats.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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