News

The scarcity narrative continues to break down under the pressure of technology, production, and American innovation. Market Watch (9/11/12) reports: “U.S. crude-oil production is expected to grow by 74%, or more than 4.9 million barrels per day to an average of 11.6 million barrels per day within 10 years, according to Platts’s energy data analytics unit Bentek Energy.”

Is EPA serious here?  Are they really defending giving money to China so it can become a more efficient competitor?  Has someone mentioned this to Sherrod Brown? The Hill (9/11/12) reports: “The EPA believes that HR 4255 will cripple the agency’s ability through grants to address harmful air pollutants that affect both the global and domestic environment,” Hooks said in written testimony. “Air pollution from overseas sources represents a growing problem for public health globally and here in the United States.”

Dan Simmons crushes here.  Which is no surprise whatsoever. Energy & Commerce (9/11/12) reports: “Daniel Simmons, Director of Regulatory and State Affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, described EPA’s foreign grants as “symptomatic of out-of-control spending by the federal government.” He explained, “Taxpayer dollars should be spent on projects that have an obvious benefit to the American people and these foreign grants do little, if anything, to benefit the American people. Lastly, if EPA would like to improve environmental quality at home and abroad, a far more productive approach would be to promote environmental improvements through economic growth. Years of research shows that economic growth promotes environmental protection.””

You may have missed this, but Kyoto is dying a pretty slow, ugly, public death.  I’m kind of surprised President Clinton didn’t mention it as one his achievements from the dais in Charlotte. Inter Press Service (9/9/12) reports: “As government negotiators from the world’s poorest countries ended a round of United Nations climate change talks in the Thai capital, they sounded a grave note about what appears imminent when they assemble in November in Doha – the reading of the last rites of the Kyoto Protocol.”

Mary Hutzler has been blogging about the windmills not being hooked up for over two years. Maybe people will start to listen to her before it comes to jumping out of windows. WSJ (9/12/12) reports: “Wind power is seeing similar overcapacity. China’s top wind turbine manufacturers, Goldwind and Sinovel, saw their earnings plummet by 83% and 96% respectively in the first half of 2012, year-on-year. Domestic wind farm operators Huaneng and Datang saw profits plunge 63% and 76%, respectively, due to low capacity utilization. China’s national electricity regulator, SERC, reported that 53% of the wind power generated in Inner Mongolia province in the first half of this year was wasted. One analyst told China Securities Journal that “40-50% of wind power projects are left idle,” with many not even connected to the grid.”

Wow!  A win, win, win.  Unless you are poor, in which case an energy tax is regressive.  Or unless you consume anything that uses energy when it gets made, or grown, or transported.  Or unless you think the link between carbon dioxide and catastrophic climate change is tenuous at best.  In those instances, it is a loss, loss, loss. Common Dreams (8/28/12) reports: “While noting the raising taxes is never embraced by the mainstream of US politics, a new study released by researchers at MIT on the impact of a national carbon tax claims that such a scheme could be “a potentially a win-win-win solution.””

Is anyone surprised?  How could anyone be surprised? Reuters(9/10/12) reports: Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts. GM on Monday issued a statement disputing the estimates.

It is a challenge to remain outraged.  After all, the federal government has already mandated that we buy enough insurance to top off our tanks.  And John Roberts said that was OK. Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (9/10/12) reports: “The EPA has no business telling Americans how much fuel they must purchase,” the lawmakers said.  “This unprecedented attempt to remedy the consequences of EPA’s E15 waivers will not prevent widespread misfueling of millions of vehicles and products already owned by Americans that are not covered by the waiver decisions and introduces an unacceptable intrusion into the daily lives of drivers.”

Just about everybody was wined and dined by the energy scarcity myth. The important thing is that the dinner tables are starting to turn on this horribly misguided mindset. Politico (9/10/12) reports: “Years before becoming famous as an advocate of fiscal restraint, Paul Ryan supported a now-controversial Energy Department loan program aimed at developing greener cars — and even called for DOE to hand out lump-sum payments to companies.”

This is from the Democratic Party platform.  It is like the Keystone XL pipeline project was never proposed.  It is an unperson. DNC (9/12) reports: “In the last four years, President Obama and the Democratic Party have taken concrete steps to make us more energy independent. We’ve supported nearly 225,000 clean energy jobs and Americans are importing less oil, breathing cleaner air, and saving money on energy costs. Historic investments in clean energy technologies have helped double the electricity we get from wind and solar.”

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an ear (of corn). Rewire(9/6/12) reports: “Among the flurry of action — or inaction — on renewable energy bills in the last days of the state’s legislative session comes a striking but largely unheralded statement of policy from the state of California. Last week, Governor Brown signed into law a bill that excludes corn-derived ethanol fuel from the state’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program.”

As in so many other things (especially how he feels about Senator Frank Church) Senator Roberts is spot-on here. The Wichita Eagle (9/9/12) reports: “Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., introduced legislation last month to impose a “carbon tax” on the American people. We’ve been down this road before. It was a bad idea then, and it is now. A carbon tax is an additional tax on the essential fuels that power our economy – gasoline, diesel, natural gas and electricity. It would cause prices at the pump to increase, electricity rates to go up, and natural gas bills to rise. Because nearly everything we buy is transported by trains or trucks, or grown on farms that use diesel equipment, or derived from oil and gas, significant increases in energy prices will ripple throughout the entire economy.”

Everybody thinks they love wind… until they have to pay for it. Tulsa World (9/7/12) reports: “The numbers opting into those programs is far less than the positive response on the poll. American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s WindChoice program, which offers wind options at $1.72 extra per 100-kilowatt blocks, only has 669 takers so far out of approximately 530,000 customers.”

So, Secretary Salazar went to the convention and talked about how great he was doing.  But out here in the real world, the assessment is a little different. Anchorage Daily News (9/7/12) reports: “A Norwegian oil and gas company is delaying plans to explore for oil offshore in the Alaska Arctic until at least 2015 because of concerns about regulatory challenges faced by rival and sometimes partner Shell Oil Co., according to a company spokesman… The decision by Statoil came in August, before federal regulators decided to allow Shell to drill in the Chukchi Sea, but that development doesn’t change things, said Jim Schwartz, a Houston-based spokesman for Statoil… “The bottom line is, in light of the significant uncertainty regarding Alaska offshore exploration, we’ve decided to take what we believe is a prudent step of observing the outcome of Shell’s efforts before finalizing our own exploration decision time frame,” Schwartz said”

You do have to say this for the President:  he has no trouble separating himself from the reality of his record.  That is a really valuable skill in politics. AEA (9/6/12) reports: ““On the eve of the one-year anniversary of Solyndra’s bankruptcy, Barack Obama made the latest in a four year string of empty promises about his plan to achieve American energy independence. Despite his pledge to create 600,000 jobs in the energy sector and 1 million new manufacturing jobs, President Obama has presided over the worst economic recovery in a generation. He has refused to permit the Keystone XL pipeline, which would create tens of thousands of jobs, and he has instituted a de facto embargo on offshore energy development that has left the Gulf coast economy struggling to recover. At every turn, President Obama has denied access to taxpayer owned energy resources on federal lands, including more than a trillion barrels of oil shale.”

Congressman Markey just can’t win.  At the risk of piling on, we would point out (again) that wind, solar, oil, and natural gas are merely some of the above.  And for our friends in the natural gas business, you may want to reflect that Jimmy Carter’s favorite fuel was . . . coal.  Mutatis mutandis. Grist (9/6/12) reports: “Let me say this because I think it’s important: When George Bush left office in January 2009, we as a country were 57 percent dependent on imported oil. Today we are 45 percent dependent on imported oil. That’s Obama drill, baby, drill! Why do I say that? We are at an 18-year high for oil production in the U.S.! Let me say that again: We are at an 18-year high for oil production in the U.S. right now! And we are at an 18-year low with greenhouse gas emissions [thanks to Obama’s push for] natural gas, wind, solar, and new vehicle standards.”

You are a damned fool if you live in coal country and don’t register some sort of disapproval with the current President. The Atlantic (9/6/12) reports: “As the delegate roll call at the Democratic National Convention neared West Virginia last night, the jokes started to fly on Twitter. “It’s going to be awkward when the West Virginia delegation gives delegates to federal inmate Keith Judd,” quipped BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynczki, a representative example.”

I think Celinda Lake is probably right.  The economy is a much bigger and less comprehensible mess than one, small, ugly instance of corruption involving billionaire donors, White House involvement, skirting the law, and the usual efforts to avoid talking about the whole thing. Politico (9/12) reports: “But Democratic pollster Celinda Lake contended that Solyndra still isn’t as hurtful to Obama as Bain Capital is to Romney… “Solyndra doesn’t have any victims,” she said. “Bain does. People lost their health insurance. Solyndra is a bank shot.””

When you actually ask voters to list important issues, environment (in total!) gets mentioned by about 1% of respondents.  Climate change gets even less.  Which is why the President has spent approximately zero percent of his political capital on the issue.  Coral can be a good reporter, but when it comes to this issue she has jumped the shark. National Journal (9/6/12) reports: “But on Thursday night, under the spotlight at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, just two months from the general election, Obama made his most high-profile mention of the controversial issue this year. “And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet—because climate change is not a hoax,” Obama said. “More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it,” he said, to a sustained ovation.”

Meeting this goal would probably be a lot easier if the President had approved the Keystone pipeline.  Or if Secretary Salazar would open up more than 3% of the federal estate for exploration.  Or if the Administration would follow the law on oil shale leases.  I could go on, but you get the point. Politico (9/6/12) reports: “President Barack Obama will call for cutting net oil imports in half and supporting 600,000 natural gas jobs by the end of the decade, according to excerpts of his address to the Democratic National Convention released by the Obama campaign.”

This is pretty good.  Or terribly bad, depending on how you think about the world. SchiffReport (9/5/12) reports: “Posing as an anti-business crusader, Peter Schiff found a number of DNC delegates and attendees who support explicitly outlawing profitability. We deliberately avoided speaking with the occupy protestors camping outside in tents to get a more “mainstream” Democratic perspective!”

He definitely should.  It would help the campaign tremendously. National Journal (9/4/12) reports: “A large group of Democratic donors is threatening to withhold money from President Obama’s reelection campaign unless he breaks his silence on climate change and responds directly to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s denigration of the issue at the Republican National Convention last week.”

I had no idea that Pleistocene-era caliche deposits release carbon into the atmosphere when exposed to the elements. WSJ(9/4/12) reports: “A couple of weeks ago we wondered if green lobbying groups would object to new Department of Interior rules to streamline environmental approval for solar energy projects on hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land. (“The Solar-Painted Desert,” Aug. 13, 2012.) Well, here we go. Three environmental groups—Western Lands Project, Basin and Range Watch, and Solar Done Right—have filed a formal complaint of the kind that often presages a lawsuit… But here’s the real shocker: The letter complains that “no scientific evidence has been presented to support the claim that these projects reduce greenhouse emissions.” And “the opposite may be true. Recent work at the Center for Conservation Biology University of California, Riverside, suggests that soil disturbance from large-scale solar development may disrupt Pleistocene-era caliche deposits that release carbon to the atmosphere when exposed to the elements, thus ‘negat[ing] the solar development C [carbon] gains.'””

You know the really sad part?  No one is really surprised. Inside Climate News (9/4/12) reports: “Mitt Romney has vowed to drill the nation’s way out of its foreign oil addiction instead of investing in clean fuel technologies—but according to Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest political advisers, that’s bad economics.”

This is discouraging.  Again, not surprising, but discouraging. E&ENews (9/4/12) reports: “Man-made global warming is happening, President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney agreed in answers released today on the independent website ScienceDebate, but neither candidate provided specifics about what kind of future policies would be needed to slow climate change or guard against its adverse effects.”

So the new automobile mandates kill people, increase the cost of cars, punish poorer people, and erode the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund.  Is there anything this crew can’t wreck? American Road & Transportation Builders Ass. (8/29/12) reports: “As new cars and light trucks are purchased in the future and old ones retired, average fuel economy will improve, reducing the 2009 forecast of gasoline sales and HTF revenues by the amounts shown in the table.  The baseline for computing percentage losses is total HTF revenues.”

Is Reuters trying to imply that Senator Reid is a corrupt politician trying to compel a utility to purchase expensive, unreliable energy?  Because if they are, they need to write this story on just about every Member of Congress who favors utility mandates.  Or, looked at through a different prism, everyone who favors the ethanol mandate. Reuters (8/31/12) reports: “In 2003, the Nevada Democrat publicly banned relatives from lobbying him or his staff after newspaper reports showed that Nevada industries and institutions routinely turned to Reid’s sons or son-in-law for representation. Now, questions surrounding family ties are flaring again in Nevada around the Senate majority leader. He and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert.”

Hey, I’m pretty sure Solyndra and the rest of the crew went under babbling about how the Chinese were killing them.  Let’s make it easy.  No one on the planet wants a product that doesn’t work as well as its competition.  When was the last time you bought a VHS tape? The Telegraph (8/29/12) reports: “At the same time, the quality of the solar equipment being made by Chinese companies, even by the biggest companies, is often not export-grade… While the Chinese government has promised to hugely increase its purchases of solar panels, there is a significant excess capacity in the domestic market that has kept prices low.”

What?  You mean FERC does not rule the entire planet?  Does Joe Kelliher know about this? Platts (8/28/12) reports: “While the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can retroactively determine what the electricity rates in California should have been during the Western energy crisis of 2000-01, it cannot use that information to make non-jurisdictional entities, such as municipal utilities and the Bonneville Power Administration, pay refunds, a federal appeals court has determined.”

On Friday we noted that some in New York did not want the Champlain Hudson line bringing in electricity from Canada.  Now, we note that some in New England would rather not have the Northern Pass line bringing electricity in from Canada.  Sense a theme?  On a separate note, kudos to ISO-NE for acknowledging that switching to natural gas may be a lot more complicated than people think. Union Leader (8/29/12) reports: “On Friday we noted that some in New York did not want the Champlain Hudson line bringing in electricity from Canada.  Now, we note that some in New England would rather not have the Northern Pass line bringing electricity in from Canada.  Sense a theme?  On a separate note, kudos to ISO-NE to acknowledging that switching to natural gas may be a lot more complicated than people think.”