AMERICAN.COM

March 26, 2012, 4:50 pm

The interwebs are buzzing with a memo from CAP’s John Podesta and Geoff Garin, urging “interested parties” to join them in a campaign to demonize oil companies and blame them for high gas prices:

By engaging in a public debate centered on exposing oil companies’ successful efforts to rig the system to favor their own profits over the interests of American consumers and expose their deep political and financial ties to conservatives in Congress that continue to defend their billions of dollars in tax breaks, progressives can win the gas price message war.

And what are CAP’s “new” talking points? They want to:

1. Ban exports of domestic oil — The heck with that whole “free-markets and international-trade” idea. How would we like it if China banned exports of rare earth elements? Oops, President Obama already took them to the WTO over that. Guess we wouldn’t like it.

2. End subsidies to oil companies — I’m against subsidies, but what CAP is actually talking about is selectively taking away tax breaks from oil companies that other manufacturers get. It’s a bit like saying that you want to end housing subsidies by taking the mortgage-interest deduction away for left-handed people. And how raising taxes on the people who make your gasoline is supposed to bring prices down eludes me.

3. Crack down on speculators — Speculators are the new bogeyman in the energy policy world, and they have magical powers. They never mistakenly bet on oil prices going down, they never miss the peak of oil prices when they’re going up, and they don’t exist when gas is around $2.50 per gallon. Of course, in the real world, speculation is called “hedging,” and is seen to have social benefits in ensuring price continuity and damping down price volatility in commodity markets. And, of course, if people had the ability to predict things the way the magical speculators do, there could be no Las Vegas, because the casinos would be broke instantly.

4. More Fuel Efficient Cars and Trucks — Right. Making cars even more expensive, smaller, more dangerous, and less desirable to consumers is sure to help out the auto industry. Look how popular the GM Volt and Nissan Leaf are! They can’t sell the things even though the subsidy rate is nearly a fifth of the purchase price.

I suppose I should be grateful to CAP for releasing their talking points, as I regularly debate with CAPpies over energy policy. Still, I could wish for a little originality—these are the same arguments that the Left has offered up since the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: Center for American Progress, energy policy, energy subsidies, oil companies

Kenneth P. Green

EPA-induced refinery closures linked to high gas prices

March 23, 2012, 1:48 pm

An article in Investor’s Business Daily puts a greater share of responsibility for high gas prices on EPA’s perpetual regulatory crusade, particularly its influence on refineries:

The untold story behind soaring pump prices is that major U.S. refineries are going out of business and creating at least regional shortages thanks in no small part to costly EPA rules. Over just the past six months, three refineries supplying about half the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to the East Coast have closed, including two owned by Sunoco Inc. They say they simply cannot make money anymore. Philadelphia-based Sunoco’s refinery business in the Northeast has lost almost $1 billion over the past three years as U.S. demand for gas fell and the cost of foreign crude soared. But over the same period, it had to shell out “significant expenditures for environmental projects and compliance activities” to satisfy onerous EPA mandates, according to the company’s latest 10-K report. In fact, it’s spent more than $1.3 billion just to comply with stricter EPA rules, which carry stiff fines or penalties for violations. Sunoco fretted that these regulatory costs would grow exponentially under the Obama administration, which has hit some of its refineries with fines.

It’s long been known that refinery costs contribute significantly to gas prices. As I wrote in a recent article for The American:

Another factor that may have contributed to the increased price of gasoline is the reduction in the number of operating refineries in the United States over the last 30 years. The number and capacity of U.S. refineries peaked in 1981, and, since then, 171 plants have closed, although the remaining plants have increased output to offset a loss of production. Though most of this reduction has been caused by the low profit potential of refineries, others see a significant cause in “extremely tight environmental restrictions, not-in-my-backyard community opposition, and the high cost of new construction.” Refinery profit margins have played a role in recent gasoline price hikes. The EIA suggests that “The sizable jump in retail prices this year reflects not only the higher average cost of crude oil compared to previous years, but also an increase in U.S. refining margins on gasoline (the difference between refinery wholesale gasoline prices and the average cost of crude oil) from an average of $0.34 per gallon in 2010 to $0.45 per gallon in 2011 and $0.42 per gallon in 2012.”

Though EPA’s official position is that every action they take is all benefit and no cost, facts—and gas prices—are stubborn things.

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Categories: Energy and Environment, Regulation | Tags: epa, gas prices, refineries

So which president deserves credit for the rise in U.S. energy production?

March 23, 2012, 12:34 pm

OK, so The New York Times has this big, blow-out piece today, “U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence.” A few stats I gleaned from it:

– In 2011, the country imported just 45 percent of the liquid fuels it used, down from a record high of 60 percent in 2005.

– Not only has the United States reduced oil imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries by more than 20 percent in the last three years, it has become a net exporter of refined petroleum products like gasoline for the first time since the Truman presidency.

– The natural gas industry, which less than a decade ago feared running out of domestic gas, is suddenly dealing with a glut so vast that import facilities are applying for licenses to export gas to Europe and Asia.

– National oil production, which declined steadily to 4.95 million barrels a day in 2008 from 9.6 million in 1970, has risen over the last four years to nearly 5.7 million barrels a day.

– The Energy Department projects that daily output could reach nearly seven million barrels by 2020. Some experts think it could eventually hit 10 million barrels—which would put the United States in the same league as Saudi Arabia.

Here is the nut graph:

How the country made this turnabout is a story of industry-friendly policies started by President Bush and largely continued by President Obama — many over the objections of environmental advocates — as well as technological advances that have allowed the extraction of oil and gas once considered too difficult and too expensive to reach.

To say the least. Vice President Cheney’s energy task force helped produce the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which stopped the EPA from regulating fracking under the Safe Drinking Water Act and granted the Interior Department “the power to issue drilling permits on millions of acres of federal lands without extensive environmental impact studies for individual projects … That new power has been used at least 8,400 times, mostly in Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, representing a quarter of all permits issued on federal land in the last six federal fiscal years.”

In addition, Team Bush “opened large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico and the waters off Alaska to exploration. … These measures primed the pump for the burst in drilling that began once oil prices started rising sharply in 2005 and 2006. With the world economy humming — and China, India, and other developing nations posting astonishing growth — demand for oil began outpacing the easily accessible supplies.”

Oh, and I would like to get some industry feedback on how Obama “largely continued” Bush’s pro-energy policies ….

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Categories: Energy and Environment, Regulation | Tags: energy policy

Kenneth P. Green

Would-be greenhouse gas controllers to hide agenda in ‘public health’

March 22, 2012, 4:54 pm

Politico’s Erica Martinson and Jonathan Allen write:

Shhhh! Don’t talk about global warming! There’s been a change in climate for Washington’s greenhouse gang, and they’ve come to this conclusion: To win, they have to talk about other topics, like gas prices and kids choking on pollutants.

It seems that the greenhouse gas control crowd, realizing that people believe they’ve been exaggerating climate risks, and that nobody wanted to go along with their policy ideas, has decided, essentially, to lie: They are going to try to push greenhouse gas controls by claiming that they’re really about protecting the public health, and stopping children from having asthma attacks.

Speakers for the Natural Resources Defense council told Politico:

“We’re going to talk a lot about the health implications of dirty air,” said Heather Taylor, director of NRDC’s political arm.

And Dan Weiss, from the Center for American Progress told them:

“You don’t have to be James Carville to figure out that talking about people’s health and the health of their children … is going to make a difference to the average voter.”

Dan tells me that he was misquoted here, and I hope that’s true, because frankly, telling people that greenhouse gas emissions will harm children’s health is pretty much a straight-up lie: Most greenhouse gases are non-toxic at ambient concentrations; conventional pollutants that are emitted in conjunction with greenhouse gases are already heavily controlled, with most in steep decline; and in either event, there is no clear correlation between asthma rates and air pollution levels. In fact, the two are somewhat anti-correlated historically: asthma rates have risen as pollution levels have declined.

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: climate change, energy policy, Greenhouse Gas

Nick Schulz

Supreme knockdown of the EPA

By Nick Schulz

March 21, 2012, 2:16 pm

The Supreme Court just sided with Mike and Chantell Sackett of Idaho in their fight against the EPA. Property rights advocates should be thrilled. It’s also a victory for the Pacific Legal Foundation and their talented attorney Damien Schiff.

I had the good fortune of meeting the Sacketts recently. It is difficult to overstate just how outrageous their treatment was by the EPA. Take a look at the following video from Nick Gillespie’s team at Reason to understand what happened to them.

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Categories: Energy and Environment, Regulation | Tags: epa, supreme court

Marc Thiessen

How’s that coal-powered car working out for ya?

By Marc Thiessen

March 21, 2012, 1:40 pm

Even with a federal subsidy of $7,500 per vehicle, the Chevy Volt has found so few buyers that GM has temporarily “suspended” production of the vehicle. It remains to be seen whether the new Tesla Model S — a luxury electric sedan that is being produced with a $465 million federal loan guarantee — will do any better. That car will cost around $45,000 (with the $7,500 per vehicle tax credit from the federal government on top of the federal loan guarantee). Hybrids like the Toyota Prius — also eligible for government tax credits — have proven more popular and commercially viable.

We taxpayers are spending an awful lot of money to subsidize expensive “green” cars for our fellow citizens — all on the premise that they are better for the environment. But are these vehicles really environmentally superior? According to a story buried in the Washington Post’s “Health and Science” section yesterday, the answer may be no.

The Post reports on a new study from Carnegie Mellon University professor Jeremy Michalek on the environmental impact of electric and hybrid vehicles:

[Michalek] found that a variety of factors affect a car’s overall environmental impact. Some have to do with location, some with consumer behavior and some with manufacturing decisions beyond your control.

Consider, for example, what kind of fuel powers the car. There’s no question that 100-percent electric vehicles have lower tailpipe emissions, because no fossil fuels are combusted during use. Total greenhouse gas emissions, however, are a different story. The electricity that runs a plug-in car has to come from somewhere. Coal is the most common source of electricity in the United States, and it emits 27 percent more carbon dioxide than oil, per unit of energy produced, by some calculations.

So, according to Michalek, your best environmental choice depends on your location: “Consumers in Seattle obtain much of their electricity from hydroelectric power, so a battery electric vehicle that uses no gasoline will be at its best. Consumers in West Virginia obtain much of their electricity from coal, so a regular gasoline-powered hybrid electric vehicle like the Toyota Prius is better.”

The Washington metropolitan area gets a large portion of its energy from coal — inspiring a lively debate about sustainability in the Post — but even that fact doesn’t end the conversation.

“The time of day that the consumer plugs in matters, because at a certain time of day the power plant that would respond to the increased demand might be a coal plant even if average electricity in the region comes from cleaner sources,” says Michalek.

And then there is the environmental issue of what to do with the environmentally toxic battery once it has broken down:

The life cycle environmental impact of a hybrid or pure plug-in car is largely influenced by the size of its batteries. Large batteries store more energy and extend a car’s range, but they come with an environmental cost. They’re heavy, require more extensive manufacturing resources and have to be replaced if they don’t outlive the rest of the car — which they often don’t. Disposal of the batteries is also resource-intensive, because they must be disassembled carefully rather than tossed into a landfill. Based on the average consumer’s energy mix and driving patterns, Michalek found that the pure plug-in cars, with large, long-range batteries, were no better for the environment than conventional gasoline cars. Hybrid engines with smaller batteries, however, are better than conventional vehicles and pure plug-ins.

So if you’re one of the proud consumers who plopped down a whole lot of your money (and mine) for one of these coal-powered cars, you may not be doing as much for the health of the environment as you were led to believe.

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Categories: Economic Policy, Energy and Environment | Tags: chevy volt, subsidies

Steven F. Hayward

Energy fact of the week: Not much renewable energy for the buck

March 20, 2012, 3:16 pm

Last week’s energy fact looked at a new CBO report which showed that non-hydro renewable energy now receives two-thirds of all federal government tax preferences, while fossil fuels only receive about 15 percent. But the situation is really much worse than it looks if you calculate how much energy is produced per dollar of tax subsidy. While the CBO report didn’t make this calculation, we did, and the results are in the chart below, which displays how much energy is produced for every dollar of tax preference. Every dollar of tax preference for non-hydro renewables produces 407,000 BTUs of energy, while every dollar of tax preference for fossil fuel delivers 66 times as much, 27 million BTUs of energy. Nuclear power subsidies—only 4 percent of total tax preferences—produce almost 26 times more energy per dollar than renewables. This is the reason renewable subsidies are both necessary to the industry, and unsustainable, at least at any scale that the taxpayer would be willing to pay. For renewables to match the output of fossil fuels at the current tax preference rate, the total tax preference would need to be $897 billion. That’s probably real money even to Obama.

Figure 1: Thousand BTUs per Dollar of Tax Preference

Source: EIA, CBO, and author’s calculations

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Categories: Energy and Environment, Energy Fact of the Week | Tags: energy subsidies, renewable energy

High oil prices? Europe has it worse than America

March 17, 2012, 7:47 am

Oil prices have surged, but they are still below the record levels set in 2008 (charts via The Oil Drum):

Unless, of course, you happen to use euros instead of dollars to buy the black stuff:

OK, these charts raise an obvious point, which Larry Kudlow rightly expounds into one:

But the best idea I’ve heard to ease gasoline prices comes from Joint Economic Committee vice chairman Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican. He has proposed the Sound Dollar Act, which would require the Fed to monitor gold and the foreign-exchange value of the dollar. He would also replace the Fed’s dual mandate with a single mandate for price stability.

A stronger dollar is key. The Joint Economic Committee just put out a study showing that a 10 to 15 percent appreciation of the greenback to pre-recession levels (before the Fed launched its massive dollar-creation, pump-priming campaign) would lower gasoline prices by 43 cents. So if the Treasury and the Federal Reserve strengthened the value of the dollar, oil and gasoline prices would decline.

It’s an excellent idea. The best one out there. A return to King Dollar would boost consumer real incomes, attract capital from all over the world, and grow the economy at a faster rate.

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Categories: Economic Policy, Energy and Environment | Tags: dollar, energy policy, oil, U.S. dollar

Kenneth P. Green

Obama’s energy straw-man parade

March 15, 2012, 3:58 pm

Once again, President Obama has turned to his favorite rhetorical trick, the parade of straw men:

“Lately, we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians — a lot of the folks who, you know, are running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed — they’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels,” Obama said. “They were against raising fuel standards because apparently they like gas guzzling cars better. We’re trying to move towards the future, and they want to be stuck in the past.” Those same people, Obama said, would’ve thought the Earth was flat, that television wouldn’t last, that the automobile was only a passing fad. “If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society,” he said. “They would not have believed that the world was round.”

Who would this be, exactly? As it happens, I don’t agree with the whole “all of the above” thing, but most of Mr. Obama’s opponents do in one form or another:

Newt Gingrich: “My administration will pursue an ‘all of the above’ American Energy Policy that allows expanded development of oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, wind, and nuclear sources of energy.”

Mitt Romney: “Government has a role to play in innovation in the energy industry. History shows that the United States has moved forward in astonishing ways thanks to national investment in basic research and advanced technology. However, we should not be in the business of steering investment toward particular politically favored approaches. That is a recipe for both time and money wasted on projects that do not bring us dividends. The failure of windmills and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant contribution to our energy supply is a prime example.”

“Concentrate alternative energy funding on basic research, utilize long-term, apolitical funding mechanisms like ARPA-E for basic research.”

Rick Santorum: “Expand domestic innovations and energy resources. This includes oil, natural gas, hydro, biomass, wind, solar, clean coal, and nuclear energy.”

Ron Paul: “Make tax credits available for the purchase and production of alternative fuel technologies.”

As for who likes gas-guzzling cars, well, the president really isn’t one to talk: His primary ride gets 8 MPG. But of course, comparing the presidential limo to a regular car would be, well, an unfair comparison, unlike, say, comparing people who disapprove of costly wind turbines and solar power parks to members of the Flat Earth Society.

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Categories: Energy and Environment, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 campaign, gop primary, president obama, renewable energy

Marc Thiessen

Here’s a ‘rigged system,’ Mr. Vice President

By Marc Thiessen

March 15, 2012, 2:39 pm

In a speech this morning to the United Auto Workers Local 12 Hall in Toledo, Ohio, Vice President Joe Biden declared:

Stated simply, we’re about promoting the private sector. They’re about protecting the privileged sector. We’re a fair shot, and a fair shake.… And ultimately that’s what this election is all about. It’s about a choice. A choice between a system that’s rigged, and one that’s fair.

This is laughable. If Obama and Biden want to run on the idea that Republicans are defending a “rigged” system while they are “promoting the private sector,” they are going to run into a little problem of their own making called the Obama green energy program.

In his outstanding book, Throw Them All Out, Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer goes through Obama’s 2008 campaign finance records and cross references Obama’s list of donors against the list of those who got grants and loans under the green energy program. Here is what he found:

• 71 percent of Energy Department grants and loans went to Obama’s political cronies. 71 percent!

• Collectively, they raised about $457,834 for Obama’s campaign.

• And they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.346 billion.

• That means they got $24,783 in taxpayer dollars for every $1 they gave to Obama’s campaign.

Now that is one heck of a return on investment.

Biden calls this “promoting the private sector.” Most Americans have a different name for it: “crony capitalism.” And there’s nothing “fair” about it.

It seems the Obama-Biden idea of “fairness” is that if you give lots of money to the Obama election effort, you’ll get billions of taxpayer dollars in return to subsidize your failing business. Most Americans don’t look at debacles like Solyndra and see a model there for promoting the private sector. They see it as a model of corruption.

So if Obama wants to make this the issue he will run on in the fall, he’s on very weak ground.

Here is a chart that tells the sordid story:

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Categories: Economic Policy, Energy and Environment, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 campaign, crony capitalism, joe biden, solyndra

Steven F. Hayward

Energy fact of the week: Who gets the most subsidies?

March 14, 2012, 4:14 pm

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted down reviving the production tax credit for wind power, but also voted down Senator Jim DeMint’s sweeping proposal to do away with all energy subsidies for everybody—fossil fuels, wind power, solar power, biomass–the whole smash. Too bad. Of course, wind and solar would collapse overnight without taxpayer support, while oil, gas, and coal production would continue with little impact, except, ironically, on smaller firms that require the tax treatment for their business model to work in some cases. That’s why these subsidies are so politically popular in Congress. Exxon-Mobil and Chevron would barely notice if you took their subsidies away. Most greenies don’t know that, and it would ruin their day to find out.

However, a new report just out from the Congressional Budget Office shows that over the last few years energy subsidies have started skewing heavily toward “renewable” energy and away from fossil fuels. Here’s part of the CBO’s summary:

Tax preferences for energy production were first established in 1916, and until 2005, they were primarily intended to stimulate domestic production of oil and natural gas. With the enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, energy-related tax preferences grew substantially, and an increasing share of them were aimed at encouraging energy efficiency and energy produced from renewable sources, such as wind and the sun. Although tax preferences for fossil fuels continued to make up the bulk of all energy-related tax incentives through 2007, by the end of 2008, fossil fuels accounted for only a third of the total cost of energy-related tax incentives.

Have a close look at the chart below from the CBO study, and notice one feature not discussed much: fossil fuel energy subsidies went almost completely away in the 1986 tax reform act, but crept back when we started raising income tax rates under Bush I and Clinton.

Source: CBO, How Much Does The Federal Government Support The Development And Production Of Fuels And Energy Technologies?

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Categories: Energy and Environment, Energy Fact of the Week | Tags: energy policy, energy subsidies

Kenneth P. Green

Climate change derangement syndrome on the rise

March 14, 2012, 4:14 pm

Recent news reports suggest that a new syndrome — call it Climate Change Derangement Syndrome (CCDS) — is on the rise.

Exhibit 1: Greenhouse Gases are Making You Fat:

Mad as it may sound, Danish researchers have announced a theory that may not only explain why people all over the world are getting fatter and fatter, but also warn of the serious consequences for life on Earth of continued pollution of the atmosphere by CO2 emissions. In itself, the theory is quite simple: CO2 contributes to making us fat.

Not surprisingly, the author’s recommendations are to eat more fruits and veggies, get plenty of exercise, and consider a return to living in caves. (Okay, I made the cave part up, but the rest is true).

Exhibit 2: The New Answer to Climate Change: Genetically Engineered Dwarf Vegans with Cat’s Eyes:

A new paper to be published in Ethics, Policy & Environment proposes a series of biomedical modifications that could help humans, themselves, consume less. Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating. Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children.

Of course, those who read this article won’t be surprised at the upsurge in CCDS:

Researchers from the University of Sydney looked at patients attending an anxiety disorders clinic. They found one-third of the patients had anxiety about the effects of climate change. Their behaviours included checking and rechecking pets water bowls, light switches, taps and stoves. Researchers say while these behaviours are common in obsessive compulsive disorder, the rationale was unique.

It might be time to bring out the special “I hug myself” jackets.

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Categories: Economic Policy, Energy and Environment | Tags: climate change, energy policy

The entire Obama presidency, in one anecdote

March 13, 2012, 8:29 am

One of my favorite moments from the new book The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery:

Energy was a particular obsession of the president-elect’s, and therefore a particular source of frustration. Week after week, [White House economic adviser Christina] Romer would march in with an estimate of the jobs all the investments in clean energy would produce; week after week, Obama would send her back to check the numbers. “I don’t get it,” he’d say. “We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean, there are no jobs?” But the numbers rarely budged.

Now let’s fast forward to this past September:

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show. The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies.

So where are the new jobs coming from, at least the good-paying ones? From the industry Obama wants to replace as much as possible with “clean” energy: oil and gas. A new report from the World Economic Forum estimates the sectors “added approximately 150,000 jobs in 2011, 9% of all jobs created in the United States that year.”

Those numbers are even more impressive once you realize that some 40% of all new jobs are being added in low-pay sectors such as retailing and leisure. So nearly 20% of new “good jobs” are in oil and gas.

Japan one year later

By Michael Auslin

March 12, 2012, 2:54 pm

Today at AEI, we had an event on Japan one year after the devastating Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear crisis. The Japanese ambassador spoke, and then a panel of experts talked about lessons learned. I have my own take on how Japan has changed (or not), up at Fox News.

While many people saw the disaster as a turning point for the country, I think it served instead to bring into sharp focus Japan’s pre-existing strengths and weaknesses. No surprise that the central government was overwhelmed, slow to respond, and resistant to expert advice—and wound up losing a prime minister in the process. On the other hand, the people of Japan showed their deep-seated sense of community and famed willingness to sacrifice. One of the most prominent roles was played by the Japanese military, whose professionalism was on display for the world to see. Sadly, however, I’m not sure that serious changes in disaster planning have taken place, nor that the government’s inability to come up with coherent responses to unforeseen challenges has altered. Instead, the next time a major crisis strikes, we’ll probably see the same dynamic play out among the various actors in society.

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Categories: Asia Pacific, Energy and Environment | Tags: Japan, Japanese economy

Kenneth P. Green

Five Friday energy failures

March 9, 2012, 12:30 pm

In the news today, five epic energy-failures, brought to you by those who believe in a planned-energy economy:

1) Situation Normal, All Fisked Up — Consumer Reports decided to take a Fisker for a spin. The Fisker, an expensive electric sports car highly subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer isn’t exactly performing up to spec:

Our Fisker Karma cost us $107,850. It is super sleek, high-tech—and now it’s broken.

We have owned our car for just a few days; it has less than 200 miles on its odometer. While doing speedometer calibration runs on our test track … the dashboard flashed a message and sounded a “bing“ showing a major fault….“We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process.”

2) The Ludicrous Prize — Our Department of Energy just gave out $10 million in the form of an L-Prize for the company that could develop the most environmentally friendly, and most affordable, LED light bulb. The prize went to Philips, which produced a 60-watt (equivalent) bulb for the bargain-basement price of only $50.00 each:

Retailers said the bulb, made by Philips, is likely to be too pricey to have broad appeal. Similar LED bulbs are less than half the cost. “I don’t want to say it’s exorbitant, but if a customer is only looking at the price, they could come to that conclusion,” said Brad Paulsen, merchant for the light-bulb category at Home Depot, the largest U.S. seller of light bulbs. “This is a Cadillac product, and that’s why you have a premium on it.”

3) Generous Motors — The People’s Car Company of America, formerly known as General Motors, is showing its generosity these days, with taxpayer money:

In a move little noticed outside of the business pages, General Motors last week bought more than $400 million in shares of PSA Peugeot Citroen – a 7 percent stake in the company. Because U.S. taxpayers still own roughly one-quarter of GM, they now own a piece of Peugeot. Peugeot can undoubtedly use the cash. Last year, Peugeot’s auto making division lost $123 million. And on March 1 – just a day after the deal with GM was announced – Moody’s downgraded Peugeot’s credit rating to junk status with a negative outlook, citing “severe deterioration” of its finances. In other words, General Motors essentially just dumped more than $400 million of taxpayer assets on junk bonds.

4) Keystone Krazy — Once again, the Obama administration has exerted itself to reduce oil imports from a hostile power. Those dangerous, poutine-peddling Canadians don’t have a chance:

President Barack Obama headed off an election-year showdown over energy policy when the Senate defeated a Republican measure that would have authorized the building of TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline. Obama lobbied wavering Senate Democrats before yesterday’s vote. He urged them to reject an amendment to legislation funding transportation projects that would have overturned his administration’s decision to deny a permit for the pipeline until an alternative route was proposed to bypass an environmentally sensitive area in Nebraska. The measure failed to pass on a 56-42 vote. Sixty votes were required to advance the amendment.

5) Algae Zero — In the past, I’ve written positively about the prospects for algae-based fuels to contribute to our liquid-fuel supply. Algae produces hydrocarbons naturally, and have a lot of advantages over land-based biofuels. The private sector has already shown a lot of interest in algae fuels, but it is still decades away (at least) from significant market penetration. That hasn’t stopped the president from proposing it as a remedy for high gasoline prices, and converting it into a partisan issue:

President Obama’s latest renewable-energy fixation is algae. During a speech at the University of Miami, he touted his administration’s $24 million investment in the fuel, saying, “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.”

As I told National Review reporter Nash Keune, this is a terrible development. Studies show that applied government R&D only displaces private capital, reducing the discipline that market forces exert on researchers. Politicizing algae fuels, I suspect, will only “force responsible private-sector money out of the effort, lure irresponsible rent-seekers into the process, and make funding of it an unreliable political football.”

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: energy, energy policy

Kenneth P. Green

How do voters feel about high gas prices?

March 8, 2012, 2:54 pm

They don’t like ‘em: CBS post-primary exit polls in seven states found that “77 percent of those voting in seven Super Tuesday states say rising gas prices were the most important factor in their vote.”

The article observes that “Voters in Super Tuesday contests say gas prices were the most critical factor in their vote.”

Will that have implications for the 2012 presidential election? You betcha:

On Wednesday in Washington D.C., there was a hearing where Republicans and Democrats offered very different views of how to deal with this issue from a policy perspective: Democrats are urging conservation and tax breaks for electric vehicles with Republicans urging a dramatic expansion of drilling. So, according to the exit polls, that division will be a key factor in elections this fall.

Watch for more disingenuous claims by the Obama administration about recent increases in domestic oil and gas production, which happened despite their best efforts, not because of them. And, watch for Democrats to crank up the Bueller mode, claiming credit for inventing the technology that led to the shale gas boom.

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Categories: Energy and Environment, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 campaign, domestic drilling, gas prices

Kenneth P. Green

EPA: Using the best science, or the best science money can buy?

March 6, 2012, 4:53 pm

The Environmental Protection Agency likes people to believe that its rulemaking is grounded only in absolute, top-quality, independent science. According to EPA’s website, Administrator Lisa Jackson will settle only for the “best science:”

As a scientist herself, Jackson has vowed that EPA’s efforts will follow the best science, using it as “the backbone for EPA programs.” She has also ensured that EPA adheres to the rule of law and acts with unparalleled transparency.

In 2007, EPA said:

A new ozone standard will be based on the best science and meet the obligation established under the Clean Air Act to protect the health of the American people.

To that end, Ms. Jackson apparently asked for more input from EPA’s ostensibly “independent” advisors:

In January 2010, EPA proposed stricter standards for smog. As part of EPA’s extensive review of the science, Administrator Jackson will ask the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) for further interpretation of the epidemiological and clinical studies they used to make their recommendation. To ensure EPA’s decision is grounded in the best science, EPA will review the input CASAC provides before the new standard is selected.

EPA’s handbook on peer-review suggests that independence means that:

Independence is freedom from institutional, ideological, or technical bias regarding the issues under review and is necessary for objective, fair, and dependent on the competence and responsible evaluation of the work product. If a selected reviewer has a particular scientific or technical perspective, it may be desirable to balance the review with peer reviewers with other perspectives. Ideally, peer reviewers should be free of real or perceived conflicts-of-interest or there should be a balancing of interests among peer reviewers. If there are potential conflicts of interest (real or perceived), they should be fully identified to ensure a credible peer review.

Now, I’m not one to argue that people’s beliefs are inherently influenced by whoever donates to their efforts. I believe that researchers probably self-select themselves into working for entities that already share their basic set of beliefs, and they’ll move into or out of such entities if they find their core beliefs are being stifled or threatened.

But EPA, and the environmental movement in general, does not believe as I do: they are constantly claiming that anyone who opposes them must simply be a shill for one special interest or another. They do not allow people to serve as voting members on their advisory boards if that person works in industry, for example, on the presumption that pay taints the advisor.

In 2007, for example, the environmental group NRDC wrote EPA observing that:

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) imposes requirements on agencies when they establish or utilize any advisory committee, defined as a group of individuals, including at least one non-federal employee, which provides collective advice or recommendations to the agency. 5 U.S.C. App. II, § 3(2). When an agency seeks to obtain such advice or recommendations, it must ensure the advisory committee is “in the public interest,” id. App. II, § 9(2), is “fairly balanced in terms of points of view represented and the function to be performed,” id. § 5(b)(2), and does not contain members with inappropriate special interests. Id.§ 5(b)(3). Committee membership should exclude financially conflicted members as much as possible, so that committees are largely composed of scientists who are able to provide a fair and complete review of all relevant data or issues. If industry representatives have specific knowledge or expertise of value to the deliberations of a committee, then invitations to address the committee during public meetings are appropriate. However, individuals with financial conflicts should not be serving as members of the SAB [Science Advisory Board].

But apparently, “transparency” and “independent” only mean what EPA wants them to mean, which may not comport with the average person’s interpretation: it turns out that virtually every member of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee is extensively funded by … EPA.

As blogger Steve Milloy points out:

According to EPA’s extramural grants database:

• CASAC chairman Jonathan Samet is listed a principal investigator on $9,526,921 in EPA grants.

• Board member George Allen is listed as a principal investigator on $3,907,111 in EPA grants.

• Board member Ana Diez-Roux is listed as a principal investigator on $31,343,081 in EPA grants.

• Board member H. Christopher Frey is listed as a principal investigator on $2,956,342 in EPA grants.

• Board member Armistead Russell is listed as a principal investigator on $20,130,736 in EPA grants.

• Board member Helen Suh is listed as a principal investigator on $10,962,364 in EPA grants.

• Board member Kathleen Weathers is not listed as a principal investigator on any EPA grants; but her employer, the Cary institute of Ecosystem Studies, is listed as a the lead institution in $3,570,926 in EPA grants.

Something to remember the next time you hear an EPA administrator justifying an intrusive new environmental rule based on the “independent” science judgment of EPA’s top-notch scientific advisory councils.

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: epa

Would Romney ‘go green’ if elected president?

March 6, 2012, 12:49 pm

There have been two Great Temptations for GOP elected officials over the past decade or so: a) embracing an individual healthcare insurance mandate and b) supporting a cap-and-trade plan or carbon tax to deal with climate change.

Here’s Politico on the GOP frontrunner:

Will Mitt Romney flip-flop on climate change if he’s elected president? Some big donors are betting on it.

Romney and his super PAC have taken millions from funders with strong green streaks — despite the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has run to the right in the primary, proclaiming doubts about global-warming science and trashing President Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas emissions policies.

Julian Robertson, founder of the Tiger Management hedge fund, helped put cap-and-trade legislation on the map with $60 million in contributions over the past decade to the Environmental Defense Fund. Now, Robertson has given $1.25 million to Romney’s Restore our Future super PAC, plus the maximum $2,500 to the Romney campaign.

Other green-minded financial backers may not be giving as much as Robertson, but they still share the view that climate-change science and a solid environmental agenda wouldn’t be a lost cause if Romney won the White House.

Maybe those contributors have noticed that two key Romney economic advisers support action to deal with climate change (As Massachusetts governor, Romney considered and then rejected joining a regional cap-and-trade plan.) In 2007, Glenn Hubbard supported a cap-and-trade plan. And Greg Mankiw likes the idea of a carbon tax to replace the payroll tax.

Here’s what Romney wrote in his book, No Apology:

I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor. I am uncertain how much of the warming, however, is attributable to man and how much is attributable to factors out of our control. … Internationally, we should work to limit the increase in emissions in global greenhouse gases, but in doing so we shouldn’t put ourselves in a disadvantageous position that penalizes American jobs and economic growth.

In the book, Romney is clearly in favor of limiting carbon emissions—at least in theory—but doesn’t want to cripple the U.S. economy or spend trillions of dollars for “extreme and expensive measures” like cap-and-trade to do it. He mentions the work of Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, who believes “addressing the remediation of the effects of global warming [is] far more economic and far more humane than massive spending to reduce emissions.”

Now here’s Romney last October:

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet and the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try and reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.

About the only thing I could find on the Romney campaign website that even gently hinted at some concern about climate change was vague support for basic research into alternative energy. But in his book, Romney writes at length about the issue, spending considerable time explaining the pros and cons of the carbon tax-payroll tax swap favored by Mankiw. Among the potential features of that plan, Romney explains:

– revenue neutrality;

– higher energy prices would encourage energy efficiency;

– industry would have a predictable outlook for energy costs

– profit incentives rather than government subsidies would encourage the development of “oil substitutes and carbon-reducing technologies.”

And there’s this:

Comparative analyses of the tax-swap plan with a cap-and-trade system have demonstrated that the tax swap is likely to be five times as effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions and, presumably, five times as effective in reducing energy consumption.

Romney does add, however, that “a great deal of work remains to be done if it is to become a viable option. (And we may hear of entirely new alternatives — as Ross Perot said, ‘I’m all ears.’)”

Just because a Romney adviser likes an idea doesn’t mean the candidate will support it. Case in point: Hubbard’s plan to use the GSEs for a mass refi of U.S. mortgages. (I also have to believe there was some pushback from the econ team over their boss’s support of indexing the minimum wage and eliminating cap gains taxes only for middle-incomers.)

So are the green Big Money guys making a bad bet on Romney? If they expect more basic research into clean energy, maybe not. But beyond that, probably.

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Categories: Economic Policy, Energy and Environment, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 campaign, climate change, environment, global warming, mitt romney

Steven F. Hayward

Energy fact of the week: Renewable stupidity needs no mandate

March 6, 2012, 10:33 am

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are all the rage in pro-green energy circles these days; they’ve become the chief fallback position since the collapse of cap and trade—a back door way to regulate carbon. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia (and Puerto Rico!) have adopted mandates calling for a certain portion of electricity to come from renewable sources (chiefly wind, solar, and biomass; some RPS standards do not count hydro power, since dams are environmentally incorrect). California has the most ambitious target, with a new law calling for 33 percent of its electricity to come from renewable sources by the year 2020. Most state RPS goals are around 20 percent. And proposals for a national RPS are a hardy perennial; New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman is out right now with another national RPS proposal (though he calls it a “Clean Energy Standard,” or CES). Senator Bingaman claims that “a properly designed CES would have almost zero impact on GDP growth, and little to no impact on national electricity rates for the first decade of the program.” Well maybe, but what about the second decade?

Naturally, RPS boosters all claim, and can point to forecasts, that RPS standards won’t significantly increase electricity prices to consumers, even though every study shows renewable electricity sources are significantly more expensive than conventional fossil fuel sources. But never let the belief in the possibility of free lunches get in the way of reality: think of it as renewable stupidity, which really is abundant and cheap.

The Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce is out with a new report, “The High Cost of Renewable Energy Mandates,” that sheds considerable light on the subject. The whole thing is worth reading, but I’m particularly struck by his Table 1, which shows that of the ten states with the cheapest electricity rates, only two (Oregon and Washington) have RPSs, while of the ten most expensive states, eight have RPSs. And Oregon and Washington deserve asterisks to go with their RPS asterisks: both of those northwestern states enjoy a high amount of cheap hydro power, built by the federal government about 80 years ago. Washington state also gets a lot of its power from cheap nuclear power, heavily subsidized by the federal government 50 years ago. In both cases, the capital cost of their current electricity infrastructure is pretty cheap.

These old, non-carbon sources of energy enable Oregon and Washington more easily to absorb RPS sources like wind power, though, as Forbes magazine explained a few months ago, when the dams have too much water to manage through the dams, they shut off wind power, which is rather telling about the limitations of renewable sources.

Source: Energy Information Administration.

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Categories: Energy and Environment, Energy Fact of the Week | Tags: renewable energy, renewable energy standards

Kenneth P. Green

The downsides of wind power

March 5, 2012, 1:34 pm

Matt Ridley has a great summary of the downsides of wind power in a Telegraph essay:

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

British decision-makers, Ridley observes, are beginning to see through the idiocy of chasing the wind:

Though they may not admit it for a while, most ministers have realised that the sums for wind power just don’t add up and never will. The discovery of shale gas near Blackpool has profound implications for the future of British energy supply, which the government has seemed sheepishly reluctant to explore. It has a massive subsidy programme in place for wind farms, which now seem obsolete both as a means of energy production and decarbonisation. It is almost impossible to see what function they serve, other than making a fortune from those who profit from the subsidy scam.

We can only hope that American decisionmakers will figure this out and change course before we wind up with an unstable grid, vast areas of land blighted with giant wind turbines, and a legacy of untold thousands of useless turbines that have to be decommissioned with taxpayer money.

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: wind power

Jon Entine

The New York Times reverses itself on shale gas

By Jon Entine

March 2, 2012, 9:47 am

There are new twists in the ever-entertaining shale gas saga. The New York Times, which turned obscure Cornell University marine ecologist Robert Howarth into an anti-fracking rock star on the way to getting hammered by its own public editor—I take some of the credit—for its biased reporting on the subject, is finally getting on the science bandwagon.

Last April, the Times ran two articles in a week promoting Howarth’s claim that shale gas generates more greenhouse gas emissions than the production and use of coal. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of this paper, which ricocheted through the media echo chamber and was even debated in the British parliament.

What the Times didn’t report then, and until now has been systematically ignored, is that almost every independent researcher—at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Energy Department, and numerous independent university teams, including a Carnegie Mellon study partly financed by the Sierra Club—has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. Within the field, Howarth is considered an activist, not an independent scientist. Many commentators, including independent lefty columnist Joe Nocera, think the gas is too valuable to be left in the ground, as the hard Left is urging.

Maybe a little fresh air is finally leaking into the Times’ insular chambers. Calling Cathles’s report a “fresh rebuttal” of Howarth’s much-maligned study, Dot Earth’s Andrew Revkin cites the latest researcher to diss its shaky science. The twist is that the point scientist for the new study was Howarth’s colleague at Cornell, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences professor Lawrence Cathles, who is an expert in this field, unlike Howarth.

Cathles convincingly demolishes Howarth’s four major claims, two of which we’ll highlight here:

• Howarth et al. claimed that shale gas wells are virtual methane sieves. But as Cathles shows, Howarth appears to have deliberately used EPA estimates of venting in 2007, a century ago by shale gas technology standards. He’s off by at least 10-20 times—at least.

• Howarth used decades-old data from the Soviet Union to make a bogus case that unconventional gas wells leak more methane than conventional wells.

Cathles conclusion that “The data clearly shows that substituting natural gas for coal will have a substantial greenhouse benefit under almost any set of reasonable assumptions” is critical but unremarkable in that it reflects the conclusions of almost every major researcher in the field, except Howarth and hard Left advocacy magazines such as Mother Jones that blindly promote marginal science when it mimics their ideological take on an issue.

Even New York Times blogger Revkin seems to agree, stating “[T]he notion that gas holds no advantage over coal, in weighing the climate implications of energy choices, is fading fast (to my reading of the science and that of many others).” It’s great to see the Times bloggers catching up with the science… about a year late… but it is a shame that they put Howarth on the fast track to progressive icon status with his reporting last April.

In fact, the “farcical position that shale gas is dirtier than coal” was never scientifically serious enough to fade; it is and was a fiction of activists, including Howarth, whose goal is to undermine a balanced scientific debate on shale gas and climate change.

Jon Entine, senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at STATS/George Mason, is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: shale gas

Is Santorum right? Did high gas prices trigger the Great Recession?

February 28, 2012, 10:06 am

Rick Santorum is getting much grief for this:

Rick Santorum told an audience Monday that the 2008 recession was caused by high gas prices. He said Americans were unable to pay their mortgages—not because of unsustainable housing prices or reckless lending practices—but because of $4-per-gallon gasoline.

“We need to look at the situation of gas prices today. We went into a recession in 2008 because of gasoline prices,” Santorum said to an enthusiastic crowd at a hotel here. “The bubble burst in housing because people couldn’t pay their mortgages because we’re looking at $4-a-gallon gasoline. And look at what happened, economic decline.”

After his rally, which was packed with families with their children, Santorum said he did not misspeak when he was asked to explain his comments. He said it was a “factor” in the recession and the housing bubble.

“Energy prices were spiking in the summer of 2008 and that was a factor,” Santorum told reporters.

But there is some evidence that Santorum has a point. In a 2009 paper, economist James Hamilton found that big oil price shocks—such as the ones associated with events such as the 1973-74 embargo by OPEC, the Iranian Revolution in 1978, the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, and the First Persian Gulf War in 1990—were each followed by a global economic recession. You can see that phenomenon on the above chart.

Now, oil prices doubled between June 2007 and June 2008, the economist notes, a bigger price increase than in any of those four earlier episodes. Hamilton’s conclusion: “Had there been no increase in oil prices between 2007:Q3 and 2008:Q2, the U.S. economy would not have been in a recession over the period 2007:Q4 through 2008:Q3.”

But what about the role of housing? Hamilton points out that housing had been an economic drag before oil and gasoline prices surged. Yet the economy continued to grow. Here’s where oil enters the scene (bold for emphasis):

At a minimum it is clear that something other than housing deteriorated to turn slow growth into a recession. That something, in my mind, includes the collapse in automobile purchases, slowdown in overall consumption spending, and deteriorating consumer sentiment, in which the oil shock was indisputably a contributing factor.

Second, there is an interaction eﬀect between the oil shock and the problems in housing. Cortright (2008) noted that in the Los Angeles, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Portland Vancouver Metropolitan Statistical Areas, house prices in 2007 were likely to rise slightly in the zip codes closest to the central urban areas but fall signiﬁcantly in zip codes with longer average commuting distances. Foreclosure rates also rose with distance from the center. And certainly to the extent that the oil shock made a direct contribution to lower income and higher unemployment, that would also depress housing demand. For example, the estimates in Hamilton (2008) imply that a 1% reduction in real GDP growth translates into a 2.6% reduction in the demand for new houses.

Eventually, the declines in income and house prices set mortgage delinquency rates beyond a threshold at which the overall solvency of the ﬁnancial system itself came to be questioned, and the modest recession of 2007:Q4-2008:Q3 turned into a ferocious downturn in 2008:Q4.

Whether we would have avoided those events if the economy had not gone into recession, or instead would have merely postponed them, is a matter of conjecture. Regardless of how we answer that question, the evidence to me is persuasive that, if there had there been no oil shock, we would have described the U.S. economy in 2007:Q4-2008:Q3 as growing slowly, but not in a recession.

Does this all sound a little bit too neat and tidy? Perhaps. But let me point out what Hamilton said is one way oil shocks affect economic growth. They tend to kill consumer sentiment, as this chart from Strategas Research shows:

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Categories: Economic Policy, Energy and Environment, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2012 campaign, energy policy

Kenneth P. Green

Did government create the shale gas boom?

February 27, 2012, 4:57 pm

As I wrote in AEI’s online magazine The American, governments, and their supporters, are fond of pulling what I call a Ferris Bueller: seeing a parade pass by, they jump up on a float, sing loudly, dance vigorously, and then claim credit for the parade.

Or, as I told a talk-radio host who observed that oil and gas production has increased since Obama was elected, “Yes, well the date on the calendar has also advanced since Obama was elected, but that doesn’t mean Obama caused either to advance!” (We debunked the Obama-the-oil-producer claim here.)

Sadly, some otherwise pragmatic environmentalists (such as the guys from the Breakthrough Institute) are hopping up on the parade float and joining the Obama administration’s Twist and Shout, now claiming credit for having ushered in the boom in unconventional natural gas and oil coming from the nation’s heartland. In an email alert today, they say:

It wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. was cast as the global climate villain, refusing to sign the Kyoto accord while Europe implemented cap and trade.

But, as we note below in a new article for Yale360, a funny thing happened: U.S. emissions started going down in 2005 and are expected to decline further over the next decade, while Europe’s cap and trade system has had no measurable impact on emissions. Even the supposedly green Germany is moving back to coal.

Why? The reason is obvious: the U.S. is benefitting from the 30-year, government-funded technological revolution that massively increased the supply of unconventional natural gas, making it cheap even when compared to coal.

Alas, the reason for the natural gas boom is not nearly as obvious as the Breakthrough Boys make it out to be:

1) One winning game does not a champion make. Nordhaus and Shellenberger take the fracking example in isolation, and ignore persuasive literature showing that “industrial policy” (the formal term for government picking winners and losers) has a history of abject failure. Some, such as Terence Kealey at the University of Buckingham, point out that Japan’s efforts at industrial policy (through an agency called MITI) were simply a disaster.

2) Displacement is not addition. Studies show that government “investment” in applied research and development does not add new money to the pot, it displaces private capital, and does so disproportionally. When government steps in, it displaces more money than it throws in the pot.

Read the details here.

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Categories: Energy and Environment | Tags: natural gas

Steven F. Hayward

Energy fact of the week: The cost of Eurozone green energy mania