Tag: "fossil fuels"

Oregon & EPA Launch Aggressive Moves Against Coal

Oregon is now one of the first states to announce that it plans to officially wean itself off coal consumption. Governor Kate Brown signed a bill that prohibits the state’s utilities from purchasing coal-fired power after 2030. The bill is largely symbolic, since Oregon is not a coal producing state and consumes very little coal. In fact, Oregon produces and consumes far more hydroelectric energy than coal and natural gas.

  • The level of coal consumption has been steadily rising in Oregon.
  • Coal consumption is only 3 percent of all fossil fuel consumption.
  • Coal consumption is only 2 percent of all fuel and renewable energy consumption.
  • Hydroelectric power accounts for close to 35 to 40 percent of all of Oregon’s energy consumption.

In addition to Oregon’s anti-coal move, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that 11 states have failed to submit plans to reduce sulfur dioxide air pollution. The EPA says the states have not reduced their emissions enough to meet federal limits or submitted plans to the EPA outlining how they will meet an October 2018 deadline for meeting standards.

Both of these efforts will more than likely have very little effect. Oregon is not much of a coal consuming state and the EPA’s deadline comes after the next federal administration is sworn into office.

Mar 14, 2016 | 5 comments | by

New NERA Study Details Economic Impact of Clean Power Plan

A new study by NERA Economic Consulting explains the economic impact from increased regulations from the federal government’s Clean Power Plan (CCP) in great detail. The CCP’s goal is to reduce carbon emissions from new and existing fossil-fueled power plants in the United States. States have the responsibility to meet the CPP goals. If they fail to come up with a carbon reduction plan or submit a plan that does not comply with CPP, the federal government steps in with their plan to meet the CPP goals. CPP goals include:

  • All compliance scenarios lead to large reductions in average CO2 emissions.
  • Reductions range from 19% to 21%.
  • By 2031, annual emissions are expected to be 36% to 37% lower than in 2005.

NERA estimates that the impact of the CPP on the energy sector, electricity rates and to the economy include:

  • Total energy sector expenditure from 2022 through 2033 increases range from $220 to $292 billion.
  • Annual average expenditures increase between $29 and $39 billion each year.
  • Average annual U.S. retail electricity rate increases range from 11%/year to 14%/year over the same time period.
  • Losses to U.S. consumers range from $64 billion to $79 billion on a present value basis over the same time period.

State-level average electricity price increases demonstrate that many states could experience significant price increases:

  • 40 states could have average retail electricity price increases of 10% or more.
  • 17 states could have average retail electricity price increases of 20% or more.
  • 10 states could have average retail electricity price increases of 30% or more.

The highest annual increase in retail rates relative to the baseline also shows that many states could experience periods of significant price increases:

  • 41 states could have “peak” retail electricity price increases of 10% or more.
  • 28 states could have “peak” retail electricity price increases of 20% or more.
  • 7 states could have “peak” retail electricity price increases of 40% or more.
Nov 18, 2015 | 2 comments | by

The Clean Coal Technology Myth

The potential rise of clean coal technology has been hampered by its costly nature. Originally intended to prevent greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere, there have been few real applications of this technology. The most promising clean coal development was the potential to make hydrogen from water by using coal and then burying the carbon dioxide by-product and burning the hydrogen, a form of carbon capture and sequestration.

In effect, clean coal technology was supposed to give the coal industry a lifeline into the future of cleaner fuels. In reality, the costs associated with clean coal increase the price of generation by up to 80 percent and cuts efficiency by 30 percent. Initial funding from the federal stimulus bill in 2009 offered $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration. The money, however, soon ran out as costs escalated.

In Mississippi, for example, a clean coal technology project already estimated at $6.2 billion went so over budget that the South Mississippi Electric Power Association withdrew from the project. The coal plant was already the costliest fossil-fuel power plant ever engineered. In February 2015, the Department of Energy similarly pulled its support on a $1.1 billion clean coal project, called FutureGen, in Illinois.

The growth of cheap natural gas has been especially worrisome for the coal industry. In the United States, Arch Coal, one of the largest coal companies, is about to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Even China, a country that traditionally burns half the world’s coal, has been increasingly switching to natural gas and renewable energy. Between January and April of 2015, China’s coal demand fell 8 percent.

Even with so much bad news, coal’s share of primary-energy use in the world is unlikely to fall below 25 percent, from a peak of 30 percent in 2010, by 2035. For many countries, coal still means cheap and reliable energy where such a thing is rare. In such countries, regulations aren’t driving up the price of generation ensuring a continuous supply of affordable energy.

 

Jun 24, 2015 | 1 comment | by

Anti-fossil Energy Groups Lobby Students

Universities and other public institutions throughout America are being targeted in an aggressive climate crisis-premised campaign demanding that they divest themselves of all fossil energy investments and influences. In the process, legitimate funding sources are being sacrificed, objective education and science programs are being compromised, and careers of non-conforming researchers are under assault.

As reported by Kimberley Strassel in The Wall Street Journal, one such sponsoring organization, “UnKochMyCampus,” provides a “campus organization guide” on how to “expose and undermine” any college that works against “progressive values.”

Spearheaded by Greenpeace, Forecast the Facts, and the American Federation of Teachers, its website directs students to a list of universities which have received money from Koch foundations. It also offers step-by-step instructions on how “trusted allies and informants” (including other liberal students, faculty and alumni) can be recruited to demand Freedom of Information legislation record disclosures from offending programs and professors.

The Federation of Teachers and National Education Association even sponsored a day-long March conference devoted to training students on “necessary skill to investigate and expose” any Koch influence. Funding influences of left wing contributors, however, are quite a different matter.

It seems quite okay that billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and his wife pledged $40 million to create the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford. Steyer, a prominent climate alarmist, anti-Keystone Pipeline lobbyist and carbon tax proponent, also spent $74 million supporting 2014 congressional candidates who would advance his uber-liberal agendas.

A recent National Association of Scholars report titled “Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism” discusses how universities continue to be co-opted as bastions of progressive ideology. Excerpted by Rachelle Peterson and Peter Wood of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the movement can be heavily credited to the former senator, now the secretary of state, John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz following her previous husband’s fatal 1991 helicopter crash.

Upon meeting at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro U.N. Earth Climate Summit the two recognized colleges and universities as important seedbeds for a new “sustainable development” initiative. This mantra was hatched by the U.N. under its Agenda 21 doctrine and became smuggled into unwitting American townships and counties through its International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI).

In 1992 Kerry and later-to-become wife Heinz launched the nonprofit “Second Nature” with the mission to “create a sustainable society by transforming higher education.” The organization began soliciting professors including ecologists, scientists, philosophers, and poets who were willing to introduce sustainability content into their courses along with encouraging the creation of new centers of sustainability study.

Second Nature’s primary and most successful targets proved to be college presidents who possess an unparalleled ability to shepherd the movement to adulthood along with financial flexibility to experiment with new technologies and programs. A group of 12 institutional heads initially came onboard, including Arizona State University President Michael Crow, and University of Florida President Bernard Machen.

The group pledged to “recognize the scientific consensus that global warming is real and is largely caused by humans” and to set an example by going “carbon-neutral.” Among other things, they also committed to engage in shareholder activism to pressure the corporations in which the college owned stock to move towards climate neutrality. As of last January, 685 colleges and universities have signed on.

Joined by mega-funded green groups, friendly media and government politicos the movement continues to gain fast-paced momentum. A recent Greenpeace-sponsored New York Times attack on Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics accused him of personally failing to disclose research funding, even though those monies were properly processed through official institutional agreements.

Two days after the Times article appeared, ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., sent letters to university employers of seven researchers identified as climate crisis skeptics. All were asked to provide details about their outside funding sources.

In addition, Senators Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., attempted to intimidate climate apostates by sending 107 letters to think tanks, trade associations and companies demanding that they provide the same information.

By extension, this presumably suggests that no scientist who ever accepts research funding from any special interest-linked sponsors should be trusted. Let’s remember, however, that government politicians and bureaucrats wishing to expand authority and budgets are as self-interested as anyone, and that nearly all university-based climate research depends upon federal grants they provide.

Those research conclusions, in turn, influence billions of dollars in regulatory and consumer energy costs. There’s little wonder then about the need for alarmist witch-hunting activists following 18 years and counting of flat global temperatures despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels. When the climate scare goes away, so does that power and money.

Another version of this post appeared in Newsmax.

 

May 11, 2015 | 2 comments | by

DOE Invests $75 Million to Create Fuel by Artificial Photosynthesis

The U.S. Department of Energy will invest $75 million in the quest to create liquid transportation fuels through artificial photosynthesis.

The funding will renew the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), an Energy Innovation Hub established in the beginning of 2010. The hub, which is modeled after “the strong scientific management approaches typified by the Manhattan Project,” is one of several Energy Innovation Hubs established by the Department of Energy.

According to Under Secretary for Science and Energy Lynn Orr:

Basic scientific research supported by the Department of Energy is crucial to providing the foundation for innovative technologies and later-stage research to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. JCAP’s work to produce fuels from sunlight and carbon dioxide holds the promise of a potentially revolutionary technology that would put America on the path to a low-carbon economy.

This commitment of new funding comes on the heels of an announcement from the Government Accountability Office stating that the department’s $28 billion loan program will cost taxpayers $2.21 billion over the lifetime of the loans. The cost skyrocketed by $500 million after several companies defaulted on their loan guarantees.

Apr 29, 2015 | 2 comments | by

Gas Savings Conundrum

Families planning road trips this summer, rejoice: According to a new estimate from the U.S. Energy Department, drivers can expect to see the lowest summer gasoline prices in about six years.

Before you head out to buy a gas-guzzling SUV, be forewarned: falling gas prices might not be as good for your pocketbooks — or the economy — as you might think. Low oil prices have slowed job growth, shut down drilling operations, and taken money out of the markets.

Texas, which produces 11 percent of all goods made in the United States, saw its slowest job growth since 2011 and lost 9,500 manufacturing jobs. Across the nation, the U.S. oil rig count, which is commonly used as a barometer for the oil industry, has lost 164 rigs over the past four weeks, adding onto the 276 rigs closed in February. In Texas alone, the oil industry lost 3,500 jobs in February and 4,300 in January. This 7,800 job loss is the sector’s biggest job loss since 2009.

While the industry struggles, many citizens have been celebrating. A poll run by the Iowa-based Principle Financial Group reports that while forty percent of U.S. residents are using the gas-induced savings to pay routine expenses, 54 percent are using the money to pay off debt or grow their savings accounts.

Fifty-four percent of the money consumers are no longer spending on gasoline is vanishing from the markets, along with manufacturing and oil industry jobs. These troubling conditions raise troubling questions: How can we encourage people to invest their gas savings back in the market? What can companies do to adapt to these continuing, low oil prices? How long can these low oil prices keep up, particularly if the Obama administration lifts oil-related sanctions against Iran?

Apr 08, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

Rockefellers Buckle to Climate Change Summit

Just before the United Nation Summit on Climate Change that happened yesterday, the long-time Rockefeller Standard Oil family made a major announcement:

On Monday, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced their divestment from the fossil fuel industry “in a move to pressure companies that are adding to climate change.” The amount of divested funds have reached $50 billion and the firm has pledged to triple that total by Q4 2014. The fund is immediately divesting from coal and tar and assessing divestment from other fossil fuels. Although RBF manages assets totaling under $1 billion and is separate from the more endowed Rockefeller Foundation, their announcement supplements the rising public momentum against climate change and non-renewables.

Under lots of pressure, major U.S. companies are buckling to climate change alarmists ahead of the summit. This kind of sudden shift in funds and direction of a company does more harm than any good.

Sep 24, 2014 | 1 comment | by

Fighting Global Warming Will Cost $4 Trillion +

A new report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate reports that fighting global warming will cost $4 trillion over 15 years. However, the report also says:

  • Countries will spend an extra $90 trillion on infrastructure.
  • Countries will enact policies to reduce their carbon footprints.

Expanding each participating country’s infrastructure, halt deforestation, regulate carbon dioxide emissions, land use reforms and reducing fossil fuel subsides is just the start of a much larger economic cost than just $4 trillion that the report claims would be the cost to fight global warming.

Sep 17, 2014 | 1 comment | by

More Evidence of Global Cooling from NCA Report

According to the network of nationwide thermometers monitored by the United States Historical Climatology Network, James Taylor noted that 2014 so far has been the coldest year for the United States ever, at least through May 6. Taylor writes,

Assertions that warming temperatures in the United States are causing a host of problems are soundly contradicted by the objective temperature data.

Soon, the more recent period of no global warming will be longer than the older period of actual warming, which lasted approximately 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Preceding that were 30 years of global cooling, generating alarms regarding a new ice age (which is actually overdue, given historical climate cycles). Even Britain’s Met Office, an international cheerleading headquarters for global warming hysteria, conceded in December, 2012 that there would be no further warming at least through 2017, which would make 21 plus years with no global warming.

The foundation for the establishment’s argument for global warming is nothing more than broad theory, which does nothing to specify how much and when warming occurs, even with 73 climate models collected by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The problem is that the warming trends projected by these models are all diverging farther and farther from the real world trend of actual temperature observations.

The NCA states:

The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.

But there is no proof of this basic declarative statement in the entire 841 pages of the report. Instead, the incontestable truths explained above show that the global warming of the past 50 years was 20 years of warming from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, preceded by roughly 30 years of global cooling, followed by almost 20 years of no warming, despite record acceleration during this time of human carbon dioxide emissions.

The NCA asserts that:

As these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed.

Such a blatantly false statement in an official U.S. government report that cost taxpayers $7 billion of whitewashing over 3 years is shameful. As incontestably explained above, the climate model projections have only grown farther and farther from reality over the past 34 years actually, particularly during the last 17 plus years of no global warming.

These climate models, with projections that cannot even replicate the past, have again been falsified by real world temperature data. So to say that over time, as “the climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed,” would be fraudulent if the statements had not been so transparently penned by PR flacks with no idea of any actual “climate science,” let alone the incontestable climate science truths explained above.

Jul 16, 2014 | 2 comments | by

Green Growth: Developed vs. Developing Nations

Difference between Developed and Developing

Before getting into the policy portion of this post, a distinction needs to be made between developing and developed nations. While they clearly have different connotations, the definitions are quite fluid and often prompt controversy.

Nevertheless, Princeton University defines a “developed” nation as one that has a high level of development according to certain criteria. Often, economic criteria have dominated the discussion, but recently the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines an economic measure with other measures, such as life expectancy and education, has become a more common use. Those with a very high HDI are considered “developed.”

Contrarily, a “developing” country is one in which the nation has a low level of material well-being or lower levels of HDI.

As no universal definition of either “developed” or “developing” is accepted, the interpretation varies per study. However, for the purposes of this post, the two definitions above, along with accepted identities of nations, will be used to clarify the boundary.

Green growth and Developing countries

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), green growth, a combination of economic policy and sustainable development, attempts to reduce poverty by bolstering economic growth and to address resource scarcity and climate change by improving environmental management. However, while green technology is generally more affordable by developed countries with robust economies, investment is particularly important for developing countries.

  1. The potential impacts, both economic and social, of environmental degradation are unique for developing countries, as they are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and as they tend to be more dependent on the exploitation of natural resources for economic growth than developed nations. Additionally, developing nations face risks from premature deaths due to pollution, poor water quality, and diseases at rates higher than developed nations.
  2. Although developing nations contribute smaller shares of global greenhouse gas emissions than developed nations, they will increase emissions if they follow conventional economic growth patterns.

However, as a report from Duke’s Law School points out, while developing nations have growing demands for climate-friendly processes and technologies, they often face many barriers because of trade policies and intellectual property regulations. Proposed by the study, one solution to the problem would be the establishment of a “global exchange forum in which transnational green technology holders, green venture capitalists, and developing country entrepreneurs could broker for efficient allocation of investment, resources, and technologies.”

Some developing nations have already taken steps to implement green growth policies. Viewed as successful, these regulations and processes are being initiated by other developing nations.

  • Costa Rica: discourages deforestation by paying forest owners through taxes on fuel and water for the environmental services that the forest produces, such as watershed and biodiversity protection.
  • Nepal: recognizes community forest user groups as autonomous bodies for managing and using community forests, generating employment and income from forest protection, tree felling, log extraction, and non-timber forest products and restoring forest resources.
  • Bangladesh: WasteConcern, an enterprise founded in Bangladesh, turns roadside organic waste into agricultural compost, saving millions in foreign currency by avoiding the import of chemical fertilizer. Annually, 124,400 tons of waste is processed, and 986 direct jobs are created.

By helping developing nations gain access to green growth and technology, a core objective of the “bright green” framework mentioned in Profiling Environmentalism, they will be able to simultaneously grow their economies and tackle environmental degradation. Economic growth and environmental sustainability are considered the twin objectives of the bright green framework, objectives that should be embraced by every nation, particularly those with a “developing” status.

Tanner Davis is a research associate at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Jun 09, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by
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