Day: March 5, 2009

Renewable Pipedream?

Robert Bryce points out in today’s Wall Street Journal that if you convert the amount of electricity produced on a daily basis by so-called “renewable” energy sources into barrel-of-oil-equivalents, you get about 76,000 barrels of oil per day. But the America’s total primary energy use is equivalent to about 47.4 million barrels of oil per day.

President Obama declared in his address to Congress last week that,

“We will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next there years.”

But even if the President was to achieve his ambitious goal, we’ll still depend on hydrocarbons. It’s no wonder that Bryce’s column was entitled, “Let’s Get Real About Renewable Energy.”

Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence’ — which is available through the JunkScience.com store.

WSJ: ‘Warming to protectionism’

Editorializing about the EU’s new tariff on biodiesel imports from the U.S, the Wall Steet Journal noted that,

Just as more scientists acknowledge that we don’t know as much about the Earth’s climate as Al Gore says, it’s becoming clearer that environmental policies won’t lead to some green economic boom…

… Neither side is in the right here — which makes the case such a good illustration of the way green policies warp markets.

… If EU environmental policies were really about the environment, [U.S. biodiesel] arguably would be a good thing. More green fuel for everyone, and on the cheap to boot…

It turns out that Europe — which also isn’t known for restraint in supporting farmers — is more interested in protecting its own biodiesel industry than in seeing motorists fill their tanks with low-carbon fuel… And all of this despite evidence that fuels like biodiesel increase CO2 emissions compared with fossil fuels…

We keep hearing about the coming “green tech” bounty. But green-collar jobs will continue to cost more in subsidies and lost efficiency than the jobs themselves are worth. Not to mention the positions that are lost along the way in other firms or industries, or never created because energy costs more for everyone. A report last year by the economic research institute RWI Essen found that €205,000 in subsidies were spent for each solar-industry job created in Germany, and that the net effect on employment was negative…

California’s killer cars

As California seeks a waiver from the EPA to establish its own carbon dioxide emission standards for cars, General Motors notes in its annual 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that,

… Since CO2 emissions are directly proportional to the amount of fuel consumed by motor vehicles, CO2 emissions per mile are directly related to fuel consumption per mile. In this regard, California’s attempt to regulate CO2 emissions per mile is tantamount to establishing state level fuel economy standards…

This means that the only way to reduce automobile CO2 emissions is basically to make lighter — more deadly — cars.

Should you risk your life for the sake of CO2 emissions?

Take Action

Read this post for directions on how you can urge the EPA to not grant the California waiver.