Author: Steve Milloy

From the Washington Times:

Officials at the Treasury Department think cap-and-trade legislation would cost taxpayers hundreds of billion in taxes, according to internal documents circulated within the agency and provided to The Washington Times…

A memo prepared by Judson Jaffe, who works in the Treasury’s Office of Environment and Energy, referenced President Obama’s remarks on energy policy in his State of the Union Address and said, given the president’s plan to auction emissions allowances, “a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.”

These figures differ from other cost estimates for the legislation produced more recently by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.

“These are candid, internal discussions of what they are telling each other and what they won’t tell you,” said Christopher C. Horner, a CEI senior fellow who filed the request.

Kudos to Horner.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has announced plans to strong-arm France into adopting a carbon tax in order to “save the human race” from global warming.

According to the AP:

The tax would be initially based on the market price for carbon dioxide emissions permits, which is now euro17 ($24.74) per ton of carbon dioxide, Sarkozy said. At that level, the government expects to raise euro3 billion, which will be entirely returned to households and businesses through a reduction in other taxes or repaid via a so-called “Green Check,” Sarkozy said.

The result would be a shift of the tax burden from other revenue sources to energy derived from fossil fuels in an effort to discourage their use.

Gasoline, diesel fuel, coal and natual gas will be subject to the tax, but not electricity, Sarkozy said. France generates most of its electricity via nuclear power, which doesn’t emit greenhouse gases.

The tax would add 4.5 euro cents to each liter of diesel, 4 cents to each liter of gasoline and 0.4 cents for each KWh of natural gas consumed, Sarkozy said. The tax is intended to rise gradually from this level, Sarkozy said.

France emits about 1.4% of global manmade CO2 emissions.

If France stopped emitting CO2 altogether for the next 90 years, the total amount of atmospheric CO2 avoided would be on the order of 1.8 parts per million.

Sacre bleu!

Capstone metering will begin marketing the “first intelligent water meter for residential use” this month, reports SmartGridToday.

The meter’s upside seems to be the ability to use water flow to generate and store its own power in a rechargeable battery.

The meter’s downside is that it will allow local water companies to remotely “monitor and restrict water flow due to conservation program requirements.”

Not a good trade-off.

First Solar, Inc. will build the world’s largest solar field in Mongolia, reports the Wall Street Journal. A few interesting points:

• The field is slated to produce 2 gigawatts of power — equal to the output of two coal-fired power plants.
• The field will take up 25 square miles (16,000 acres), as compared to about 200 acres for two coal-fired plants.
• Unlike coal plants, however, no electricity will be produced at night– so the field will need to be backed up by conventional (most likely coal-fired) power plants.
• The estimated cost of such a field in the U.S. would be on the order of $6 billion — twice as much as the cost of two coal-fired power plants. Keep in mind that back-up coal plants (at additional cost?) would be needed to back up the solar field. But First Solar expects the costs to be much lower as it would be using “lower-cost Chinese” (slave/child?) labor.
• First Solar expects China to place a $0.15 – 0.25 tariff (tax) on the electricity produced by the plant — about tripling to quintupling the consumer price of electricity in China.

Is this considered renewable because there seems to be an endless supply of green chicanery?

Taxpayer provided welfare for the renewable energy industry became a lot richer yesterday as the Departments of Treasury and Energy announced that they were making $502 million in “grants” available to firms in lieu of earned tax credits. Apparently the tax credits weren’t worth anything since the industry has no profits.

The $502 million of stimulus funding supposedly will provide 2,000 jobs according to the feds.That’s only $251,000 per job — and all so that consumers can pay higher prices for electricity.

Whoever is being stimulated by this spending is pretty perverse.

The Wall Street Journal reports how Wall Street wind investors get a 30% cash rebate on the building of renewable energy facilities in addition to accelerated depreciation deductions — with no government spending cap on the program.

A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said:

“We are concerned that this may evolve into a cash-for-clunkers version 2.0.”