Category: Climate & Energy

Hillary: Exploit financial crisis for CO2 regulation

Reuters reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of young Europeans at the European Parliament that,

“Never waste a good crisis … Don’t waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security… “Certainly the United States has been negligent in living up to its responsibilities.”

In what can only be viewed as a comical lack of self-awareness, she also chastised Russia for using energy as a political weapon against Ukraine in recent years:

“We are … troubled by using energy as a tool of intimidation… We think that’s not in the interest of creating a better and better functioning energy system.”

Is anyone “troubled” about the greens using the financial crisis as a political weapon?

NY Gov. attacked for acting without greens’ OK

Green groups are attacking New York Gov. David Paterson for permitting electric utilities more flexibility with carbon dioxide emissions. Worse, according to the greens, he did it without first asking them for permission!

The New York Times reported this morning that,

At the urging of the energy industry, Gov. David A. Paterson has agreed to reconsider a key rule New York adopted as part of a 10-state pact aimed at reducing the threat of global warming by cutting power plant emissions.

Mr. Paterson appeared to overrule the State Department of Environmental Conservation in making the move, which would reopen state regulations to provide power plants leeway to release greater amounts of emissions at no additional cost. Administration officials said the governor was concerned the rule might unfairly burden the energy industry.

His decision infuriated environmental groups, which learned of Mr. Paterson’s decision just this week, though he met with energy executives privately last fall and assured them he would take the step.

Take Action:

The Times reported that

Several environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Advocates of New York, sent a letter on Wednesday to the governor’s top deputy, Larry S. Schwartz, protesting the move.

Fire off your own e-mail supporting Gov. Paterson’s move!

Steve Milloy’s new book, “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them,” focuses on how the greens are making energy more expensive and less available.

Three cheers for ExxonMobil!

Exxon Mobil announced yesterday that it would:

invest at record levels — between $25 billion and $30 billion annually over the next five years — to meet expected long-term growth in world energy demand.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL!

ExxonMobil’s 2008 highlights include:

  • Production started at eight major projects in 2008, which at their peak are expected to add the net equivalent of 260,000 barrels per day to the company’s production. A further nine major projects are expected to commence production in 2009, and at their peak are expected to add the net equivalent of an additional 485,000 barrels per day to production.
  • The company once again replaced more than 100 percent of production through proved reserves additions in 2008. It was the 15th consecutive year that the company’s proved reserves additions have more than replaced production. In addition, net exploration acreage has been increased by about 40 percent since 2003.
  • In the downstream, the company is progressing plans to invest more than $1 billion in lower-sulfur diesel projects at three refineries in the US and Europe. Once complete in 2010, these projects will allow an increase in lower-sulfur diesel production of 140,000 barrels per day.

Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” discusses how there’s plenty of oil for our energy needs — if only the greens will let us at it.

Click here for ExxonMobil’s press release.

Business Climate Lobby: Once ‘at the table’, now ‘on the menu’

Kim Strassel writes in today’s Wall Street Journal about how lobbying for climate change regulation is shaping up as a giant miscue for corporate America.

Strassel cites Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers’ original rationale for lobbying:

“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’ll wind up on the menu.”

Now, Strassel writes,

Duke sat, yet it and its compatriots are still shaping up to be Washington’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Obama plan will cost plenty, upfront, which will be borne by Mr. Rogers’s customers.

Stassel closes her terrific piece by recommending that:

Business leaders might do better to use this as an opportunity to kill the beast. They might get some credit for protecting their customers from what they are now, finally, admitting is a giant tax — in the middle of a recession.

The odd saga and miscues of corporate climateers like Duke Energy are spotlighted in Steve Milloy’s new book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

Take Action:

E-mail Strassel’s column to a USCAP CEO that you know.

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.

Obama attack on oil & gas industry begins

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wants to take away tax breaks for oil and gas companies because they contribute to global warming.

Reuters reported that Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee on March 4 that,

“We don’t believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don’t think that’s good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country.”

I’m not for the government subsidizing anyone, but Geithner’s statement indicates that the Obama administration is starting its long-promised attack on the oil and gas industry. Their tax breaks apparently are first. Are profits next? Since last summer, Obama has been saying that he would impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

A recent study by CRA International commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute concluded that a windfall profits tax likely would:

  • Cause a net loss of up to 490,000 U.S. jobs by 2030.
  • Reduce U.S. gross domestic product by roughly 1 percent, or $240 billion by 2030.
  • Increase U.S. imports of crude oil by up to 18 percent in 2030 and reduce U.S. domestic production of crude oil by up to 26 percent in the same year.

Obama moves to end nuclear energy?

The Obama administration is driving a stake into the heart of the U.S. nuclear power industry by cutting-off funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage program in President Obama’s budget proposal.

The Washington Post reported this morning that,

Yucca Mountain is not an option.

Yucca Mountain opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) called Obama’s action,

“… our most significant victory to date in our battle to protect Nevada from becoming the country’s toxic wasteland.”

Now, nuclear power plants will have to continue to store spent fuel on-site in hopes of someday being able to reprocess spent fuel like the French do.

But will the anti-nuclear greens permit that to happen? When will the nuclear power industry realize that the greens are not its friends?

If we can’t store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, can we at least dump the greens there? According to EPA standards for Yucca Mountain, humanity would be safe from the greens for at least one million years.

Natural gas jeered at D.C. rally

When Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) called for upgrading/retrofitting the U.S. Capitol’s power plant from coal to gas today at the Capitol Climate Action rally, she was jeered by protesters yelling out “no gas” and “solar.”

Rep. Norton apparently missed the march to the power plant rally which featured anti-gas chants such as “No coal, no gas, hey-hey, ho-ho.”

Deregulation or greens to blame for utility shut-offs?

The Washington Post reported today that,

Utilities across the Washington region have sent out millions of notices to customers who have fallen behind on their gas and electric bills in the past year and are increasingly shutting off service as residents find that they cannot pay rising heating costs.

In addition to billing cycle issues, the Post attributed customer payment difficulties on deregulation:

Higher wholesale energy prices continue to push up electricity and natural gas costs, a result of deregulated markets in the District and Maryland. A typical monthly Pepco bill for District customers is $103.67 today, compared with $58.16 in 2004.

The fuller story is that Maryland had capped electricity rates until a few years ago when the caps expired and market forces — like supply pressures — pushed prices up.

Who’s against increasing supply? A year ago, the Post reported that it was the greens.

BP CEO calls for more drilling

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for more domestic oil drilling, BP CEO Tony Hayward observed,

… energy security can only be built on a solid foundation of free markets and free trade. Two-thirds of the world’s oil is traded across international borders. This huge and agile market makes it possible to respond quickly to supply disruptions, such as hurricanes or political unrest. Tariffs, heavy taxes, or restrictions on the free movement of petroleum products interfere with that process…

… America must stop looking to others for the oil it needs and actively develop its own hydrocarbon endowment. Even with the rapid growth of alternatives, fossil fuels will continue providing most of the energy Americans consume for decades into the future.

The search for new sources of domestic crude has been constrained by a lack of access to promising areas, notably the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Resource estimates for closed areas exceed 100 billion barrels of oil, with 30 billion recoverable with today’s technology and at today’s prices.

Opening up the OCS would enhance America’s energy security. Moreover, a new study by ICF International estimates that it could create as many as 76,000 new jobs and generate a total of nearly $1.4 trillion in new government revenue by 2030…

What a refreshing change from Lord John Browne who thought BP stood for “Beyond Petroleum.”

Obama cancels Bush oil shale leases

The Washington Post reported this morning that,

In his second reversal of a Bush administration decision, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday that he is scrapping leases for oil-shale development on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Salazar rescinded a lease offer made last month for research, development and demonstration projects that could have led to oil-shale exploration on 1.9 million acres in the three states.

It was the second time Salazar has reversed the Bush administration. He also halted the leasing of oil and gas drilling parcels near national parks in Utah this month.

At least the oil and gas producers had the courage to speak up:

“It’s part of a pattern of decisions by the secretary that are detrimental to all sources of domestic energy,” said Kathleen Sgamma, government affairs director for the Denver-based Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.

In a media release, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar said,

“We need to push forward aggressively with research, development and demonstration of oil shale technologies to see if we can find a safe and economically viable way to unlock these resources on a commercial scale. The research, development, and demonstration leases we will offer can help answer critical questions about oil shale, including about the viability of emerging technologies on a commercial scale, how much water and power would be required, and what impact commercial development would have on land, water, wildlife, and communities.”

Despite the Obama administration’s apparent openness to drilling, rest assured that last bit about “impact” on “land, water, wildlife, and communities” is code for “Don’t worry fellow greens. We’ll make sure that oil shale never happens.”

California blows climate cost-benefit analysis

To support the enactment of California’s global warming bill, Mary Nichols, the state’s top air regulator, embraced as “good-news-numbers” a cost-benefits analysis that predicted the law would create 100,000 jobs and increase per-capita income by $200 by 2020.

The New York Times reported this morning that, as it turns out, it is the critics who labeled the cost-benefit analysis as “unrealistic” who were correct:

In one withering review, Matthew E. Kahn of the University of California, Los Angeles said the analysis unconvincingly portrayed the law as “a riskless free lunch.” Another economist, Robert N. Stavins of Harvard, said the regulators were “systematically biased” in ways “that lead to potentially severe underestimates of costs.”

Now, with the recession deepening — unemployment in California is 9.3 percent — manufacturers like Mr. Repman say the recession will make carrying out the state’s plan, the first stage of which goes into effect in 2010, even more difficult and could make the economy worse.

The lesson? As the Times reported:

“We’re talking about a transformation of the way of life,” said Greg Freeman, an economist with the Los Angeles Economic Development Commission. “There’s going to be transitional costs. We can’t have the debate about whether the cost is worth paying unless we have a realistic idea of what the cost will be.”