Posts from — April 2009

A recent article in the New York Times, “Not So Green After All: Alternative Fuel Still a Dalliance for Oil Giants,” chronicled the move away from politically correct (but economically incorrect) wind and solar energy by the oil majors.

Royal Dutch Shell and BP, in particular, recognize wind and solar as what they are: dilute, intermittent energies that are not consumer friendly or economic. And their investment returns in the same have been lackluster. Shell and BP have found out what Exxon Mobil learned in the 1970s.

“Oil giants worldwide are skeptical that President Barack Obama’s plans to move the economy away from petroleum will be successful,” Jad Mouawad wrote in the Times. “Many of the oil companies are sticking to their hydrocarbon business model and some are backing away from commitments to renewable power.”

Mouawad summarizes the thinking from these three majors: [Read more →]

“I can find virtually no one—in government, in the environmental community, in business or in the press—who thinks that the Kyoto Protocol has even the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of coming into effect in anything approaching its current form.  This is every bit as true internationally as it is in the United States.”

- Paul Portney [then president: Resources for the Future], “The Joy of Flexibility: U.S. Climate Policy in the Next Decade,” Keynote Address, Energy Information Administration Annual Outlook Conference, March 22, 1999, mimeo, p. 2.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress is increasingly fighting his own flank as a number of Left environmentalists are moderating their climate views in response to scientific and political realities. His enemies list grows and grows, the latest being Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg, whom Romm challenges (and more!) for seriously considering Freeman Dyson’s conclusion that climate alarmism is exaggerated.

Dr. Romm is also upset at Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, who said recently: “Binding targets for the developing nations is [sic] out of the question.” To which Dr. Romm posted [Read more →]

Several reports (see here and here) and certain websites (here) allege that renewable technologies can meet our growing electricity needs and also meet stringent reduction targets for carbon dioxide. For example, Climate Progress, a website populated by Joseph Romm, an assistant secretary of energy during the Clinton administration, indicates that the answer to our growing electricity needs will come from energy efficiency (including cogeneration), wind power, concentrated solar power (CSP), and biomass co-firing, which taken together will meet a projected 1 percent annual growth rate in demand while also reducing carbon emissions.

These reports are in sharp contrast to forecasts produced by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent agency of the U.S. Department of Energy. [Read more →]

A key element of the current administration’s approach to recovery from our current economic and financial crises is a fundamental reorientation of the kinds of work performed in our economy. But a proposed shift to “green” jobs in the name of well-paying, high-impact employment that cannot be outsourced overlooks the essential nature of how human labor fosters economic well-being.

Simply put, the key to prosperity is high productivity per worker. There is simply no other way to be rich unless you sit on top of a gold mine (or oil well) and have few mouths that need to feed off that source of wealth.

Discarding the vain hope that a nation of 300 million can live well off a raw materials-based economy, we are left with productivity as the wellspring of affluence. If work is productive then it adds value to the raw materials and machinery used, whether these are oil molecules, computer keyboards, wind currents, or trainloads of corn. [Read more →]

“Climate change is not an economics problem. It’s an ethics problem.”

- Stephen Schneider, Science, June 4, 2004.

Well, yes it is.  And the climate-change debate brings up the energy-policy debate.

Poor people around the world need abundant, affordable, modern energy. And this points to private property and free markets–and adaptation in the face of uncertainties–and not government ownership and control of energy resources. The failure of Kyoto I should not be followed by a Kyoto II. The United States should not enact either a carbon tax or a carbon cap-and-trade program. Resource access on government lands (and waters) should be permitted. The goal is a robust supply-side strategy that respects free consumer choice to benefit one and all, and particularly the most vulnerable.

Here are some quotations on the need to eradicate energy poverty (a list that needs to be added to if folks have other quotations that can be added in the comment list). [Read more →]

[MasterResource editor] Clean Power Now VP Charles Kleekamp argued in favor of the proposed Cape Wind offshore wind project on economic grounds in guest editorials in the March 6 Cape Cod Times and March 15 Cape Cod Today. In letters-to-the-editor to the same papers (not published), Glenn Schleede challenges Kleekamp’s analysis and describes what information the developer of Cape Wind would need to provide to help determine what the ensuing cost of per kilowatt-hour is likely to be. Still, Massachusetts electric users can be expected to be paying more because such power is bring driven by state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard and the fact that electricity from wind is intermittent.

Mr. Schleede’s analysis follows.

Dear Editors:
Unfortunately, Mr. Kleekamp’s Opinion column in the March 6 issue of Cape Cod Times and March 15 issue of Cape Cod Today presents highly misleading information about the true cost of electricity that would be produced by the proposed Cape Wind project.

Your readers deserve better information about the full potential cost of electricity from Cape Wind, including what is now known and unknown, and who has the most complete information about the potential cost. [Read more →]

To those who have a memory that transcends more than a few weeks, recent events in the auto sector must induce a great feeling of irony.

Back in August of 2008, then-candidate Obama called for 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles to be on the road by 2015.

To that end, then-candidate Obama called for:

*$4 billion in tax credits to American automakers to retool plants for the production of plug-in hybrid cars capable of 150 miles to the gallon;

*A $7,000 tax credit for consumers who bought early model plug-in vehicles; and

*Candidate Obama vowed that half of all cars purchased by the federal government would be plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012.

As both candidate and president, Obama has repeatedly raised plug-in hybrids as a vital technology for greening Detroit.

Fast forward [Read more →]

A few weeks ago, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies for coal-fired power plants.According to CRS, commercialization and widespread deployment of CCS will require “demand pull” regulation, such as Clean Air Act New Source Performance Standards, combined with cap-and-trade or carbon taxes; and it will require support for “technology push” RD&D (research, development, and demonstration) via government grants, tax preferences, and loan guarantees.

CCS will not be deployed on an industrial scale without “demand pull” regulation, because burning coal with CCS will always be more expensive than burning coal without it. Yet “technology push” RD&D to reduce CCS-related cost penalties is also critical. Although CRS does not explicitly say so, it implies that if CCS costs do not decline dramatically, carbon caps or taxes would make coal generation uneconomic. Absent relatively inexpensive CCS, carbon penalties could easily decimate the single largest source of electric power in the United States and, indeed, the world. [Read more →]

The National Wildlife Federation released a report last week that began:

Overwhelming scientific evidence supports reducing carbon pollution* that causes global warming as much as possible and as quickly as possible.

Why such a stark verdict? Because…

Global warming is happening faster than predicted even several years ago, with many natural systems already seriously impacted.

This is an odd contention given that we are now in a multi-year period (12 years and counting) period during which time the global warming has been preceding much more slowly than the climate-model mean projections of the expected rate of temperature rise. And, what’s even worse (for the models anyway), is that the rate has now dipped near the lower bound of the 95% confidence range of model projections. If the slowdown continues much longer, it will be a clear indication that something is amiss with the temperature projections—and thus with alarming claims that depend upon them. [Read more →]