Posts from — June 2009

“Imagine if an industry-funded government contractor had a hand in writing a major federal report on climate change. And imagine if that person used his position to misrepresent the science, to cite his own non-peer reviewed work, and to ignore relevant work in the peer-reviewed literature. There would be an outrage, surely . . .”

- Roger Pielke Jr. on Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (June 2009)

 The U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program (CCSP) report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, is a major disappointment, particularly for some of us who labored to not only correct the small things but to get the big picture right. The political side won with stubbornness and persistence. Reality lost with an overall description that many of the impacts from climate change are greater (worse) than the best science allows. The result is an advocacy document parading as a scientific assessment.

Background

In the last year, this report went through three periods of public comment. In response to loads of comments (including the large detailed set that I contributed), tweaks were  made and glaring errors corrected. But by and large, the same general sentiment remained in place throughout—that is, anthropogenic climate change has made, is making, and will continue to make, things worse for Americans. Evidently, all aspects of the CCSP report were forced to support that general concept—whether or not they do so in reality when all scientific evidence is fairly considered.

Examples of how the established scientific understanding was bent to conform to the CCSP’s authors pre-determined conclusions are too numerous to detail here. It took my colleagues Pat Michaels, Bob Davis, and I a full month last summer to go through and make (94 single-spaced pages-worth of) detailed comments on the first draft of the report. [Read more →]

Longtime MasterResource readers know of Chip Knappenberger’s post on the negligible climatic effects of unilateral adherence to Waxman-Markey. Across the board, the response from supporters of Waxman-Markey was not to deny Knappenberger’s calculations, but rather to insist that the U.S. had to show leadership. The (perhaps unspoken) premise was that if the whole world adopted the steep emission cuts proposed in Waxman-Markey, then the climatic benefits would clearly outweigh the economic costs.

In an earlier post, I tried to show that this view is simply false. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)–the very document showing the “consensus” on the physical science basis of manmade climate change–the best estimates of climate change damages do not justify the aggressive limits contained in the current Waxman-Markey bill.

Then in a follow-up post, I documented that a recently released summary paper from Resources for the Future (RFF) reached the same conclusion: Using standard cost/benefit analyses, the peer-reviewed literature cannot justify the aggressive emission cutbacks in Waxman-Markey. In order to justify the bill’s 83% cut (relative to 2005 levels) by 2050, proponents must stipulate that there are climatic tipping points beyond which it is too dangerous to proceed. But the actual expert models of the global economy and climate system cannot themselves spit out these “tipping points” as the efficient policy choices. (In general, many proponents of aggressive government action have repudiated cost/benefit analysis altogether when it comes to climate change policies.)

In the present post, I want to show the contradictions in Paul Krugman’s recent advocacy for Waxman-Markey, and then comment more generally on the implications of a cost/benefit result. [Read more →]

In its Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Sections 202(a) of the Clean Air Act , the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) places six greenhouse gases into one basket. All are treated as equal, primary culprits in the anthropogenic enhancement of the earth’s greenhouse effect, and thus the EPA proposes to find that they “endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The six are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.

But for many reasons, one of these gases is not like the others and should be considered separately. That gas is carbon dioxide.

The Green Greenhouse Gas

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to life on earth as we know it. It is a necessary ingredient in the photosynthetic recipe that produces the oxygen that we breathe as well as the carbohydrates that we eat. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the better plants grow. And better-growing plants are, obviously, a boon for the planet’s animal life (including humans).

Interestingly, not only does carbon dioxide make plants grow better and be more productive, but it makes them more resistant to other environmental stressors. [Read more →]

I have previously described Exxon Mobil as the anti-Enron. In an opinion-page editorial in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle, I contrasted the two companies in terms of both energy strategy and public policy.

More could be said than is in the editorial (reprinted below). Enron’s first fraud, engineered by Andrew Fastow, came with the purchase of Zond Corporation, which was renamed Enron Wind Corporation and is now part of GE Energy. (This complicated story about a “qualifying facility” under federal energy law is told in McLean and Elkind’s The Smartest Guys in the Room, pp. 166–67 and Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools, pp. 142–44.)

Enron Energy Services, the energy outsourcing division of Enron that so excited environmentalists (including Joe Romm, now blogging at Climate Progress), was one of the company’s biggest frauds.

So Enron’s “green” strategy was at the core of its business problems and legal problems, a theme that I will detail in a forthcoming book.

Also, some of the points made below have been the subject of MasterResource posts, such as: [Read more →]

Editor Note: Robert Peltier, Ph.D., PE, is editor-in-chief of POWER magazine. His bio is at the end of this post.

Environmental retrofits at coal plants have experienced costs greater than estimated by the Energy Information Administration. That is the bad news. The good news is:

• There are no significant technical problems with flue gas desulphurization (FGD) or selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technologies.  Utilities are not buying “serial number one” so the performance or compliance risk is negligible.  Completion risk for any project also appears to be minimal.
• The costs to construct either technology are reasonably well understood so that project capital cost estimates should be on the money.
• The cost escalation (updated below) during the boom is now subsiding.

The overall result is that the “dirtiest” power plants have been and are being cleaned up to current stringent air-emission standards via the Clean Air Act and other pollution regulation. This is real news–cleaned-up coal versus the political moniker “clean coal” (a separate issue dealing with a non-criteria air pollutant, carbon dioxide). [Read more →]

Air quality from America’s coal plants have been improving for decades, even before Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970. And since 1970, the six so-called criteria pollutants have declined significantly overall and in the generation of electricity, even though coal-fired generation has increased by more than 180 percent.[i] (The “criteria pollutants”—those for which the EPA has set criteria for permissable levels—are carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide [SO2], nitrogen oxides [NOx], ground-level ozone, and particulate matter [PM]).

Specifically, total SO₂ emissions from coal-fired plants were reduced by about 40 percent between 1970 and 2006, and NO_x emissions were reduced by almost 50 percent between 1980 and 2006. On an output basis, the percent reduction is even greater, with SO₂ emissions (in pounds per megawatt-hour) almost 80 percent lower, and NO_x emissions 70 percent lower. [Read more →]

[Editor Note: Transportation expert Randal O'Toole is a senior fellow of the Cato Institute and blogs at Antiplanner. His bio is at the end of this post.]

Amtrak, the American Public Transportation Association, and other passenger-rail advocates want everyone to believe that passenger trains are more energy efficient than driving. This helps them justify the hundreds of billions of tax subsidies they receive. But is this rationale true?

Comparing the Studies

A new study from the University of California (Davis) finds that the answer depends on such things as load factors: your auto carrying four people consumes a lot less energy per passenger mile than a subway (which on average is only one-sixth full) or Amtrak train (which on average is only half full).

The Department of Energy’s Transportation Energy Data Book says that, on average, cars consumed [Read more →]

Yesterday’s post at MasterResource described the failure of the 81st Texas Legislature (aka the “solar session”) to enact a new renewables mandate. Other big news is the rejection of an initial renewable (read solar, biomass) mandate by the Florida Legislature, as well as a sweetheart deal desired by Florida Power & Light (FPL). Nuclear and offshore drilling also came into play in the legislative debate as tie-in’s in the political environment.

All this is instructive for the current federal push for a National Electricity Standard (NES). Florida would be a loser in any national NES–especially given the prohibitive cost of converting sunshine into electricity in any sort of a major way. The age-old promises of solar breakthroughs are a mirage, and Enron’s 1994 contrived Solarex splash should not be forgotten.

As reported by John Dorschner in the Miami Herald, Florida rejected a year-long push by environmental groups and their business allies to enact a renewable quota in the state. The drama included the pro-mandate/subsidy Gov. Charlie Crisp; Southern Alliance for Clean Energy; sugarcane company Florida Crystals; and (would-be) solar town developer Syd Kitson. On the other side [Read more →]

“We can push solar, and that’s great. But somebody’s got to pay for it. You can’t have those who can barely afford their energy bills subsidizing it.”

- Texas Rep. Sylvester Turner, quoted in the Houston Chronicle

The Houston Democrat made a national statement, not just statewide one, in reference to proposed legislation to surcharge ratepayers to subsidize solar roofs. Such sentiment beat back a well-funded effort by national environmental pressure groups and the solar industry. Has the decade-old Enron-launched artificial stimulus to uneconomic, unreliable renewables reached its apogee? Might existing and planned renewable programs enacted at the expense of ratepayers and taxpayers be reconsidered by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the 82nd Texas Legislature in 2011?

Background

The Texas Legislature, which meets every two years, fell to Enron and environmental lobbyists back in 1999 when the nation’s strictest renewable energy mandate was passed and signed into law by then Gov. George W. Bush. In 2005, the renewable quota was increased again, making Texas the national leader in industrial wind parks–and energy liabilities parading as assets (see here). [Read more →]

Buried within the controversial Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (formally known as HR 2454, “The American Clean Energy and Security Act”) – a bill that may well reach the House floor for a vote before the July 4^th recess – is another fairly arresting proposal: the creation of a federal “clean energy bank.” The idea (found in subtitle J, addressing “Nuclear and Advanced Technologies”) is to use federal tax dollars to provide subsidies (in particular, direct loans, letters of credit, loan guarantees, and insurance products or other credit enhancements or debt instruments) to private business in order to “promote access to affordable financing for accelerated and widespread deployment” of clean energy, energy infrastructure, energy efficiency, and manufacturing technologies.

 The Senate is considering similar legislation in the form of S 949, “The 21st Century Energy Technology and Deployment Act,” but it would go further and also allow indirect subsidies as well, including securitization, indirect credit support, the acquisition or selling of debt or interest in the debt; and secondary market support through lending on the security of debt.  That bill will likely be passed by the Senate Energy Committee this week as part of a larger energy bill titled ”The American Clean Energy Leadership Act.” [Read more →]