Virginia to Gina: Your Power Plant Rule Is “Arbitrary, Capricious, and Unlawful”

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 21, 2014

“As currently drafted, the carbon emission rates that EPA proposes for Virginia are arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.”

“Virginia’s compliance with the Proposed Regulation, as currently drafted, will be expensive and will be paid for by Virginia residents and businesses. Contrary to the claim that ‘rates will go up, but bills will go down’, experience and costs in Virginia make it extremely unlikely that either electric rates or bills in Virginia will go down as a result of the Proposed Regulation.”

“Additional near-term generator retirements caused by the Proposed Regulation will compound existing, unresolved reliability concerns in the Commonwealth.”

– Staff of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Comments to U.S. EPA, October 14, 2014.

The anti-intellectual, postmodernist arguments for free-lunch/lunch-you-are-paid-to-eat CO2-emission reductions regulation, or in the U.S. EPA’s words, “‘rates will go up, but bills will go down,” sooner or later must hit the shoals of reality.…

AWED Energy & Environmental Newsletter: October 20, 2014

By John Droz, Jr. -- October 20, 2014

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Greed Energy Economics:

As Hawaii Prepares for Utility Reform, the State’s Solar Industry Sheds 3,000 Workers

The Dumb Ways We Subsidize Renewable Energy

Paying wind developers to not produce electricity, etc.…

US-EU Free Trade Is Good for the Economy and for the Climate (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership treaty deserves broad support)

By Carlo Stagnaro -- October 17, 2014

“The degree of trade integration between America and Europe is already fairly advanced…. In particular, the average level of tariffs is relatively low (around 3%). Therefore, unlike most previous and current discussions on trade treaties, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will focus much more on non-tariff barriers where a protectionist rationale advances an environmentalist or health regulatory agenda.”

“Free trade can be good for the economy, and for the environment too.”

The United States and the European Union are in the process of negotiating a new free trade agreement, the so-called Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The treaty has the potential of delivering significant benefits to both parties, because of increased trade, lower barriers, and better labor specialization.

Energy may be a significant part of the deal: according to a leaked “non paper”, trade in energy commodities and technologies between the EU and the US would be freed from most of the burdensome red tape that, until now, has significantly hampered the possibility of achieving a greater integration among the two world’s largest economies.…