Why The World Will Not Agree to Pricing Carbon (Part I)

By Peter Lang -- October 23, 2014

“If Europe chooses a solo effort through a one-sided climate protection target of 40% less emissions, it would mean billions in losses for us that our global competitors would not otherwise have gained. The damage done to competitiveness among energy-intensive companies in the EU would be considerable.”

– Utz Tillmann, Energy Intensive Industries of Germany, quoted in “German Industry Issues Stark Warning Ahead of EU Climate Summit,” EurActiv, October 22, 2014.

This two-part series considers the probability of success of carbon pricing and an alternative approach. Part 1, ‘Why carbon pricing will not succeed’, is an edited extract from my submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into repeal of the carbon tax legislation (Submission No 2; Mr Peter Lang). Part 1 explains why carbon pricing cannot succeed unless it is global, and global carbon pricing is unlikely to be achieved, let alone sustained for the time until the job is done (centuries).…

Solar PV Subsidies: Criticism Mounts (U.C. Berkeley’s Borenstein has had enough)

By Wayne Lusvardi -- October 22, 2014

“[T]he evidence is clear that Increased Block Pricing is a key driver behind the distributed solar PV movement in California… The first step to rationalizing California’s electricity rates is to greatly reduce or eliminate increasing-block-pricing.”

“With federal subsidies that pay nearly half the cost of PV — and net metering that pays the residential customer for electricity supplied to the grid at the retail rate rather than the wholesale rate that other renewable generation sources receive – solar PV can beat the high-tier prices of IBP. That’s why solar PV installers are the most vocal opponents of rational rate reform that would call a kilowatt-hour a kilowatt-hour regardless of how many other kilowatt-hours you consume during the month.”

— Severin Borenstein, Director, University of California Energy Institute (September 30, 2014)

Southern California Edison Rates 1999 to 2009

Tiered electric-rate policies are driving California homeowners that use a lot of electricity into rooftop solar installations and should be ended, says one of California’s top energy experts.…

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.…