According to USA Today, the energy elements of Obama’s “stimulus” package add up to about $58 billion. He’d use $32 billion to fund a smart electricity grid;$20 billion for Renewable energy tax cuts and a tax credit for research on energy efficiency and clean energy, plus a multiyear extension of the green energy production tax credit; and $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes.
There’s not all bad here.…
Continue ReadingLast week I blogged about the news accounts of ExxonMobil’s coming out in favor of a carbon tax. I was too hasty. I should have read Rex Tillerson’s speech first–and very carefully. Mr. Tillerson did not call for a carbon tax as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Deep in his speech, Tillerson argued that carbon taxation is better than cap-and-trade as a regulatory program.…
Continue ReadingThere are a lot of good reasons to be suspicious of regulators who claim to be guardians of the truth, but every now and then they get something right. The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA, http://www.asa.org.uk) is that country’s equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission, with jurisdiction over false advertising. Last month, the ASA reached a settlement with the British Wind Energy Association acting as agent for the country’s wind generators. Two months earlier, a local anti-wind group filed a complaint at the ASA against Npower, a subsidiary of Germany’s RWE. Npower’s advertising claimed that every kilowatt-hour of wind power displaced 860 grams of CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel power plants. The ASA determined that the amount was badly overstated. …
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