“Perhaps in a new free-market era the functional equivalent of an anti-Lois Lerner will investigate such rent-seeking entities as the Regulatory Assistance Project. Meanwhile, be warned: RAP may soon be coming to a Public Service Commission or environmental program near you, if they haven’t been there already.”

The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) may be one of the most influential “clean energy” not-for-profit organizations you’ve probably never heard of. RAP’s long-standing general policy to keep off the radar screen may be changing as this organization becomes emboldened by their own rhetoric. But behind the scenes, RAP is effectively demoting gas-fired end-use technologies, including cogenerated power capacity, in favor of renewables and forced efficiency that favors electrification.

In the beginning, RAP was involved with electric utility rate-case proceedings before state utility commission’s in the area of “energy efficiency.”…

[Editor note: An under-the-radar energy intervention is to force fossil-fuel fired water heating to go electric “regardless of adverse economic impacts,” as Mark Krebs explains in this post and Part I yesterday.]

Why should electricity monopolize energy if gas-fired alternatives are more economical as determined by self-interested consumers?

If the objective is low carbon water heaters, there are more direct means of doing so. The following graphics compare the full fuel-cycle efficiencies of traditional gas water heater to electric water heaters:

Gas Storage Water Heater Site and Source Energy Efficiency

Electric Resistance Storage Water Heater Site and Source Energy Efficiency

Note: The previous two graphs are used with permission form the Gas Technology Institute

The electric utility industry prefers a site-based energy efficiency metric because it can indicates that switching to an electric resistance water heater from a gas water heater can “save” over 30% more energy. …

[Editor note: An under-the-radar federal energy intervention is to force fossil-fueled water heating to go electric “regardless of adverse economic impacts,” as Mark Krebs explains in this post and Part II tomorrow.]

In March of 2015, MasterResource.org published my article, Giving (tax) Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due: “Geothermal” Heat Pumps (and beyond) where I asked: “So what’s next, calling toaster ovens and electric resistance water heaters renewable?”

Apparently, the answer is electric resistance water heaters since they are now being depicted (unwittingly or otherwise) as “batteries” for thermally storing “clean” electric energy.  But toasters may not be far behind. The following article is about the latest rash of “crony environmentalism” under the guise of “deep decarbonization” through increased electrification of everything possible; regardless of adverse economic impacts.

Introduction & Background

For better or worse, Congress has delegated broad authority to the Department of Energy (DOE) to mandate minimum energy efficiency standards for most major (and many minor) residential and commercial energy consuming products.…

“In the United Nations Paris Accord last December world leaders promised to try to reduce future emissions. These politicians shamelessly clapped each other on the back, pretending they had accomplished something important. However, they had agreed beforehand not to even discuss the only action that could rapidly reduce global emissions.”

– James Hansen, “‘I am an Energy Voter’” February 23, 2016.

James Hansen is mad at the “I am an Energy Voter” campaign that encourages consumers to vote for their favorite energies at the ballot box, not only at the pump. Hansen, in fact, is mad at the free society where buyers voluntarily buy and sellers voluntarily sell. Ludwig von Mises called that consumer sovereignty.

Hansen wants otherwise. Renewables as savior is for the Tooth Fairy, he believes, so nuclear and forced conservation (conservationism) is atop his agenda — forced by a punitive carbon tax (or fee-and-dividend as he puts it).…