5 December 2014
In the News
Some Perspective on the Headlining Antarctic Ice Loss trends Chip Knappenberger, Cato at Liberty, 5 December 2014
Conservatives Urge States To
Laura Barron-Lopez, The Hill, 5 December 2014
Why Is NRDC Afraid of Democracy? Dan Simmons, Institute for Energy Research, 3 December 2014
Fracking Debunks Obama
, 3 December 2014 EPA Employees Paid More Than $1 Million To Not Work Thomas Lee & Katie Tubb, The Daily Signal, 3 December 2014
Key Facts about the Great Oil Crash of 2014 Robert Samuelson, Washington Post, 3 December 2014
Representatives Press for Gas Tax Hike Keith Lang, The Hill, 3 December 2014
Robert Bradley, Jr., Master Resource, 2 December 2014
News You Can Use
President Whiffs on Green Car Promise
According to Investor
’
s Business Daily, President Obama is about 826,000 cars short of achieving his
promise to put 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, despite almost $8 billion in taxpayer subsidies. In related news, National Journal this week reported that U.S. consumers are abandoning
green cars as gas prices fall.
Inside the Beltway
Myron Ebell
House Renews Wind PTC, But Just for 2014
The House of Representatives voted 378 to 46 to pass a big tax package that includes a one-year
extension of the wind production tax cut. The extension expires at the end of 2014. This extension
probably won’t benefit many wind developments begun in 2014 because nearly all of them are covered by the IRS’s extremely generous interpretation of what counts as project begun in 2013.
By renewing this and a long list of tax cut extenders retroactively for 2014, the House has simply punted the whole mess to the next Congress. There have been conflicting accounts about what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will do, but I expect he will allow a floor vote and that the bill will be sent to the president for his signature. There have also been conflicting opinions about what the 114th
Congress is likely to do next year, but at this point it’s just speculation.
223 Companies Want Americans To Be Poorer
Two-hundred twenty-three companies sent a letter to President Barack Obama this week supporting the
EPA’s proposed rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
On the other hand, CEI and eleven other free market and conservative non-profit groups filed an official comment on
1st December that makes a thorough case that the rule is illegal and would raise electric rates and decrease reliability.
Companies that support the EPA rule include Adidas, Ben and Jerry’s, Clif Bar, Eileen Fisher,
IKEA,
Kellogg’s,
Levi Strauss, Mars, Nestle, New Belgium Brewing, Nike, North Face, Patagonia, Seventh Generation, Starbucks, Stonyfield Farm, Symantec, and Unilever. I guess that most of the chocolate I eat
will be Hershey’s.
The entire, pathetic list can be seen here.
Apparently these companies think that if people have less money in their pockets because of higher energy prices, they nonetheless will spend more on their products.
Across the States
Marlo Lewis
NRDC Peddles Nonsense about ALEC
As reported in E&E News, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) this week held a press
conference call in which spokespersons for the group denounced the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for something it had not done yet
–
consider model legislation called the “Reliable, Safe and Affordable Power (RASP) Act.”
ALEC is the association of state lawmakers dedicated to free markets, limited government, and federalism. RASP instructs state agencies
until the rule’s legality has been fully r
esolved in courts, and (2) not to expend funds to execute a CPP implementation plan until committees of jurisdiction in the state legislature approve the plan.
NRDC reportedly asserted that the RASP Act would “paint states into a corner.” If I catch the d
rift, NRDC argued that states will eventually have to comply with the CPP, so if a state refuses to submit its own implementation plan, EPA will impose a federal plan without input from state officials. Message: Resistance is futile -- it will only make matters worse! That is baloney. Unlike all previous EPA rules requiring states to adopt emission performance standards
for “existing” stationary sources under §111(d) of the Clean Air Act, CPP performance standards cannot
be achieved by requiring owners or
operators to install specific control technologies at “designated facilities” —
a power clearly within EPA’s jurisdiction.
Rather, CPP standards can be achieved only by enacting and/or amending state electricity laws and regulations. Only state lawmakers and agencies acting pursuant to state statutes have such authority. If
states ‘just say no,’ EPA is out of luck.
EPA cannot impose its own plan, because the agency has no authority to enact or amend state renewable energy requirements, generation fleet dispatch policies, or demand-reduction incentives like rebates for programmable thermostats.
Peter Glaser points out, EPA cannot even threaten to punish the state with loss of highway funding, because the Clean Air Act does not authorize sanctions for failure to comply with §111(d). The states are well advised to sit tight and let litigation sort out the legal issues, as the RASP Act advises.
Around the World
Myron Ebell
COP-20 Begins in Lima
The twentieth Conference of the Parties (COP-20) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change began on Monday, 1st December and is scheduled to end on Friday, 12th December.
This year’s
meeting is in Lima, Peru. COP-20 is the midway point in negotiations that began last year in Warsaw and are scheduled to conclude next December in Paris on a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Expectations for the big conference are all over the board. Chief U. S. negotiator Todd Stern is optimistic because of the momentum created by the Obama-Xi Jinping deal announced in Beijing last
month. Rupert Darwall writing in the Wall Street Journal (access to a limited number of articles each