Freedom to Compete

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In this column, we’re going to discuss the freedom to compete.

Free to compete, free to choose

Because of threats to fossil fuel development and use, it’s very important for us to understand the truth about their impact on human life. Ultimately, we’re trying to promote human flourishing, not fossil fuels per se. We’re championing fossil fuels when they’re the best source of energy. And fossil fuels are at this point of history usually the best form of energy in any given situation. But they’re not the best for every situation.

For example, take somebody off the grid who’s willing to pay more for energy, and willing to use less energy. A solar installation with a lot of batteries could be a better solution because either they don’t have access to the grid or it would be inconvenient to use a diesel generator.

The best form of energy is the cheap, plentiful, reliable, and safe source of energy that consumers freely choose, when they’re given the choice among all alternatives that producers produce. This is why the freedom to compete is so important—the best form of energy can only be decided by the free choices of individuals.

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A proper energy policy, then—one that truly benefits human life—is one that allows freedom of competition. As with phones or computers, when every energy producer is free to compete, the best ideas win.

No energy favoritism

The good forms of energy don’t need favoritism—special subsidies, protections, loans from the government. They need the freedom to compete and the freedom to improve—without interference, but also without special privileges.

The freedom to compete means that no energy gets special privileges. Every form of energy is free to compete for consumers’ dollars, as long as it doesn’t violate the rights of others—and as long as it doesn’t fail the endangerment test.

If we allow the freedom to compete then this will lead to the most energy for the most people.

Environmental Activists Ignore The Strong Case For Offshore Oil Drilling

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By David Mica

While environmental activists continue to push the same weak claims for opposing offshore energy exploration and production despite successful operations elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, there are 56,000 reasons why Florida should open its waters to exploration.

That’s the number of high-paying Florida jobs Florida could see by 2035 if it embraces its offshore opportunities. And the benefits don’t stop there. In addition to jobs, additional offshore oil and gas production could positively impact:

National security: Why depend on foreign, often hostile, sources of energy when we have the potential to secure our own resources here at home?

Exports: With abundant domestic energy resources, the U.S. can be the world’s energy leader, creating jobs at home and enhancing security for our allies abroad. Win-win.

Increased Safety: Offshore operations today are safer than ever before. Since 2010, more than 100 standards have been created or strengthened, including for improved safety and environmental management, well design, blowout prevention, and spill response.

Price at the pump: Every barrel of oil we produce domestically adds stability to the global oil supply, putting downward pressure on prices. As the third largest consumer of motor fuels in the U.S., Florida benefits from greater domestic energy production and has the potential to significantly contribute to it as well.

Environmental Protection: Florida has received more than $908 million in federal funding over the past five decades to conserve our precious natural and historic treasures. That funding comes from oil and natural gas revenues. We can safely produce energy and use the revenues for important environmental conservation throughout the state. Another win-win.

Hurricane disruptions: Everyone in Florida knows the potential damage hurricanes can have on daily life and livelihoods. Further diversification of the nationwide energy infrastructure network would help prevent disruptions to gasoline supply after storms.

Energy conservation: Greater use of natural gas for electricity generation has helped drive U.S. carbon emissions to 25-year lows. Florida is on the front lines of this exciting trend, generating more than 60 percent of its electricity from clean, affordable natural gas and demonstrating that energy production and environmental progress are not mutually exclusive.

Florida’s Tourism Economy: Decades of experience in the Gulf of Mexico confirm that energy development can safely coexist with fishing and tourism, as state officials with firsthand experience enthusiastically attest.

The facts support taking advantage of Florida’s offshore energy resources. Florida families and businesses already benefit from offshore energy exploration — from the sidelines. By getting in the game, we can grow our economy and be part of making the nation more energy secure.

ABOUT DAVID MICA

David Mica is the Executive Director of the Florida American Petroleum Institute.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Incredible Economic Opportunities of Offshore Energy Exploration

The Benefits of U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Development in the Eastern Gulf

How Do You Tell If The Earth’s Climate System “Is Warming”?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act. The Revolutionary Act has no financial or other affiliation with API. The featured image by kristinakasp on Pixabay.

Freedom to Develop

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In this column, we’re going to discuss the freedom to develop.

What is the freedom to develop?

To develop is to change our environment from one form into another form—in particular, a form that the developer regards as more conducive to human life. All energy production requires development, and a lot of it.

Thus, for energy production to occur, we need to be free to develop; to be free to take our ideas—the best place for a power plant, which basin has the most potential for oil and gas, a new kind of refinery—and translate them into value.

What does freedom to develop mean? It means that others cannot forcibly interfere: private individuals should not be able to sabotage development, as sometimes happens with pipelines, and governments shouldn’t be able to sabotage development, which is far more common.

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Pro-development vs. anti-impact

If we want the best laws to promote human well-being through energy abundance, we need this freedom. However, there are a lot of people in the world, particularly in wealthy countries, who advocate the idea that development is bad. They sometimes call it “being green” or “minimizing impact.”

If you really take that idea seriously it means that we shouldn’t do the things that we need to do to prosper, and that in fact we shouldn’t have done most of what we’ve already done to make ourselves prosperous.

If we’re anti-development, if we want to minimize our impact, then we should have never turned the patch of dirt and trees in the northeast United States into New York City.

If you look at the map of North Korea and South Korea, you’ll see that South Korea is lit up at night while North Korea is almost completely dark: if we really want to minimize impact, North Korea is doing a much, much better job.

I think this anti-development idea is a dangerous idea. We don’t want to be anti-development. We want to be anti-pollution, but pro-development.

The vital importance of private property rights

This doesn’t mean that the government has to develop itself. It just means the government has to allow people to be free to develop.

Historically, the United States has been the world’s energy leader and the world’s energy innovator because we have had the most freedom to develop of any place in the world—including a strong respect for private property rights, which are vital for enabling people to develop energy resources.

But today, the right to private property and the right to develop are both under attack. Much damage has already done by anti-development activists preventing people from using their land as they choose, and instead saying that landowners are obligated to use their land only in the way the activists see fit.

We might ask, “Does freedom to develop mean that anyone can develop anywhere?” There’s room for debate here, but in general, people who own private property can and should preserve the areas that they really want preserved and develop the areas they really want developed. It’s a very dangerous idea that one person’s property rights should be restricted because someone else wants that property to remain pure.

If I buy several acres with some trees, and then I learn that underground there’s an amazing amount of hydrocarbons, I should be free to extract that so I can get a royalty from it. Someone in Washington D.C. or Washington State shouldn’t get to say, “I want your land“ or to tell you how to use your land.

The freedom to develop is crucial, so if we respect the freedom to develop while respecting the freedom from endangerment, we can make a lot of progress.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump blames California wildfires on ‘bad environmental laws’

Trump to California fuel standards: “You’re fired!”

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Driven by Green ideology, the Obama Administration set unrealistic fuel standards (a.k.a. “CAFE” rules) for cars sold in America.

Yesterday, the Trump Administration announced it is putting a freeze on their implementation before any serious damage is done.

As recent as the Bush administration, the fuel efficiency standard was 27.5 miles per gallon. The Obama approach was set to jack up the CAFE mandate to a whopping 54.5 mpg by 2025. It was inspired by the eco-topian standards set in California and designed to force Americans to either buy electric cars or force them to drive unsafe, matchbox-sized gasoline powered ones.  Most Americans did not want to voluntarily buy either.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler highlight exactly this point in an important editorial in the Wall Street Journal:

The 2012 standards were designed to encourage the development and sale of electric vehicles. Today electric vehicles are only about 1.5% of new vehicles sold. Some data conclude that nearly half of consumers who purchase an electric car do not buy another because of challenges with range and recharge times. Yet to meet the previous administration’s fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas standards, manufacturers would have to produce vehicle lineups that are 30% electric or more over the next seven years—far more vehicles than buyers are likely to want.

Further, the effect of the last administration’s standards was to subsidize these expensive electric vehicles at the expense of affordable traditional cars and trucks. Our goal is to ensure that consumers have a variety of safe, fuel-efficient choices so they can decide for themselves which options suit them best. This includes electric vehicles, for those who want them.

The President, by putting a freeze on the Obama CAFE rule, is also ending California’s practice of using its large market power to dictate Green ideology to the rest of the nation from the Left Coast.

The framers crafted the U.S. Constitution to safeguard the rights of individuals and of the states.  At the same time they realized that there were some powers they could not entrust to the states.  The Commerce Clause was crafted specifically to prevent the states from taxing and obstructing the flow of goods across state lines.  They reserved regulation of interstate commerce to the federal government.  The federal government has since wildly expanded its Commerce Clause powers far beyond the framers intent.  California’s practice of setting national environmental policy from Sacramento in cahoots with a compliant EPA is just the sort of thing the Constitution was written specifically to prevent.

Crafting smarter fuel efficiency standards is a needed reform.

Standing up to California’s heavy-handed eco-bullying is courageous.

CFACT applauds both wise moves.

Wind and Solar Power are the Welfare Dependents of the Energy World

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Every turbine and panel that goes up raises the cost of electricity for the community it (allegedly) serves.

Take a look at this hard-hitting editorial at CFACT.org that reveals the hypocrisy of the wind and solar crowd.

Failing the laugh test: Wind, solar power make subsidy accusations

The lavishly subsidized wind and solar power industries apparently don’t like other meth dealers – er, make that energy subsidy recipients – on their federal-pork street corner. The evidence? Wind and solar apologists are squealing with outrage that coal and nuclear power may finally get their own small piece of the action.

For important context, the wind and solar power industries each receive such enormous taxpayer subsidies that all other energy industries combined do not receive as much taxpayer pork as either wind or solar power alone. According to the U.S. Energy Information administration, the net subsidies for coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power combined amount to only 1/9th of the amount of federal renewable energy subsidies (see Table 3: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf).

Keeping wind and solar power’s dominance of the energy subsidy racket in mind, wind and solar apologists are making laughable objections to Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to provide credit – on energy security grounds – to power facilities that can produce electricity 24/7 and can store their fuel onsite. With coal and nuclear power fitting these energy security goals, and wind and solar power falling short, renewable power apologists claim energy security considerations amount to “subsidies” and “bailouts” for coal and nuclear power.

For example, University of Michigan professor Mark J. Perry argued Tuesday in the Washington Examiner that coal and nuclear power “are being pushed out of competitive electricity markets by an abundance of cheap natural gas and renewable energy.” He may be correct that low natural gas prices are giving coal and nuclear power a run for their money, but wind and solar power prices certainly don’t. It is precisely because wind and solar power are so expensive and unreliable that the wind and solar industries need lavish subsidies and renewable power mandates to force consumers to purchase their products.

Perry digs himself a deeper hole by calling energy security considerations a “bailout” and then arguing, “It is time to let natural gas and renewable power earn their fair share of the electricity market, unencumbered by government interference.”

“Unencumbered by government interference”?!! This is a renewable power apologist talking? Forgive us for spewing our coffee all over our keyboard as we read this.

Free-market economists can debate whether the federal government should assign preference to baseload power that is available 24/7 and is relatively immune to supply interruptions. But people championing wind and solar power are the last ones who can criticize coal and nuclear power finally being considered for a small portion of the renewable power industry’s federal energy subsidies.

Wind Turbines, the Military, National Security and Sausages

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There’s a well-known observation that close inspection of how legislation is made, is very much like watching sausage being created. In both cases it’s very unappetizing.

This process was on display recently with the machinations going on with the annual federal legislation for our military: the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). To understand the missed opportunity here, one needs to have a bit of background as to how we got to where we are today.

It would be nice to be able to convey this whole story in a single sound-byte sentence, but that’s not possible. If you care about our national security, it is important to understand some related information. Let me summarize it as simply as I can, by identifying the key points, in approximate chronological order…

#1: There has been several years of conflict between military operations (in the US and elsewhere) and industrial wind energy. There have been multiple conflicts, ranging from tall structures obstructing low-level flight paths, to weather and navigation radar interferences, to specialized cases (like deteriorating the important ROTHR facility).

#2: Initially the COs of affected military facilities simply voiced their objections, and in most cases the proposed offending wind project was not approved.

#3: This was unacceptable to the powerful wind industry, and some of their well-connected allies. Their plan was to get military base COs basically out of the equation — while simultaneously giving the public the impression that military concerns were being fully addressed. That might seem like a tall order, but we’re dealing with expert marketers here. Their end result was to create the DoD Wind Siting Clearinghouse (2011: during the Obama administration).

#4: The Clearinghouse was all about expanding US industrial wind energy, not protecting our military or our national security. The rules and regulations for the Clearinghouse were written to assist the wind industry. If that wasn’t enough, the initial people in charge of the Clearinghouse were unabashed wind energy promoters. (Upon retiring, the first head-person was quickly hired as a wind energy lobbyist!)

#5: Not surprisingly, numerous conflicts continue to exist between wind energy and our military. The public has little awareness of these issues, due to classified agreements, carefully enmeshed in bureaucratic double-speak. The wind industry repeatedly trumpeted that everything was just peachy. For those who didn’t bother to closely look behind the curtain, things may well have seemed to be OK.

#6: Effectively what happened was that military defenders had to now look for some protection from state level legislation.  Of course the wind lobby has infiltrated state politics as well, so this was no easy solution. That said there have been some major victories — e.g. Texas passing S277, and North Carolina passing a two year statewide moratorium (see here, Part XIII) while they did an investigation of the wind energy military interference issue.

#7: Ultimately the defense of our military, and our national security, is a federal matter. Towards that end, in early 2017 I sent to some key legislators an outline of this problem, which included three simple but effective solutions to this serious matter to be incorporated into the current year NDAA: a) substitute a better word for “mitigate” (like “remediate”) as this can result in no meaningful change being made,  b) require that the developer pay for all costs incurred [not the taxpayer, which is the case now], and c) broaden the allowable reasons for denying a permit — e.g. to include if the lives of military personnel were put at risk.

#8: Both the 2018 House and Senate bills actually did endorse a part of the third (“c”) recommendation. The Clearinghouse rules basically say that to reject a proposed wind project, that there has to be substantial proof that it is an “unacceptable risk to national security.” (How that is defined has evolved, and is still subject to interpretation.) This has to be then endorsed by the DoD Secretary, etc. In other words, the bar was purposefully set very high, so that it was almost impossible to turn down a proposed wind project. (Reference: only one project out of over 15,000 has been so terminated via the Clearinghouse process over many years now.)

#9: One of my three recommendations was to reasonably expand the allowable reasons to deny a wind project. For example, if a wind project could be shown to threaten the lives of our military personnel, that this (by itself) would be an acceptable justification to deny it a permit to be built. The 2018 NDAA (see section 311) improved the wording in this regard from the original 2011 legislation, but further clarification and more conditions are recommended. [For example, military lives could be at risk due to the deterioration of the ROTHR signal from wind energy interference, and the current words do not seem to address that.] In this session both the House and Senate NDAA bills, approved improving the Clearinghouse rules, to add some words to that effect.

#10: In later July 2018, this change was removed from the NDAA conference legislation (see page 1951 of 2019 NDAA). An experienced DC lobbyist told me that he could not recall a single case, where an important bill provision agreed to by both House and Senate, was then eliminated from the final conference legislation. What is of even more concern, is that during all this research and negotiation, that neither of the other two important deficiencies of the Clearinghouse (see #7 above), were fixed.

#11: As an apparent compromise, our legislators added a new last-minute provision to the NDAA: Section 318 (page 179). Basically it authorizes the DoD to engage the National Weather Service (NWS) to do a study about the impact of wind turbines on weather radars and military operations. It seems like the intent here is to convey the impression that legislators are serious about our military safety, and national security.

#12: Of course the devil is in the details. From all appearances, this provision amounts to more delays. Furthermore, nothing in the study will be about protecting the lives of pilots from wind turbine obstructions. Nothing in the study will be about assessing the impact of wind turbines on navigation radar. Nothing in the study will be about protecting the exceptionally important ROTHR facility or the military lives impacted by it. Lastly, who knows what will happen when the study is finished? In the meantime our military and national security is being compromised.

#13: What’s disappointing is that several good reports have already been generated on this issue. For example, here is a detailed NWS explanation of the problem. For example, earlier this year the NWS wrote a blistering report about how wind development in upstate NY was compromising FIVE (5) different important NEXRAD radar facilities! For example, Fort Drum issued this official statement about wind energy interference. What else do legislators need to know? Oh, they want more pertinent studies? How about: this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. We already have solid studies. We already know what the problems are and what some good solutions are.

#14: The reason we are procrastinating, is that the wind industry has done a superior job in creating the deception that wind energy is a good thing (i.e. a societal benefit). However, the fact is that industrial wind energy is a technical, economic and environmental net liability. Once that understanding is fully absorbed, no reasonable legislator would agree to allow such a detriment to interfere with our military, or national security.

#15: The bottom line here is that the protection of our military (and our national security) is being compromised by powerful special-interest lobbyists — who have undue influence on the government, and our lives. (For more info on that, see here.)

Please contact your federal legislator and insist that the Clearinghouse wind energy siting rules be fully and properly fixed (via the NDAA or otherwise):

How ‘Green’ Energy Subsidies Transfer Wealth to the Rich

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When the Golden State Warriors, who won three of the last four NBA championships, signed All-Star Demarcus Cousins, sports pundits across the country offered the same opinion: The rich just got richer.

In many respects, the same holds true for energy subsidies.

Federal energy programs promise ambiguous policy goals such as abating climate change, spurring innovation, or reducing dependence on foreign sources of energy. But they often lead to situations that help the rich at the expense of middle- and lower-income Americans. That’s because when the federal government gets involved in the energy business, it transfers billions of dollars to the production and consumption of politically preferred sources and technologies—and many of those involve the poor transferring money to the rich.

For instance, a recent study by the Pacific Research Institute found that more than 99 percent of subsidies for electrical vehicles go to households with incomes of $50,000 or higher, and nearly three-quarters go to households with an annual income of $100,000 or more.

Poorer Americans can’t access the $7,500 tax credits because of the high prices of electric vehicles, even after accounting for the generous subsidies, which means they help pay for the subsidies through their taxes but can’t themselves get eligible for the subsidies or other benefits, such as carpool lanes.

To make matters worse, some major car companies are forced to sell electric vehicles at a loss to comply with state mandates and regulations. As Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute explains:

California, along with the nine states that have adopted California’s policy, mandates that zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) comprise a set percentage of the automobile market. The mandated minimum market share for ZEVs is currently scheduled to grow from 4.5 percent of sales in 2018, to 22 percent of the market by 2025; and Gov. Jerry Brown is even contemplating a complete ban on sales of cars with internal combustion engines after 2040.

Complying with these mandates requires companies to maintain ZEV credits that equal their share of the mandate, based on the company’s specific sales. Acquiring sufficient credits requires manufacturers that do not sell enough ZEVs to either sell ZEVs in California at a loss, purchase credits from companies whose ZEV sales exceed their credit requirements, or pay a $5,000 fine per credit that the company is short.

Consequently, the sales mandate has become a subsidy to companies, such as Tesla, that sell more ZEV-qualified vehicles than required by the mandate; and, a penalty on companies whose ZEV sales fall short of the required mandate. The $700 million earned by Tesla via these credit sales, which does not even account for all the credits Tesla has amassed, exemplifies that these subsidies and penalties can be substantial.

Energy subsidies benefit not only wealthy individuals, but also wealthy companies in the form of blatant corporate welfare. The federal government’s loan guarantee program is another subsidy program where government-backed loans have, time and again, gone to companies that simply don’t need any support from the taxpayer.

You don’t have to scratch too far beneath the surface to see that some of these projects have financial backing from giant tech firms, massive energy utilities, large investment banks, and other successful corporations.

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program granted more than $1 billion in loans for Nissan and Ford to retool their factories. This program is simply a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to these massive companies. These companies should have no trouble financing a project without government-backed loans if they find it is worth the investment.

Eliminating favoritism in markets will benefit all Americans—individuals and businesses alike—not just the privileged few.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Nicolas Loris

Nicolas Loris

Nicolas Loris, an economist, focuses on energy, environmental and regulatory issues as the Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Read his research. Twitter: .

Bryan Cosby

Bryan Cosby is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by nrqemi/Getty Images.

The Dark Continent and Africans for Energy

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People in highly developed countries take energy for granted.

Try living without it.

Millions of Africans still live without electricity.  That needs to change.  Fast.

Two of CFACT’s most distinguished scholars, Paul Driessen and David Wojick, posted a pair of articles to CFACT.org you should know about.

They discuss international development banks.

The first titled “Multilateral anti-development banks” explains  how large development banks have abandoned the energy needs of people in Africa and the developing world and sacrificed them to climate ideology.  They placed the huge profits corporations make on climate ahead of people.

“Foreign Operations” appropriation bills now working their way through Congress supposedly provide funding to “advance U.S. diplomatic priorities overseas,” “increase global security,” and continue “life-saving global health and humanitarian assistance programs for the world’s most vulnerable populations.”

The bills include handsome funding for the World Bank and other so-called Multilateral Development Banks: some $1.8 billion in total. The United States is by far the World Bank Group’s largest donor, and a major funder of four other MDBs: the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In recent years, these banks have embraced manmade climate change alarmism as a key foundation for their lending policies. In particular, they refuse to fund the development of electric power generation via fossil fuels – thereby starving impoverished nations and families of desperately needed electricity.

Instead, the MDBs are pouring money into solar and wind power schemes that simply cannot produce affordable, reliable electricity on a large enough scale to help raise their client countries out of poverty.

Read more…

This is an outrage.

The second titled “Rejecting carbon colonialism” showcases a clear-headed example of bravery and hope.

We recently explained how Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) use manmade climate change alarmism to justify lending policies that reject funding for fossil fuel electricity generation, promote expensive and unreliable renewable sources, and thereby help keep impoverished nations poor.

Now, in a daring show of humanity and common sense, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has broken ranks with the World Bank and its like-minded carbon colonialist brethren. The AfDB has announced that it will once again finance coal and natural gas power generation projects. As AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina puts it, “Africa must develop its energy sector with what it has.”

In a formal statement, Adesina noted: “The key challenge for Africa is the generation of power. The continent has the lowest electrification rate in the world. Power consumption per capita in Africa is estimated at 613 kWh per annum, compared to 6,500 kWh in Europe and 13,000 kWh in the United States. Power is the overriding African priority.

“The investment is expensive, yes, but the long-term returns will be much greater. To fast track universal access to electricity, the Bank is investing US$12 billion in the power sector and seeks to mobilize $45-$50 billion from other partners.”

Read more…

The big banks may have gone all-in on climate, but the “investments” they are financing will have no meaningful impact on global temperature, while causing real harm to people forced to live without energy.

The African Development Bank is wise to recognize this reality and to put its money on the side of providing real energy and genuine hope for Africa.

RELATED ARTICLE: Freedom from endangerment

Electric Cars Actually Increase Pollution

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Jonathan A. Lesser, PhD, is the president of Continental Economics, an economic litigation and consulting firm. He is the author of a new Manhattan Institute report titled “Short Circuit: The High Cost of Electric Vehicle Subsidies.”

Dr. Lesser writes:

Many claim that “zero-emissions vehicles” (ZEVs), especially battery-powered electric vehicles, should replace most, if not all, cars and trucks powered by gasoline-burning internal combustion engines. The primary rationale is to reduce air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

To effect this change, governments are spending billions of dollars to subsidize electric vehicles. These subsidies include state and federal tax credits for purchasing ZEVs and programs to subsidize the installation of vehicle-charging infrastructure in businesses, households, and along highways. Several states also have mandated the sale of ZEVs. For example, an executive order signed by California governor Jerry Brown in January requires 5 million ZEVs to be on the state’s roads and highways by 2030.

Will these subsidies and programs accomplish their objectives? And at what cost? A review of the literature finds few cost-benefit studies on these key questions.

KEY FINDINGS

  1. Broad-based adoption of ZEVs will increase overall emissions of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and particulates, compared with the same number of new internal combustion engines. The simple fact is that, because of stringent emissions standards and low-sulfur gasoline, new gasoline-powered cars and trucks today emit very little pollution, and they will emit even less in the future.
  2. While new ZEVs will reduce CO2 emissions compared with new internal combustion vehicles, the overall reduction will be less than 1% of total forecast energy-related U.S. CO2 emissions through 2050. That reduction will have no measurable impact on world climate—and thus the economic value of CO2 emissions reductions associated with ZEVs is effectively zero.
  3. Subsidies for ZEVs and the required infrastructure to support them benefit the higher-income consumers who can afford to purchase them at the expense of lower-income consumers who cannot. In California alone, the total cost of ZEV subsidies, including federal tax credits and state rebates for ZEV purchases, as well as subsidies for private and public charging infrastructure, is likely to exceed $100 billion.

READ FULL REPORT

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by ANDREW MATTHEWS/PA.

Sacred peer-review takes a big hit

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Is there a more self-contradictory term than “settled science?”

Science should always be open to challenge and investigation. The scientific method demands that conclusions must follow facts.  We must never adjust the facts to suit a conclusion.

Sadly, this is not always the case.

We posted an article at CFACT.org which highlights how “Stanford University medical professor John Ioannidis, in an interview with Agence France Presse (AFP), blew the lid off the trustworthiness of the peer-review process.”

Global warming alarmists suffered a big hit this week in their effort to deify shoddy “peer-reviewed” climate papers. Stanford University medical professor John Ioannidis, in an interview with Agence France Presse (AFP), blew the lid off the trustworthiness of the peer-review process.

When the alarmist community seeks to push a new argument or messaging strategy in the global warming debate, they first have one of their pseudo-scientists write an article for publication in a compromised peer-reviewed journal. The political left has infiltrated and taken over most science journals that address political hot topics, much as they have taken over most of the “mainstream” news media. This is especially the case regarding global warming issues. As the leaked Climategate emails revealed, editors of science journals typically are prominent alarmists or deliberately coordinate with prominent alarmists in the selection of articles and messaging. The “peer-review process” typically involves the editor sending a submitted article to a team of reviewers who are outspoken climate activists. After the paper is published, global warming activists and their media allies typically cite the peer-reviewed nature of the paper as evidence that its conclusions are infallible. Any who question the methodology or alarmist conclusions are then labeled science deniers.

According to Ioannidis, the peer-review process guarantees little in terms of trustworthiness even before political agendas compromise the issue.

“[W]hen studies are replicated, they rarely come up with the same results. Only a third of the 100 studies published in three top psychology journals could be successfully replicated in a large 2015 test,” AFP reported, summarizing Ioannidis’ findings.

“Medicine, epidemiology, population science and nutritional studies fare no better, Ioannidis said, when attempts are made to replicate them,” according to AFP.

When only a third of peer-reviewed studies reach the same results when they are replicated by outside authors, this is a serious problem. Regarding climate change papers, the peer-reviewed papers are likely even less reliable – before even considering the inescapably political nature of the topic – because many papers address predictions and models for which it is impossible to test the paper’s conclusions against objective evidence. For example, when a scientist invents a climate model predicting rapid global warming or seriously negative future climate impacts, and when a paper summarizing the results of his or her model appears in a peer-reviewed journal, there is no way at the time of publication to compare the climate predictions against real-world observations. This adds an additional level of doubt to the accuracy of global warming predictions published in peer-reviewed science journals. And this is before taking into consideration the inherently political nature of the global warming debate and the political agendas of journal editors and their carefully selected article reviewers.

The lesson to be learned is the liberal media engage in laziness or deliberate misrepresentation when they cherry-pick certain peer-reviewed studies and claim that anybody who questions them is “attacking science,” “attacking scientists,” or being a “denialist.” Sound science requires critically testing theories and predictions – including those published in peer-reviewed science journals – against objective evidence.

When science is sound its results hold up.  Repeated experiments reach the same conclusions.  There must be no “politicized” or “secret science.”  Data must be made available for all to scrutinize and there should be no coercion in terms of outcome.  The scientific method must never be compromised.

Politics and rent-seeking greed have sadly infected the scientific process, particularly on the issue of climate.  Global warming campaigners have treated peer-reviewed academic literature like sacred texts.  However, the Climategate scandal revealed warming researchers were working diligently to exclude any science that contradicted their carefully honed, alarmist narrative from the literature.

We should expect more from the scientific community.

Science is too important to accept less.

Freedom from endangerment

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In this column, we’re going to discuss the freedom from endangerment.

It is vital for human well-being that individuals are protected from dangers to their air, water, sanitation, and safety. Energy production and use, including fossil fuel production and use, can endanger people in all kinds of ways if done badly—from bad burning processes, to waste that’s handled improperly, to oil rigs going out of control, to gas lines exploding.

It’s really important that we have policies to protect us from such dangers. How to do this is not obvious, but the key is to always think about what’s best for human flourishing.

Personally, I think there are three keys to a good policy that protects the freedom from endangerment. A good policy is one that establishes standards of health and safety that are:

  1. reasonable and equitable
  2. scientifically verifiable
  3. economically desirable

Reasonable

What do I mean by reasonable? When talking about protecting health and safety from certain kinds of risks, we have to acknowledge that every human action and technology carries risks and dangers. Nature itself carries risks and dangers.

We can’t have a policy that demands actions and technologies be totally free of risks and dangers, because then we would not be able to do anything, or we would just keep doing the same old things, ignoring that they also have risks because we’re used to those risks.

Instead, we need standards that protect us without overprotecting us to the point where they do harm.

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For example, think of the first people to use fire. They were exposing themselves and their family to a certain amount of smoke—much more than modern power plants do, for sure. Now, should they have not used fire because of the smoke? No. Fire was so vital to their lives that it would have been harmful to their health and safety not to have the fire. If there had been a policy banning the use of fire because of the smoke, that would have been an example of overprotecting themselves to the point of harm.

By the same token, we can’t have standards for energy risks or energy safety that would prevent people from using energy. That’s what I mean by a policy having to be reasonable: protecting without overprotecting.

Equitable

This goes right along with equitable, or fair and impartial.

We want to be equitable and we don’t want to discriminate against some industries or some forms of energy, holding them to impossibly high risk and endangerment standards. Often, however, safety standards aren’t equitable because people tend to see new and unfamiliar things as riskier than old things.

Take hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for example. This is a technology that has been around a long time, but the term fracking wasn’t introduced into common usage until around 2010. People think of it as very risky even though it’s been done very safely for a long time. They worry about the risk of fracking but not about the risk of driving, which is an incomparably greater risk than fracking.

Unfortunately, it is very common to treat unpopular industries such as the oil and gas industry this way. They get held to completely different standards than more popular industries. Take the issue of noise. What you’ll find is that the amount of noise accepted from janitors, construction workers, and movie theaters is often far greater than that of a fracking job. But people complain that their rights are being violated by the noise from the fracking job and not by the noise from these other activities. That’s clearly non-equitable.

It’s important when we hear talk of risk and danger that we’re clear on whether there is actually an unreasonable amount of risk in a given area, or whether we’re holding some industry or activity to a higher standard than other comparable industries or activities.

VIDEO: The Shady Reality of California’s Solar Policy

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A new policy passed down from the California State Energy Commission says every new home must be built with solar panels. California already has twice the cost of living compared with other states, and this new policy is going to make housing even more expensive. At these prices there better be gold in those hills!

Some Recent Energy & Environmental News

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I hope you enjoy the latest Energy and Environmental Newsletter. Note: this issue has a special section about the EPA and Scott Pruitt.

Some of the more interesting Energy related articles are:

Wind and Solar Require Massive Subsidies

Renewable energy seeks demand, investment to survive Trump squeeze

Technical Experts: Wind Turbines Pose “Significant Danger” To Environment

Video: Wind Turbine Infrasound

Even ‘clean’ and ‘green’ energy have an environmental impact

Energy development: free market purists vs the state

The Electric Power Struggle

Two North Texas wind projects cancelled due to military concerns

The Incredible Scam of Rooftop Solar

Magical Wind Power: Illusions versus Reality

Ontario’s new premier must save the province

The BP 2018 Statistical Review, electricity and CO2 emissions

China’s Renewable Energy Growth Isn’t as Good as It Seems

Successful passage of an important US Nuclear bill

If Nuclear Power Is So Safe, Why Are We So Afraid Of It?

German Study: Compendium for a Sensible Energy Policy

Some of the more informative Global Warming articles are:

More proof that Wind and Solar won’t fix climate change

Study: How One Flawed Climate Study Fooled the Media

Note 1: We recommend reading the Newsletter on your computer, not your phone. Some documents (e.g. PDFs) are easier to read on a computer. We’ve tried to use common fonts, etc to minimize issues.

Note 2: Our intention is to put some balance into what most people see from the mainstream media about energy and environmental issues… As always, please pass this on to open-minded citizens, and on your social media sites. If there are others who you think would benefit from being on our energy & environmental email list, please let me know. If at any time you’d like to be taken off this list, simply send me an email saying that.

Note 3: This Newsletter is intended to supplement the material on our website, WiseEnergy.org. The most important page there is the Key Documents page.

Note 4: I am not an attorney, so no material appearing in any of the Newsletters (or our WiseEnergy.org website) should be construed as giving legal advice. My recommendation has always been: consult a competent attorney when you are involved with legal issues.

Working With Green Groups, Local Governments Use This Kind of Lawsuit to Get Cash From Oil Giants

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Cities and counties across the country are teaming up with environmental groups to drill for revenue by using public-nuisance lawsuits against some of the world’s largest energy companies.

These local governments claim oil giants, such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and others, have caused global warming that they say is damaging their communities, and they want to be compensated for those damages—in most cases an undisclosed amount.

Since last summer, New York City, one county in Washington state, eight cities and counties in California, and three Colorado jurisdictions have challenged the oil giants through public-nuisance lawsuits.

However, some legal experts contend these lawsuits are a misuse of public-nuisance law—which is intended to protect the public from a safety or health hazard, rather than advance regulations.

Last week, U.S. District Judge William Alsup for the Northern District of California dismissed a lawsuit brought by San Francisco and Oakland against Chevron, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips.

The two cities wanted the five energy companies to pay for infrastructure improvements to protect their residents from sea-level rise and other purported effects of climate change.

In April, 15 Republicans state attorneys general, led by Curtis Hill of Indiana, filed an amicus brief supporting the dismissal of the case.

The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming joined Indiana in the amicus brief regarding the San Francisco and Oakland lawsuit.

“We oppose any type of overreach, whether by the federal government, state governments, or municipal governments,” Hill told The Daily Signal.

Hill said his office is monitoring the other lawsuits.

“These municipalities were seeking to regulate what was out of their nexus,” Hill said. “This was a shakedown. These nuisance lawsuits are used to hold up industry, specifically the energy-manufacturing industry.”

Alsup cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent, finding the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency authority over emission standards, which displaced nuisance claims on emissions. The judge, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, also said other branches of government should decide the matter.

The National Association of Manufacturers has led the effort against public-nuisance lawsuits through legal action and advocacy.

“Other municipalities around the country who have filed similar lawsuits should take note, as those complaints are likely to end the same way,” NAM President Jay Timmons said in a statement. “New York City, [Boulder, Colorado], and the other California municipalities should withdraw their complaints and follow the lead of others that are focused on meaningful solutions.”

But with an appeal on the way from San Francisco and Oakland, the other pending cases aren’t likely going anywhere.

Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group backing the lawsuits, told Reuters, “This fight is just getting started, and we expect to win.”

Federal law defines a public nuisance as a circumstance that injures or endangers the safety, health, comfort, or property of others. More broadly, a public nuisance at the state or local level could be defined as an activity affecting the health or safety of an entire community.

In either case, it’s distinguished from a private nuisance that would affect relatively few. The contrast would be the public nuisance of a factory spewing toxic chemicals into an entire city, as opposed to the private nuisance of playing loud music at 3 a.m., waking up the neighbors.

The municipalities are twisting an area of the law that has no application to climate issues, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation.

“They are trying to use the courts in an area where it is up to the legislature, particularly Congress, to legislate,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.

“They have no chance of winning if the judges in the case follow the law,” von Spakovsky said. “If they get an ideological judge who doesn’t care about the law—well, they might have some success. But, ultimately, any case like this, if it goes to the Supreme Court, is going to get thrown out.

“Eventually one of them will eventually get to the Supreme Court if the plaintiffs are foolish enough to keep appealing the decisions,” he said.

In January, New York City sued Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The city announced it also would divest its $189 billion public pension fund of investments in fossil-fuel companies over the next five years. The lawsuit claims the companies knew carbon emissions caused climate change, but were dishonest about the risks. The suit seeks to hold the oil companies liable for an undisclosed amount.

“New York City is standing up for future generations by becoming the first major U.S. city to divest our pension funds from fossil fuels,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in announcing the legal action. “At the same time, we’re bringing the fight against climate change straight to the fossil-fuel companies that knew about its effects and intentionally misled the public to protect their profits.

“As climate change continues to worsen, it’s up to the fossil-fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient,” he said.

The first hearing was held on June 13 before federal Judge John Keenan of the Southern District of New York, who was reportedly skeptical of the city’s position that oil companies are to blame for purported global-warming damage.

“The firehouses all have trucks. The sanitation department has trucks. If you open the door and go out to Foley Square, you’re going to see five police cars,” said Keenan, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. “Does the city have clean hands?”

In April, the litigation moved to Colorado. The city of Boulder, the county of Boulder, and the county of San Miguel together filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor for damages related to climate change.

EarthRights International, one of the environmental groups representing the three Colorado governments, said in a statement last week it wasn’t deterred by the court ruling in the San Francisco-Oakland case.

“Other lawsuits—including ERI’s own lawsuit on behalf of communities in Colorado—are proceeding and will not necessarily follow the same path,” the statement says. “Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the oil industry’s role in misleading the public and delaying the shift toward carbon-neutral energy sources.”

Back in California, cases were filed separately in July 2017 by the city of Imperial Beach, Marin County, and San Mateo County—initially, in California state court—against Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, and other energy companies.

The cases were being heard together by federal Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, who accepted the plaintiffs’ motion to remand the case back to state court.

But the defendants filed an appeal, asking the court to stay the proceedings until the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decides if all of the climate cases should be heard at the state or federal level. Chhabria, an appointee of President Barack Obama, granted the defendants’ stay, and the 9th Circuit will hear the matter later this month.

Separately, the city of Santa Cruz and county of Santa Cruz in December sued Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, and other companies. They are seeking damages for extreme flooding the plaintiffs blame on the harvesting and burning of fossil fuels.

The city of Richmond, California, filed another climate public-nuisance lawsuit in January against Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, and 25 other companies, alleging that harvesting natural resources and producing fuel has led to rising sea levels that threaten the city’s property.

Both cases were filed in state courts, but moved to federal court, where Chhabria is also deciding whether to send them back to state court.

In May, King County, Washington, filed a lawsuit against BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, claiming public nuisance. It wants to force the companies to fund an abatement program.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of York City Mayor Bill deBlasio is by Natan Dvir/Polaris/Newscom.

Energy Policy

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In the next few columns, we’re going to be talking about energy policy.

In previous columns, we concluded that fossil fuels are a moral form of energy that should be expanded, not restricted. But, there’s one qualifier. We can say there are moral forms of energy, but it’s only moral to use them if they are being used the right way.

Minimizing misuse

Like any technology, fossil fuels can be misused. Part of ensuring the proper use of fossil fuels involves every company doing its best to be ethical and having a major emphasis on safety.

By the same token, consumers of fossil fuels need to be responsible—for example, performing regular maintenance on their heating systems and vehicles. Everybody has a part in making sure that all forms of energy are used as safely as possible. But that’s not enough.

Once we’ve concluded that fossil fuel energy is a fundamentally good technology when used in a beneficial way, we need to have the right kinds of laws in place to ensure that it is used in a beneficial way.

This brings us to the issue of energy policy.

We need policies that protect our right to use energy responsibly and that punish people when they deliberately fail to use energy responsibly and endanger our lives.

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The three energy freedoms

One of the major things we need is proper policy to protect us from companies endangering neighbors, whether through explosions, spills, or dangerous emissions like smog.

But we also need policy to protect companies, and more broadly to protect production, from people who want to stop it. Imagine you’re running a company that’s trying to drill for oil and somebody who doesn’t like oil tries to sabotage your rigs. That can cause you to lose millions and millions of dollars. The government needs to protect every producer from people who try to sabotage them—whether it’s direct sabotage or getting the government to sabotage projects they don’t like. Having policies that restrict our ability to develop is a major threat to progress. And less progress means less prosperity.

Finally, we need policy to protect innovation. We want the energy market to evolve over time, but with the wrong policies it is very easy for special interests to stop innovation. One thing fundamental to innovation is competition. It’s important that we be free to choose the best kinds of energy—that we be free to choose fossil fuels when they’re the best form, but also others when they’re the best. Often, however, companies will want to suppress competition. But if we care about human flourishing, what we need are policies that protect everyone who’s not endangering others to compete.

We can think of policy, then, in terms of three crucial freedoms:

  1. freedom from endangerment
  2. freedom to develop
  3. freedom to compete

We’ll be discussing each of these freedoms in more depth.