Companies like Solar City need politicians to keep them afloat. The best solution would be to rid ourselves of politicians who play favorites with other people's money (like Andrew Cuomo), but barring that, we should cancel all subsidies that enable rich people to profit from policies that make energy more expensive for the poor -- via political means.
CFACT policy advisor Marita Noon says the GOP Congress got one A, two Bs, a C, and two Ds on its energy policy report card during 2015 -- but the B for the Keystone Pipeline ought to be an F if results, not good intentions, are the basis for grading.
The decades-old legislation that prevented American producers from exporting oil is officially overturned—despite previous presidential threats to veto a bill to lift the oil export ban. That’s good policy. However, to get the support of “reluctant Democrats,” The Economist reports: “an additional five years of tax credits for wind and solar power” was part of the package. That’s bad energy policy. While it will likely be months before the first tanker of crude oil leaves U.S. shores, the benefits of lifting the ban are already being felt as the spread between the global benchmark price, known as Brent, and the U.S. [...]
If the “keep it in the ground” movement is successful, government services—including education, first responders, and hospitals and healthcare—must be cut, taxes on everything must go up, and electricity rates will “necessarily skyrocket.” Western civilization is based on successful mining and farming—which the antis want to block.
Contrary to what President Obama said in his overlong speech in Paris, the sea is not swallowing up villages, let alone entire islands; glaciers are not receding any faster than they did prior to 1970; and very few people are relocating to higher ground to escape rising sea levels from global warming. Climate change is by no means a worldwide threat, but climate change conferences just might be.
CFACT energy advisor Marita Noon outlines research being done in Texas on recycling produced water for reuse in hydraulic fracturing operations -- a move that, if as successful in field trials as in initial tests, will provde to be highly beneficial on multiple fronts -- including the Oklahoma earthquake front.
The old adage -- follow the money -- proves right once again. The Evangical Environmental Network, created to "green" evangelical parishoners into voting for radical environmental policies, was paid for this job via grants from the Hewlett and Energy Foundations, among others. This brazen attempt to politicize the churches was thwarted by a counter measure group, the Cornwall Alliance. Yet the greens remain hopeful they will succeed the next time around.
There is a growing, bipartisan consensus (outside certain corn-dominant states) that it is time to end the ethanol mandate -- and definitely not to expand that mandate to include E15 fuel, which has a track record of fouling engines and engine components. Ethanol is especially hard on marine engines -- and E15 would be much worse. Meanwhile, the ethanol mandate has contributed to rising prices for food and certain consumer goods.
While Catholic leaders, led by Pope Francis, are focused on curbing global warming (aka curbing the use of fossil fuels) as the most urgent means of combating poverty, the facts are that cheap, reliable energy and access to jobs and markets is what the poor need most. And, not surprisingly, the poor know it -- ranking "climate change" the LEAST important concern in their lives, with food and education at the top.
Less than one month from now the nations of the world will meet in Paris for the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21). Will the warming campaign finally get its way?
Just about the ONLY people in America who like electric cars are government regulators (who likely do not own them) and companies like Tesla, whose only real (sic) profits come from energy credits that add to consumer costs for other vehicles. The bugbear is the ridiculous 54.5 mpg fuel standard created by the Obama Administration with little regard for the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans. It could get worse -- the government may one day disallow the purchase of gasoline-powered vehicles.
Once again, CFACT advisor Marita Noon sheds light on the lies of the anti-fracking, anti-fossil-fuel crowd. This time she shows how Leftists falsely claim that fracking is a significant cause of earthquakes, when in fact science has shown that the problem is oversaturation due to reinjection of produced water into deep wells. The truth is that fracking operations often can use this water that otherwise would be reinjected, minimizing the problem.
A glimmer of hope emerged in the night sky as 26 Democrats joined with the Republican majority in the U.S. House to approve a bill ending the decades-old oil export ban. But the dark lords of correctness and fears of reprisals remain strong, and few and far between are the bopartisan votes in this Congress.
In little more than 30 days, there have been five distinct cases that you may have missed--each, a victory for responsible land use.
Bumping up against reality in her desire to be known as a Green guru, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is forced to rely on coal after shuttering nuclear power plants. Similarly, German auto maker Volkswagen realized the technology did not exist to meet stringent emissions standards for diesel vehicles and so came up with a scheme to game the system. Now they are being ordered to come up with a fis -- that likely does not exist.