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December 14, 2016
Trump Nominee Scott Pruitt Will Clean up the EPA
Life in the Beltway offers a range of amusements, the latest of which is the reaction of the environmental left to President-elect Donald Trump’s announced intention to nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Climate denier! An enemy of the EPA! An arsonist in charge of fighting…
December 6, 2016
Trump’s Realistic Thinking on Climate Change
President-elect Donald J. Trump said recently that there exists “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change, which may or may not reflect a shift in his view on that scientific question. But he has indicated no change in his policy stance on various attendant regulations, and an “open mind” on a U.S. exit from…
November 21, 2016
The Magical Powers of the Social Cost of Carbon
When last we joined hands around the ourenergypolicy.org campfire, roasting s’mores and singing songs of camaraderie, we told tales of one particular monster of the dark, to wit, the Obama administration analysis of the social cost of carbon, perhaps the most dishonest exercise in political arithmetic ever produced by the federal bureaucracy. But this is the Beltway: No perfidy goes unrewarded. And so…
October 26, 2016
Solar Energy Can’t Survive Without Massive Subsidies
Notwithstanding the thunderous applause that solar photovoltaic (rooftop) power receives from enlightened opinion, it is not cost-competitive with conventional electricity, and cannot survive without massive subsidies. An army of lobbyists, commentators and bureaucrats has told us for years that rooftop power will be cost-competitive with conventional electricity very soon, if it is not already, and technically could provide over 38 percent of U.S….
October 18, 2016
Washington State Initiative 732 — All Cost, No Benefit
Voters in the state of Washington will vote November 8 on Initiative 732, which would impose a “carbon tax” on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and thus on energy, while reducing the sales tax and almost eliminating the business and occupation tax on manufacturers. Here is a number that those voters should keep in mind: twenty-five…
September 29, 2016
The Carbon Tax Is Not Just Political; It’s Ineffective, Too
In a recent editorial in support of a carbon tax, The Washington Post complains that “Americans are burning record amounts of gasoline,” arguing that “one of the most glaring … flaws” of the “Environmental Protection Agency fuel-efficiency mandates” is the reality that the regulations “cannot control how much people drive or what type of vehicles people buy.”…
August 16, 2016
Renewable Electricity as a Solution to Puerto Rico Debt Crisis? You Must Be Kidding
The Beltway lobbying machine is nothing if not inventive. The latest evidence for this eternal truth is a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis arguing that the debt restructuring plan recently hammered out for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) will not work as intended, in substantial part because it…
August 15, 2016
Mark J. Perry on Nuclear Power
It is hot. It is humid. Even sound intellects have trouble maintaining focus in the dog days of Beltway August, a phenomenon illustrated recently by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Mark J. Perry. An absolutely solid economist. AEI scholar. University of Michigan professor. General Secretary of Carpe Diem, hands down the most useful and interesting policy…
August 8, 2016
More Regulatory Magic from the EPA
I wrote recently about the manipulation of benefit/cost analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and more generally about the adverse implications of the evolution of the federal bureaucracy into an interest group driven by both budget and ideological imperatives. This reality now emerges frequently, with little effort to hide it, the most recent example of which is an…
August 1, 2016
Missing the Forest for the Trees on Solar Net Metering
In a recent essay on the solar photovoltaic (PV or “rooftop”) power market, Mark Muro and Devashree Saha of the Brookings Institute applaud the net metering system of subsidizing such rooftop installations, concluding that the system is a “net benefit” for both the recipients and the non-recipients of the subsidy; that is, for all power consumers. The…