BigEthanol:TheRFScanhelpmitigategas

Big Ethanol: The RFS can help mitigate gas prices! CBO: The RFS is going to cause higher gas prices.

posted at 8:41 pm on June 26, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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Well, this is rich.

In light of the recent political turmoil in Iraq and the potential for disruption to the global oil supply, Big Ethanol would like you to know that the Renewable Fuel Standard — i.e., the mandate through which the federal government forces you to buy ethanol by forcing U.S. refiners to blend an ever-increasing volume of so-called biofuels into the country’s oil supply — is a great way to enhance our domestic energy security and mitigate the impact of any surges in gasoline prices. They even made an advertisement about it, via HuffPo:

The liberal group Americans United For Change released a new television ad Thursday tying the fight over domestic renewable fuel standards to the situation in Iraq.

The ad highlights concerns that the current violence in Iraq may cause an increase in gasoline prices. “More chaos over there means higher prices here,” the ad warns. …

The group said the ad buy is worth $400,000. The ads will run in the Washington, D.C. area this Sunday during “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation,” “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and “60 Minutes.” They will also run on MSNBC, CNN and FOX News next week. In addition, the group said it’s planning an “aggressive digital media campaign.”

When Congress first enacted and later expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007, lawmakers were relying on the crucial assumption that Americans’ demand for gasoline would continue to increase ad infinitum. Instead, innovation, greater fuel efficiency, and an economic recession resulted in slackening demand for gasoline, making the RFS’s requirements and the inherent subsidy for ethanol producers therein costly and unworkable for everybody else. The EPA finally started to acknowledge this reality last year and is currently mulling over whether to relax the requirements for 2014; that’s an eventuality that the Big Ethanol lobby desperately wants to avoid, and it’s trying to capitalize on the Iraqi instability to gin up more support for the mandate that sustains the bloated ethanol industry.

We already knew that the ad’s argument that ethanol means “less pollution” is totally bogus, but as for this latest claim about the Renewable Fuel Standard being a helpful policy to put downward pressure on gas prices? Yeahhhh… no, via The Hill:

Gasoline’s price will increase up to 9 percent, and diesel fuel will rise by up to 14 percent by 2017 because of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) if Congress does not repeal it, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Thursday.

The CBO’s analysis estimated that, in order to comply with the increasing mandates called for under the Energy Independence and Security Act, fuel refiners would have to more than triple their use of advanced biofuels by 2017, and would have to use much more ethanol in gasoline than the 10 percent blend that older vehicles can tolerate. …

The agency predicted that the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the RFS, will keep the mandate levels similar through 2017, since increasing them “would require a large and rapid increase in the use of advanced biofuels and would cause the total percentage of ethanol in the nation’s gasoline supply to rise to levels that would require significant changes in the infrastructure of fueling stations.”

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Tags: biofuels, CBO, Environmental Protection Agency, ethanol, gas prices, lobby, Renewable Fuel Standard

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AtleasttheEPAdidonethingright

At least the EPA did one thing right in the new emissions regulations: Don’t nix the nukes

posted at 6:41 pm on June 3, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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While the emissions regulations mostly meant to not-so-gently steer the country’s power plants away from coal are likely to be hugely, regressively costly in terms of job- and wealth-creation, the eco-radical set would argue that those costs are ones to which we should readily resign ourselves in order to bring us one step closer to climate-change mitigation. The most glaring problem with that reasoning, however, is that these regulations are not going to be particularly effective at achieving significant carbon-emissions reduction.

The United States’ electricity generation only accounts for about a third of its carbon emissions, and the U.S. is no longer the lone major polluter on the planet — and it is going to become even less so as other countries’ economies develop and the world’s population continues to grow in both wealth and numbers. As Jonathan Adler points out in an excellent post at the Volokh Conspiracy/WaPo (that you should definitely go read in full if you’re into environmental issues), these regulations are really only serving to highlight the incredibly limited effectiveness we can ever ever hope to have via regulation and top-down central economic planning. What we really need are more advanced, diversified, cost-effective, and clean technologies that can keep providing heightening energy efficiency for fewer monetary and environmental costs. …In a nutshell, the type of major innovations that Big Governments is exceptionally poor at creating when they are leading both the science community and investment dollars around by the nose while simultaneously squashing the competitive influences of the free market via politically-directed subsidies and regulations.

Here, for instance, is a very recent example of this phenomenon: The EPA expects that the coal plants it is effectively shutting down with these regulations will be replaced by cleaner-burning natural gas, but the rise of natural gas was largely brought about by free-enterprise-driven innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling on state and private lands. (And, sidebar: I would merely like to take this opportunity to once again condemn the eco-radical movement for what must be either its stupidity, its obstinacy, or else its lack of sincerity concerning its true goals in trying to rid the world of fracking. The degree of counterproductivity there is mind-numbing.)

In that vein, then, I suppose we can at least be glad that the EPA didn’t decide to follow the ideological and ill-advised path laid down by Germany’s grandiose climate-change ambitions. In what was supposed to be their super-green and pioneering Energiewende transformation, Germany decided to get rid of their nuclear power plants in favor of subsidizing expensive solar and wind schemes — with the end result being a ridiculously pricey and horribly intermittent energy grid that they then had to back up by bringing more coal plants online and perpetuating net emissions that were higher than they were when they started out.

The nuclear power industry is in the throes of its own set of economic problems when it comes to competing with coal and natural gas plants (and it is on the receiving end of its own set of government subsidies), but it produces virtually zero emissions without taking up too much land. What’s more, it produces reliable, around-the-clock energy output that puts it light years ahead of wind and solar energy, and fortunately, the EPA isn’t trying to punish it with the new emissions regulations like some of the other hysterical policymakers of the world have been doing lately. Instead, the agency’s rule looks to “discourage premature retirement” and “encourage deployment of nuclear unit designs that reflect advances over earlier designs”:

The Obama administration today threw a potential — and limited — lifeline to the country’s ailing nuclear industry, highlighting the ability of existing reactors to help states curb emissions.

U.S. EPA unveiled a proposal for curbing emissions from existing power plants that pointed to the United States’ fleet of about 100 reactors as playing a critical role — alongside ramping up efficiency and shifting to natural gas and other low-carbon alternatives — in cutting the utility sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2030.

At issue is EPA’s finding in the proposal that preventing the closure of “at-risk” existing reactors could avoid up to 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during the initial compliance phase of 10 years.

“Policies that encourage development of renewable energy capacity and discourage premature retirement of nuclear capacity could be useful elements of CO2 reduction strategies and are consistent with current industry behavior,” the agency said. “Costs of CO2 reductions achievable through these policies have been estimated in a range from $10 to $40 per metric ton.”

As ever, I find little use for subsidy schemes of any sort beyond choking off innovation and investment elsewhere — and I think the government could be spending our money much more effectively with things like technology inducement prizes, as Adler notes — but if the Obama EPA insists on regulating the heck out of our energy sector, they could be doing it even more illogically by trying to specifically stamp out nuclear, as a handful of other crazed countries have done. That’s all I’m saying.

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Tags: big government, carbon, climate change, emissions, Environmental Protection Agency, free market, innovation, nuclear power, regulations, technology

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NewEPAruleslooktocutcarbonemissions

New EPA rules look to cut carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030

posted at 1:21 pm on June 2, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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In what enthusiastic progressives are heralding as “one of the boldest acts of his presidency,” environmentalist groups are hailing as “the centerpiece of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan,” embattled red-state Democrats are warning are “disastrous new rules,” and industry representatives are branding a clear move “designed to materially damage the ability of conventional energy sources to provide reliable and affordable power,” the Obama administration has finally revealed the emissions regulations on existing power plants for which they have long been prepping. Via the AP:

The 645-page rule, expected to be finalized next year, is a centerpiece of Obama’s plans to tackle climate change and aims to give the United States more leverage to prod other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year. Under the plan, carbon emissions would be reduced 30 percent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, putting in motion one of the most significant U.S. actions on global warming.

The proposal sets off a complex regulatory process, steeped in politics, in which the 50 states will each determine how to meet customized targets set by the Environmental Protection Agency, then submit those plans for approval.

“The glue that holds this plan together — and the key to making it work — is that each state’s goal is tailored to its own circumstances, and states have the flexibility to reach their goal in whatever works best for them,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said as she formally announced the proposal.

The regulations are going to require individual emissions-cutting plans from each state to add up to a national 30 percent reduction, with different state-specific requirements based on how much electricity they get from coal and how much they have already done to reduce their emissions in recent years. The Obama administration doesn’t want to seem like it’s unfairly coming down too hard on state economies that happen to rely more on coal for their electricity needs (West Virginia, for instance, is going to get walloped, with 95 percent of their electricity currently coming from coal, while Idaho actually gets most of its electricity from hydroelectric power and exactly none of it from coal), and in that vein, the EPA claims that the regulations will offer plenty of “flexibility” for states to adjust to the changes:

Many states that rely heavily on coal will be spared from cutting a full 30 percent. West Virginia, for example, must cut 23 percent by 2030 compared to what the state was emitting in 2012. Ohio’s target is 28 percent, while Kentucky and Wyoming will have to find ways to make an 18 percent and 19 percent cut.

On the other extreme, New York has a 44 percent target, EPA figures show. New York has already joined with other Northeast states to curb carbon dioxide from power plants, reducing the baseline figure from which cuts must be made. But states like New York can get credit for actions they’ve already taken, lest they be punished for taking early action on climate change.

The fact that they chose 2005 as a baseline is also meant to be a mitigating factor, since our natural-gas boom along with increased fuel efficiency have already taken us part of the way there. Nevertheless, President Obama wants the EPA to finalize the rules by June 2015, and states are supposed to start submitting their implementation plans by June 2016 (with room to push their deadlines into 2018, depending on how they choose to approach the regulations) so that the rule can start having an impact before he leaves office — in theory. The legal challenges from states with a larger proportion of older coal plants are going to come hard and fast, not to mention some staunch lobbying efforts and less-than-uniform support from put-upon Democrats.

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Tags: climate change, coal, emissions, Environmental Protection Agency, regulations

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EPAdivingintounchartedlegalwaterswithnew

EPA diving into uncharted legal waters with new regulations for existing power plants

posted at 2:01 pm on June 1, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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Leave it to the Obama Environmental Protection Agency to plumb the heretofore untested depths of regulatory legerdemain to justify their environmentalist central planning.

The Obama administration’s forthcoming regulations on existing power plants — i.e., the main course of their proffered climate-change menu, set for release this week — were always going to spark a whole host of legal challenges no matter what provisions they used for their justification. The negative economic impact the new rules will have on a bunch of states and industries is certainly going to make it worth their while, and part of the EPA’s task in devising the rules was to find the best way possible to protect them from these challenges.

Evidently, they think they’ve found it. Via the WSJ:

The expected legal battle over the Obama administration’s coming limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants could provide a rarity for environmental litigation: a case for which there is scant court precedent.

The Environmental Protection Agency is turning to a little-used provision of the Clean Air Act for its new rules, because carbon dioxide isn’t regulated under major Clean Air Act programs that address air pollutants. The EPA says it has only used the section, called 111(d), to regulate five sources of pollutants since the provision was enacted in 1970—and none on the scale of CO2, a major greenhouse gas.

Because the provision has been invoked so rarely, courts have had little opportunity to weigh in on it, creating the unusual circumstance in which potential challengers to the carbon rules would be litigating largely on a blank slate against the EPA. The Clean Air Act provision gives the agency authority to regulate pollutants emitted by facilities already in operation, but the expected lawsuits from states and industry could test how far a president can go in using the long-standing air-pollution law to try to address climate change.

Unfortunately, the EPA has been on something of a legal winning streak lately, and the eco-radical lobby is in a tizzy of excitement over these latest and greatest regulations. The Obama administration has been in preemptive defense mode, and we can all look forward to a whole lot more of this over the coming days:

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Tags: bureaucracy, climate change, coal, electricity, emissions, Environmental Protection Agency, law, Obama administration, regulations

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The unworkability of the Renewable Fuel Standard, visualized

TheunworkabilityoftheRenewableFuelStandard,visualized

45senators,includingvulnerableDems,areaskingthe

45 senators, including vulnerable Dems, are asking the EPA to delay incoming emissions regulations

posted at 5:21 pm on May 23, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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It’s only a small matter of time until the Obama administration finally, rapturously releases what its hopes will be the crown jewel of its rise-of-the-oceans-slowing climate-change agenda: Regulations capping the emissions from existing power plants, a.k.a., stamping out coal plants across the country. This set of regs is going to be even more complicated and controversial than the regulations for only new power plants the administration released last year, and as the AP obliquely explains, we’re likely to start seeing those “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices Obama once mentioned pretty quickly here:

Electricity prices are probably on their way up across much of the U.S. as coal-fired plants, the dominant source of cheap power, shut down in response to environmental regulations and economic forces.

New and tighter pollution rules and tough competition from cleaner sources such as natural gas, wind and solar will lead to the closings of dozens of coal-burning plants across 20 states over the next three years. And many of those that stay open will need expensive retrofits.

Because of these and other factors, the Energy Department predicts retail power prices will rise 4 percent on average this year, the biggest increase since 2008. By 2020, prices are expected to climb an additional 13 percent, a forecast that does not include the costs of coming environmental rules.

The Obama administration, state governments and industry are struggling to balance this push for a cleaner environment with the need to keep the grid reliable and prevent prices from rocketing too much higher.

“Tough competition” from wind and solar? …That’s cute. Our egregiously subsidized wind and solar industries account for about 4 percent of our electricity generation and are terribly unreliable (just ask Germany, which has lately had to bring more coal plants online to make up for their faulty renewables), while coal still provides around 40 percent of our electricity and is the most reliable mass source we have. Natural gas is great with its cleaner-burning emissions, coming in with the really stiff competition at around 30 percent, but it has some infrastructural issues that are currently keeping it at second place in terms of reliability. Make no mistake — the Obama administration swooping in with major regs that deeply affect 40 percent of our electricity generation is going to take its economic toll, and 45 senators  — Democrats and Republicans included — would like the Obama administration to step back for a second a perhaps more deeply consider that toll. Via The Hill:

Forty-five senators are pressing the Environmental Protection Agency to delay new rules on limiting carbon emissions from power plants. …

The senators are pressuring the EPA to set a 120-day comment period rather than the standard 60-day comment period. That would double the normal allotted for industry, consumers, businesses, and states to give their two cents on the rule.

Fifteen Democrats signed the letter, including the four seen as most vulnerable in the midterm elections: Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Warner (Va), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Mark Begich (Alaska). …

“Affordable, reliable, and redundant sources of electricity are essential to the economic well-being of our states and the quality of life of our constituents,” the letter to EPA chief Gina McCarthy said.

“While we all agree that clean air is vitally important, EPA has an obligation to understand the impacts that regulations have on all segments of society,” it said.

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Tags: coal, Democrats, emissions, Environmental Protection Agency, Obama administration, regulations

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HowtogetapaycheckfromtheEPA

How to get a paycheck from the EPA without really trying: Telework without working, or go to the office and watch porn

posted at 1:21 pm on May 7, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

If you can read this addendum to yesterday’s EPA post without slamming your head onto your desk, I salute you.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that inspectors general are up in arms over the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Homeland Security operating as a “rogue law enforcement agency” and agency employees actively blocking their investigations into employee misconduct. The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on these alleged improprieties this morning, and according to the prepared testimony of Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Allan Williams, last year’s case of former employee John C. Beale defrauding taxpayers of nearly a million dollars while pretending to be a CIA operative was just the beginning of the waste/fraud/abuse.

An employee at the Environmental Protection Agency downloaded more than 7,000 pornographic files onto a government computer and viewed them for two to six hours a day, according to the agency’s independent watchdog.

The worker, who wasn’t identified, was watching pornography when a special agent showed up at his work space, Allan Williams, the EPA’s deputy assistant inspector general for investigations, told lawmakers today.

“True deterrence of employee misconduct at the EPA ultimately rests with agency executives and managers to set a tone that ensures such behavior will not be condoned,” Williams told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. …

The employee caught viewing pornography is still on the payroll, earning about $120,000 a year, and the case has been referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, Williams said.

Not only did that employee earn six figures — he earned, ahem, “performance rewards.” Via the WFB:

Rep. John Mica (R., Fla) questioned Allan Williams, the deputy assistant inspector general for investigations at the House Oversight Committee over the employees’ “work activities.”

“So this guy is making $120,000, spending two to six hours a day looking at porno. Then this information I have is he received performance awards during the time period?” Mica asked Williams.

Williams responded, “Uh, he possibly did. Yes, sir.”

In an entirely separate instance, another manager allowed an employee to collect full pay and benefits without reporting to work. It reportedly started out as a work-from-home accommodation for a medical condition, except that the employee wasn’t actually doing any work either — and yet managed to collect a casual $500,000 or so over several years, as well as cash bonuses based on excellent performance appraisals. Astounding.

As Chairman Issa put it in the hearing this morning, the EPA is “running an organization from which no one can get fired.” Who wants to make bets about this kind of waste, fraud, incompetence, negligence, and lack of oversight being unique to the 16,000 employees of the Environmental Protection Agency?

Tags: big government, bureaucracy, Environmental Protection Agency, fraud, House Oversight Committee, investigation, waste

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Inspectorsgeneral:TheEPAisbeingactivelyuncooperative

Inspectors general: The EPA is being actively uncooperative with and dismissive of our investigations

posted at 6:31 pm on May 6, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Remember the bizarre case of John C. Beale? Last year, it was finally revealed that the former high-level Environmental Protection Agency employee managed to defraud the federal government of almost a million dollars over the course of twelve years while doing almost no work, and then excusing his many absences by claiming that he was jetting off on secret climate-change-related business in conjunction with the CIA, followed by a fake retirement party. Much to the EPA’s chagrin, federal watchdogs were not filled with confidence in either our sprawling bureaucracy generally or the EPA’s power-grabbing/obfuscating tendencies specifically, and began an investigation into the lack of internal controls that allowed the guy to fly under the radar for so long; then in February, the EPA inspector general wrote a letter to Sen. David Vitter informing him that several EPA employees were actively getting in the way of the IG’s investigations thereof. This afternoon, the Associated Press just dropped another bomb on those inauspicious EPA activities:

A unit run by President Barack Obama’s political staff inside the Environmental Protection Agency operates illegally as a “rogue law enforcement agency” that has blocked independent investigations by the EPA’s inspector general for years, a top investigator says.

The assistant EPA inspector general for investigations, Patrick Sullivan, was expected to testify Wednesday before a House oversight committee about the activities of the EPA’s little-known Office of Homeland Security. The office is overseen by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s chief of staff, and the inspector general’s office is accusing it of impeding independent investigations into employee misconduct, computer security and external threats, including compelling employees involved in cases to sign non-disclosure agreements.

“Under the heavy cloak of `national security,’ the Office of Homeland Security has repeatedly rebuffed and refused to cooperate with the OIG’s ongoing requests for information or cooperation,” Sullivan wrote in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press. “This block unquestionably has hamstrung the Office of Inspector General’s ability to carry out its statutory mandate to investigate wrongdoing of EPA employees.” …

EPA’s Office of Homeland Security was set up in 2003 by an administrative order, and has no statutory authority to conduct investigations or enforce the law. But since July 2012, in an agreement with the FBI, it has been the primary contact on all investigations with a connection to national security.

Hmm — this EPA office secretively operates by using the heavy cloak of “national security” as its justification? Is that kind of like how John C. Beale used the cloak of national security as a justification, do you suppose? They already have the oh-so-convenient justifications of the “public health” and “environmental protection” to excuse their every whim; how many more can they possibly need if, as they claim, they really aren’t up to anything untoward?

Funny how the self-proclaimed Most Transparent Administration, Evah seems so averse to scrutiny — particularly the zealously environmentalist agency currently marshaling as much authority to itself as it can muster for the sake of almost singlehandedly executing President Obama’s costly and ideological climate change agenda via top-down regulations executive orders.

Tags: Associated Press, bureaucracy, Environmental Protection Agency, federal government, investigation, Obama administration, regulations, transparancy

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SupremeCourtupholdsEPA’scross-stateairpollutionauthority

Supreme Court upholds EPA’s cross-state air pollution authority

posted at 6:01 pm on April 29, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Over the past few years, the green lobby has put a lot of its collective energy into making a gigantic fuss over the Keystone XL pipeline and pushing President Obama to make climate change more of a priority — but in the grand scheme of things, the proposed pipeline is really just a symbolic battle about refusing to enable fossil-fuel development by building the requisite infrastructure (because, these eco-radicals hope and pray, we’ll start leaving more of our resources in the ground in favor of heavily subsidizing renewables and forcing behavioral changes). As the NYT rather aptly pointed out last week, the carbon emissions that Canada will unleash in developing their old sands aren’t even a drop in the bucket compared to the impact that the Obama administration’s many regulations can/will have:

Experts say that Mr. Obama’s eventual decision on the pipeline will have a marginal impact on global warming emissions, while those dull-sounding E.P.A. rules and treaty talks will determine his enviromental legacy.

Consider the numbers: In 2011, the most recent year for which comprehensive international data is available, the global economy emitted 32.6 billion metric tons of carbon pollution. The United States was responsible for 5.5 billion tons of that (coming in second to China, which emitted 8.7 billion tons). Within the United States, electric power plants produced 2.8 billion tons of those greenhouse gases, while vehicle tailpipe emissions from burning gasoline produced 1.9 billion tons.

By comparison, the oil that would move through the Keystone pipeline would add 18.7 million metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere annually, the E.P.A. estimated. In other words, the carbon emissions produced by oil that would be moved in the Keystone pipeline would amount to less than 1 percent of United States greenhouse gas emissions, and an infinitesimal slice of the global total.

Within that context, “the Keystone pipeline is a rounding error,” said Kevin Book, the founder of ClearView Energy Partners, an energy analysis firm.

Which means that the Obama administration’s recent regulations on new power plants in conjunction with forthcoming regulations on existing power plants (read: squashing coal out of the picture) are the real power players in Obama’s climate-change agenda, and the Environmental Protection Agency was further enabled in carrying out that mission through the Clean Air Act with a Supreme Court decision released today. In 2012, a lower court ruled that the EPA was taking too much leeway with the “good neighbor” provision of the act in determining how much upwind emitters should be required to reduce their emissions to compensate for the pollution that drifts to downwind states (namely, via the EPA appointing itself with the unwritten authority to selectively consider several factors including what it would cost the individual state and how much the individual state has already done to cut pollution, rather than just considering how much the state is actually emitting). SCOTUS, however, decided that the EPA’s broader interpretation of the rule does indeed make practical sense, via Reuters:

By a 6-2 vote, the court said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acted reasonably in requiring 28 states to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which can lead to soot and smog.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the EPA rule a cost-effective way to allocate responsibility for emission reductions among so-called upwind states, and that the EPA need not consider each state’s proportionate responsibility for the emissions in question.

She also called the rule a “permissible, workable, and equitable interpretation” of the “good neighbor” provision of the federal Clean Air Act.

This provision limits cross-border emissions that make it harder for downwind states to comply with federal air quality standards, or national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS).

“The Good Neighbor Provision requires EPA to seek downwind attainment of NAAQS notwithstanding the uncertainties,” Ginsburg wrote. “Required to balance the possibilities of under-control and over-control, EPA must have leeway in fulfilling its statutory mandate.”

Alito recused, while Scalia and Thomas were the two dissenters, emphases mine:

Too many important decisions of the Federal Government are made nowadays by unelected agency officials exercising broad lawmaking authority, rather than by the people’s representatives in Congress. With the statute involved in the present cases, however, Congress did it right. It specified quite precisely the responsibility of an upwind State under the Good Neighbor Provision: to eliminate those amounts of pollutants that it contributes to downwind problem areas. But the Environmental Protection Agency was unsatisfied with this system. Agency personnel, perhaps correctly, thought it more efficient to require reductions not in proportion to the amounts of pollutants for which each upwind State is responsible, but on the basis of how cost-effectively each can decrease emissions.

Today, the majority approves that undemocratic revision of the Clean Air Act. The Agency came forward with a textual justification for its action, relying on a farfetched meaning of the word “significantly” in the statutory text. That justification is so feeble that today’s majority does not even recite it, much less defend it. The majority reaches its result (“Look Ma, no hands!”) without benefit of text, claiming to have identified a remarkable “gap” in the statute, which it proceeds to fill (contrary to the plain logic of the statute) with cost-benefit analysis—and then, with no pretended textual justification at all, simply extends cost-benefit analysis beyond the scope of the alleged gap. …

The statute ad­dresses solely the environmental consequences of emis­sions, not the facility of reducing them; and it requires States to shoulder burdens in proportion to the size of their contributions, not in proportion to the ease of bearing them. EPA’s utterly fanciful “from each according to its ability” construction sacrifices democratically adopted text to bureaucratically favored policy.

Perhaps the individually-evaluated approach for which the EPA argued does make the process more workable for its ostensible emission-reducing purposes, but I’d be a little more inclined to give the agency the benefit of the doubt if it hadn’t already established such a brazen habit of expanding its own power at every possible turn.

Tags: emissions, Environmental Protection Agency, Obama administration, regulation, Supreme Court

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Oh,good:TheEPAfinally,retroactivelylowersa

Oh, good: The EPA finally, retroactively lowers a 2013 biofuels requirement to reflect the fact that the required biofuels did not actually exist

posted at 8:41 pm on April 22, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

It’s an improvement, I suppose, over that one time last year when they actually tried to penalize refiners for not complying with the previous year’s standard which also vastly overestimated the amount of the required cellulosic biofuels that would exist in the real world rather than inside their self-righteous faux-green fantasies, but… that is hardly cause for celebration. Via The Hill:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday retroactively lowered the volume of cellulosic biofuel that refiners must blend into traditional fuels, aligning the 2013 mandated volume to the actual amount of fuels produced.

EPA’s original mandate for 2013 was based on a projection that producers would make 6 million ethanol-equivalent gallons of cellulosic biofuel, but just over 800,000 gallons of the fuels were actually produced that year, the agency said. Tuesday’s action sets the cellulosic biofuel blend level at 0.0005 percent, reflecting the amount of fuel produced. …

The year is over, but EPA’s revision means that refiners will not have to use credits or pay penalties for not reaching the target.“Since the cellulosic biofuel standard was based on EPA’s projection of cellulosic biofuel production in 2013, EPA deemed this new information to be of central relevance to the rule, warranting reconsideration,” EPA said in its rule, noting that now that the year is over, its “projection” can be based on actual production.

Let me reiterate that. The EPA devised the standard with which refiners must lawfully comply based on the consistently inaccurate projections with which they plowed ahead for benefit of the two cellulosic biofuels producers in the country (one of which ended up drastically underperforming), and the agency only belatedly “deemed” the fact that those biofuels were not commercially available to be of “central relevance the the rule.” …Ya’ think?!

Sadly, I realize that this hardly even qualifies as “news,” really, since this is just kind of the business-as-usual way the federal government often goes about enforcing things and even more particularly the way the EPA goes about enforcing the Renewable Fuel Standard — but why is this hardly even noteworthy business-as-usual? I often refer to the RFS and all of the ghastly inefficiencies and regulatory vagaries it inspires as the “saga of stupid,” and I do not throw around the word “stupid” lightly. This, my friends… this is stupid. The unabashed cronyism and politicization of it all is enough to make your head spin.

Now, if only they would stop cowering from the sound and the fury of the Big Ethanol lobby and finally release the 2014 RFS standards sometime before the next presidential election…

Tags: biofuels, Environmental Protection Agency, ethanol, Obama administration, Renewable Fuel Standard

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APstudy:“Advanced”cornethanolmightactuallybe

AP study: “Advanced” corn ethanol might actually be environmentally worse than gasoline

posted at 5:21 pm on April 21, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Last November, the Associated Press released their own study that confirmed more or less everything we already knew about the damaging unintended consequences created by the Renewable Fuel Standard: That the artificially jacked-up demand for corn incentivizes American farmers to bring marginal lands into agricultural production, effectively obliterating millions of acres of conservation land in favor of putting more strain on the water supply, pumping more fertilizer into the environment, and churning up more soil (subsequently releasing the carbon trapped within) than they otherwise would. The champions of the Big Ethanol lobby, shameless rent-seekers that they are, denounced the AP’s study as obviously biased hogwash, and demanded that the U.S. Environmental Protection ignore the abundant evidence against ethanol’s supposed environmental benefits by upholding the ever-increasing volumetric blending requirements of the RFS.

If Big Ethanol didn’t like what the AP reported last fall, however, I think they’re likely to have an even bigger tantrum over what the AP is reporting on today — this time, a study funded by the feds that undercuts ethanol’s counterfeit environmentalism even further:

Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration’s conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.

A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.

While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says they won’t meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel.

The conclusions deal a blow to what are known as cellulosic biofuels, which have received more than a billion dollars in federal support but have struggled to meet volume targets mandated by law. About half of the initial market in cellulosics is expected to be derived from corn residue.

And seeing as how these “advanced” cellulosic biofuels derived from biomass other than corn starch (i.e., in this case, the stalks, cobs, leaves) are technically supposed to release 50 to 60 percent fewer carbon emissions on net evaluation than gasoline, that’s something of a problem. I might also add that “a billion dollars in federal support” is a vast understatement, what with that whole Renewable Fuel Standard injecting a bunch of fake signals into the market by forcing Americans to purchase a product that they obviously wouldn’t without the presence of a federal mandate (despite the repeated failure of the well-subsidized biofuels market to actually provide the requisite amount of biofuels in commercially available quantities, yeesh).

Tags: biofuels, cellulosic biofuels, Environmental Protection Agency, ethanol, gas, Renewable Fuel Standard, renewables

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Source from: hotair

TheEPAconfirms:GHGemissionsaredown,largely

The EPA confirms: GHG emissions are down, largely thanks to…

posted at 8:41 pm on April 17, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

This little nugget of knowledge has been circulating for months on months by now, but once the Environmental Protection Agency has it on their books, you know there’s no way of getting around it (not that the Obama administration really wants to; as much as they are still on the prowl for reasons to further regulate natural gas and the extraction thereof, they’re happy to sing its praises as a “bridge” fuel to see us through toward their more heavily renewable future). The agency released its Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks this week, and you’ll never guess which energy source was the most successful player in bringing about “green” policy goals:

In 2012, total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 6,525.6 Tg or million metric tons CO2 Eq. Total U.S. emissions have increased by 4.7 percent from 1990 to 2012, and emissions decreased from 2011 to 2012 b 3.4 percent (227.4 Tg CO2 Eq.). The decrease from 2011 to 2012 was due to a decrease in the carbon intensity of fuels consumed to generate electricity due to a decrease in coal consumption, with increased natural gas consumption. Additionally, relatively mild winter conditions, especially in regions of the United States where electricity is an important heating fuel, resulted in an overall decrease in electricity demand in most sectors. Since 1990, U.S. emissions have increased at an average annual rate of 0.2 percent.

Boom. As any eco-radical will be quick to tell you, it already looks like the emissions for 2013 probably ticked back up again, but isn’t it funny that a specific fuel so often derided by self-titled environmentalists — because of the hydraulic fracturing it usually requires — has had the greatest success at reducing emissions? Unlike in, say, Germany, which — in a fit of aggressive green whimsy a few years ago — decided to tamp down on hydraulic fracturing, do away with nuclear, and heavily subsidize renewables in one fell swoop? And is now seeing increased coal usage and higher emissions as a result? Maybe the Obama administration should reconsider natural gas’s status as a mere “bridge fuel,” perhaps? Just sayin.’

Tags: emissions, Environmental Protection Agency, natural gas

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Source from: hotair