Tag Archives: Environmentalists

Biden’s Signature Climate Law Has A Major Achilles’ Heel — And Dems Are Making It Worse

From The Daily Caller

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill is being held back by a lack of comprehensive permitting reform, the absence of which enables environmentalist lawsuits that impede green energy projects subsidized by the legislation.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) contained hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize green energy projects nationwide, but the bill did not include significant reform to the permitting process that would expedite construction timelines and insulate developments from environmental legal challenges. Unless Congressional Democrats can negotiate a permitting reform package with Republicans in an election year, these problems will continue to dog the IRA’s implementation, energy policy experts and stakeholders told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

After solar and wind developments have been built, they need to be connected to the grid via transmission lines to feed power into the grid. Permitting reform would speed up the lengthy paperwork process for that transmission, as well as provide developers an additional layer of protection against environmental lawsuits that also disrupt the construction of green energy developments (RELATED: Blue States Are Stripping Rural Counties Of Ability To Prevent Green Energy Takeover Of Their Communities)

However, that reform has not happened yet, thanks in part to Congressional Democrats’ inability to agree among themselves on what that reform should look like to counter Republican proposals, according to E&E News.

“I think that not having any transmission reform is a huge barrier to implementing the IRA,” Isaac Orr, a policy analyst for the Center for the American Experiment who specializes in energy policy, told the DCNF. “I think there was an understanding that permitting reform was necessary in order to implement a lot of the things Democrats wanted as soon as they got the IRA … It’s a physical reality that you need the transmission in order to incorporate all this new capacity on the grid.”

The lack of reform has left numerous green energy developments open to legal challenges filed by environmental groups, who often will pursue similar legal strategies adopted by opponents of fossil fuel infrastructure projects in the past.

For example, a coalition of tribes and environmental organizations are suing to block a massive $10 billion transmission project in Arizona, while different coalitions have taken to court to allege violations of environmental laws on the part of offshore wind developers building wind farms in waters off the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts. Elsewhere in the country, conservation groups have continued the yearslong fight against Wisconsin’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line by suing the government to stop construction.

“Reforms aimed at streamlining the federal government’s permit decision-making process and discouraging frivolous litigation have the potential not only to improve regulatory efficiency but also to bring about greater certainty and predictability in the offshore wind sector,” Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) told the DCNF. “Litigation, particularly around alleged National Environmental Policy Act deficiencies, has been a significant hindrance for offshore wind projects. A robust U.S. offshore wind market relies on confidence and certainty in the permitting and regulatory process, which is essential for fostering growth and ensuring the success of these projects, much like any other major infrastructure endeavor.”

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading advocate for comprehensive permitting reform, has tried to advance legislation to expedite the permitting process and minimize opportunities for litigation to gum up timelines for all kinds of energy projects.

In total, there are no fewer than ten different permitting-related bills in Congress and two major regulatory initiatives underway on the federal level, but progress on streamlining the permitting process is still very sluggish, according to Utility Dive.

“All of these things, the Clean Water Act, the way the National Environmental Policy Act is now run … you can’t get anything built because of these statutes,” Mike McKenna, a Republican strategist with extensive experience in and around the energy sector, told the DCNF about Congressional gridlock on permitting reform.

“So we are about a year into you’re what I think is going to be a seven- or eight-year process, where everyone on the Left starts figuring out, ‘Oh, my goodness, these guys were right, You can’t build any of this stuff.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Energy responded to requests for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Market Environmentalists vs. Wind/Solar/Battery Industrialization, Sprawl

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“These aforementioned groups and individuals are standing tall against the Climate Industrial Complex and Big Government Wind, Big Governmental Solar, Big Government Batteries, and the I-want-to-control-your-energy-life elitists. The real environmentalists speak from the grassroots, not from Washington, D.C.”

The article by Dave Anderson for the Energy and Policy Institute, (EPI), “Blocking Renewable Energy is a Top State Legislative Priority for Network of Pro-fossil Fuels Think Tanks,” lists the names of many organizations and individuals who should be applauded for their efforts to spare the living, green space from industrialization and energy sprawl.  

Dense energy is the most environmental, as pointed out by the late Peter Huber in Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists (New York: Basic Books, 1999):

The greenest fuels are the ones that contain the most energy per pound of material that must be mined, trucked, pumped, piped, and burnt. [In contrast], extracting comparable amounts of energy from the surface would entail truly monstrous environmental disruption….

The greenest possible strategy is to mine and to bury, to fly and to tunnel, to search high and low, where the life mostly isn’t, and so to leave the edge, the space in the middle, living and green.

Anderson in his article also fails to understand that the “Pro-fossil Fuel Think Tanks” are less pro-fossil fuels than they are pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, pro-freedom, and pro-environment. The problem of massive industrial wind turbines and solar acreage is that consumers do not like them and they are bad neighbors as judged by real local grassroots environmentalists.

Back to the article. Dave Anderson provides the following list for real environmental applause:

The State Policy Network (SPN) announced on its website last month that it will focus on working with state lawmakers to prevent states from adopting wind and solar power in 2024. 

SPN is the national organization that serves as the central hub of a network of affiliated think tanks located in all 50 states, and is funded by right-wing and corporate donors that include fossil fuel interests. The network also includes associate groups like the Donald Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute and multiple organizations backed by Charles Koch, such as Americans for Prosperity. 

Koch is the billionaire CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, which operates in multiple sectors of the fossil fuel industry. His Stand Together Trust contributed $5 million in 2022 to SPN-affiliated think tanks and millions more to SPN associates like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Cato Institute, according to the Center for Media & Democracy.  

The Energy and Policy Institute is publishing new research profiles of SPN and several affiliated think tanks involved in coast-to-coast efforts to block renewable energy projects. Highlights and links to the new profiles can be found below: State Policy Network: SPN has brought on Amy Oliver Cooke, a political consultant who previously worked for a SPN-affiliated think tank in Colorado that was funded by coal producers in Wyoming, to lead its Energy Policy Working Group.

Sponsors of SPN’s annual meeting in Chicago last year included the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, Stand Together Trust, and the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity. Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF): TPPF, which received more than $3 million from Stand Together Trust and the Charles Koch Institute in 2021 and 2022, ran an online fundraising campaign last year that featured false claims about offshore wind farms “beaching whales” and aimed to raise $500,000.

Ten of the nineteen individuals listed on TPPF’s board of directors web page have direct financial connections to the fossil fuel industry. Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI): CRI is leading SPN’s national campaign against offshore wind power. The Delaware-based SPN affiliate received $162,500 from the du Pont family’s Longwood Foundation in 2022.

The Longwood Foundation’s president Thère du Pont is a director for the DuPont Company, which sells products used by coal and methane gas power plants, and the foundation’s chairman Charlie Copeland works for CRI. Ben du Pont chaired a $150-per-person fundraising dinner for CRI’s anti-offshore wind campaign in November.

Cascade Policy Institute: The Oregon-based SPN affiliate published a report, “Quantifying the Unreliability of Wind and Solar Power in the Northwest,” last year by Eric Fruits. Fruits is also a senior scholar for the International Center for Law & Economics, which received $500,000 in 2022 from Koch’s Stand Together Trust.

Other SPN affiliates and associate groups have also been ramping up efforts to block renewable energy The Buckeye Institute, an Ohio-based SPN affiliate, has made the Frasier Solar project and Knox County officials the latest targets of its campaign against Ohio’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program.

PILOT payment arrangements provide renewable energy developers with tax certainty, while ensuring counties benefit from reliable revenue from wind and solar projects for local schools and services. Frasier Solar has faced opposition from Knox Smart Development, an anti-solar LLC that has connections to the gas industry and has used the Buckeye Institute’s flawed analysis in its efforts to derail the solar project. 

The Buckeye Institute’s Board of Trustees includes Mark Jordan, the president of the gas exploration and production company Knox Energy. Jordan also serves on the board of the Kirkpatrick Jordan Foundation, which contributed $35,000 to $40,000 annually to the Buckeye Institute in recent years, according to IRS Form 990s. 

The Center of the American Experiment, which received $250,000 from Koch’s Stand Together Trust in 2022, has run multiple anti-wind and anti-solar ad campaigns on Facebook. The Minnesota-based SPN affiliate also received $20,000 from Americans for Prosperity in 2021, when it published an anti-renewables report, “Not in Our Backyard,” by Robert Bryce, a leading purveyor of anti-renewable energy disinformation. 

Center of the American Experiment’s Facebook ads The John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina-based SPN affiliate, is busy fighting solar farms and offshore wind. The group received $100,000 in 2022 from “the dark money ATM of the right,” Donors Trust, which contributed $19.3 million to SPN affiliates that year.  The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan’s SPN affiliate, received $525,000 from Stand Together Trust in 2022.

The group is supporting the Citizens for Local Choice ballot initiative, which aims to repeal Michigan’s new law aimed at streamlining renewable energy siting in the state. The leaders of the ballot initiative include longtime anti-wind and solar activist Kevon Martis.  Martis is also listed as a Senior Policy Fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a Virginia-based SPN associate that’s received funding from the coal industry.

Martis and Bryce spoke last month at a Knox Smart Development anti-solar event in Ohio. E&E Legal received nearly $950,000 in 2022 from Donors Trust.  The Cato Institute, a national SPN associate, received $1.8 million from Stand Together Trust in 2022. Cato hired former Trump Department of Energy politico appointee Travis Fisher, a longtime foe of renewables, last year. Fisher spoke in January at an anti-offshore wind meeting in Maryland led by several Republican members of Congress. 

Linnea Luekin of the Heartland Institute, another SPN associate located in Illinois, called for 2-mile setbacks for wind turbines in an appearance last month before state lawmakers in West Virginia. Heartland received more than $1.25 million from Donors Trust in 2022.  The Manhattan Institute, an SPN affiliate based in New York, received $495,000 from Stand Together Trust and $1.6 million from hedge funder Paul Singer’s foundation in 2022.

Adjunct fellow Jonathan Lesser has churned out a steady stream of anti-renewables opinion pieces featured in Forbes, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal.  Lesser is also president of the consulting firm Continental Economics, where his clients have included multiple pipeline companies, and the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the group backed by Oxbow Carbon CEO Bill Koch that fought Cape Wind. 

These aforementioned groups and individuals (and many more) are standing tall against the Climate Industrial Complex and Big Government Wind, Big Governmental Solar, Big Government Batteries, and the I-want-to-control-your-energy-life elitists. from the grassroots, not from Washington, D.C.

Wind farms and Congress – polar opposites

Wind turbines in the Papalote Creek Wind Farm near Taft, TX. Monday, Oct. 28, 2013.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

The latest poll shows that 78 percent of Americans disapprove of the performance of the U.S Congress, while just 18 percent approve. Yet in the latest poll that matters, Congressional incumbents had a 98 percent win rate. The reason most offered is that, while people despise Congress, they are quite fond of “their” Congress member.

Of course, in the entrenched Congress very few seats are even contestable, and party leaders support those whose votes can be counted on. The entire system is so corrupt that hardly anyone even knows what their representatives are voting on beyond the headlines.

By contrast, while public support for wind power is high (77 percent according to a 2021 poll), huge numbers of people oppose individual wind farms that impact their daily lives. Opposition to onshore and offshore wind spans the political spectrum to include environmentalists, chambers of commerce, fishermen, Native American tribes, ferry operators, airport commissions, business groups, municipalities, and homeowners.

The journalist Robert Bryce identified 31 big wind and 13 big solar projects that local residents across the U.S. vetoed in 2021, and over 320 wind projects that were rejected between 2015 and 2021. Today, the fight against big wind has shifted to offshore projects, with fisheries and wildlife conservationists leading the charge against powerful politicians and billionaires.

East coast fisheries have declared their industry will shut down because the offshore wind farms will disrupt their ability to fish profitably. Others complain more about diminished water quality, coastal erosion, and habitat degradation. Today, the complaints include damages to marine life.

Oregon fisheries deride the impact of wind turbines’ electromagnetic field cables on fish populations that threaten their livelihoods, and the Bureau of Ocean Management ignores their protests. In Hawaii opponents expressed concerns that the turbines would “obstruct Native Hawaiian ocean resources that include reef systems, fishing areas and cultural practices” if placed within 30 miles of the seashore.

While the few who stand to gain financially support wind turbines in “their backyards,” there are plenty of people who have no qualms about placing the noisy, fire-prone bird and bat killers in other people’s backyards. They won’t be affected! Fortunately, across much of America, local citizens retain the power to stop “progress.”

Three reasons for the zeal of the unaffected are the massive subsidies for wind power; the climate crisis campaign that has convinced millions that the planet will die from carbon dioxide poisoning; and a relentless media and “academic” campaign that finds climate change as the cause of every human and animal ill. The plethora of nonsensical diatribes is nauseating.

Investigative reporting in America today is suppressed or demonized in the rare cases in which it is even attempted. In its place we find conjured up stories that reflect a narrative that advances often hidden agendas – and the media, stuffed with “former” politicians and often interlinked with office holders, rubber stamps the agenda without even raising serious questions. Voters who despise Congress (according to the polls) feel powerless to fight the system.

That elites who created and subsidized the wind and solar and electric vehicle industries have the backing of a compliant media that promotes the agenda almost without question. Laws once used against industry and property owners – the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and others – are ignored and blatantly transgressed without the media raising a finger.

The big majorities in favor of wind power live in urban areas which will never see a wind turbine, just as their homes and neighborhoods are relatively unaffected by the hordes who destroy the property, threaten the lives, and disrupt the peace of border towns and ranches – or by the bodies piling up that burden public services.

The negative impacts of offshore wind that are causing the greatest uproar today are the destruction of fisheries and the killing of whales and environmental impact studies that would have sunk mining, farming, and other rural activities in the Heartland are either ignored or not even done for these gigantic intrusions into the near-shore oceans.

Even the courts have tacitly agreed in many cases to ignore the law of the land – because of the “climate crisis” – the same way that election laws were violated during the 2020 election cycle – because of the COVID crisis. Without a declaration of martial law there was no lawful justification for abusing the rule of law. Yet the media gleefully cheered on the violators.

Across the pond, the British government has been accused of allowing wind farm operators to sell electricity to the public at nearly twice the maximum amount specified in their contracts. This despite government claims that relying on wind would lower electric bills.

Even as the media almost daily report that wind energy is super cheap, there are other reports that big players in constructing wind turbines are facing massive losses and write-downs and canceling big offshore wind projects.

What do you do when your life’s work is being tossed into the trash by elected officials – and the bureaucrats they seem to serve? In the rare cases in which courts declare their policies and practices unconstitutional, there is increasing effort to pack the court or just to ignore decisions that do not rubber stamp their unlawful actions.

For decades American children were taught that killing off the passenger pigeon to extinction, the near-extinction of other wildlife and even tiny plants, and any human intrusion into wilderness areas were great sins that must never be repeated.

Yet today even Greenpeace, which built its reputation on ‘saving the whales,” dares not speak against the deaths of scores of endangered right whales, humpback whales, and dolphins that many believe are direct results of the sonar and tidal disruptions from wind turbine construction.

Three years ago the BBC reported that more than 350 scientists and conservationists from 40 countries had signed a letter calling for global action to protect whales, dolphins and porpoises from extinction. The letter singled out the right whale as in grave danger of extinction in the near future. There are only a few hundred right whales left, and several have washed up onshore in areas near wind turbine construction.

Yet CNN assures us that the wind turbines are not responsible – it is the whales’ fault for entering shipping lanes in search of menhaden. Whales only entered those waters recently (by CNN’s logic) when menhaden moved into them. The noise and dirt from turbine base drilling operations had no impact the ability of whales to hear oncoming ships and steer clear of them. Up is down.

Besides, Extinction Rebellion says, the loss of whale species is worth saving the planet from carbon dioxide.

Damn the torpedoes! Build wind turbines and solar arrays, destroy farmland used for livestock and crops, prevent Africans from using their abundant energy reserves to feed and house their increasing populations, and start eating crickets and worms. We don’t need no stinkin’ seafood!

Or – just maybe – we don’t need no stinkin’ bought-and-paid-for members of Congress who put their own profit ahead of the people they were elected to serve.

Author

  • Duggan Flanakin
  • Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.
  • A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
  • A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, “Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout.”

Zero Sum Game: Industrial Wind & Solar Destroying the Environment to ‘Save the Planet’

From STOP THESE THINGS

Environmentalists were once known as ‘tree huggers’. Now, a new ‘green’ cult clear-fells them to make way for hundreds of wind turbines or seas of solar panels.

Germany’s Black Forest has been overrun, with chainsaws, bulldozers and blazing torches paving the way for our so-called ‘green’ energy transition. And hundreds of ancient oaks in its thousand-year-old Fairytale Forest, the Reinhardswald, are under threat of being felled and shredded, for the same reason.

So far, Scotland’s wind industry has wiped out over 14 million trees, spread over more than 17,000 acres of the Highlands to clear the way for thousands of these industrial monstrosities; and, no, they don’t replant them – any sizeable tree is an impediment to ‘productivity’, as it interferes with airflow and reduces wind speeds, and therefore wind power output. So, once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.

Precisely the same slash-and-burn techniques are being employed in northern Queensland’s dryland tropical forests, in order to make way for thousands of these things. As Federal MP, Nationals Leader David Littleproud points out in this interview with Chris Kenny on Sky News, if the modern environmentalists was serious about saving the environment, she would be promoting nuclear power, like there was no tomorrow.

‘Reckless race’ toward wind renewables is ‘degrading’ the environment
Chris Kenny and David Littleproud
Sky News
20 March 2023

Those destroying the Queensland bushland for wind farms in the “reckless race” toward renewables are “forgetting the first principle of what they’re trying to do” which is improve the environment, says Nationals Leader David Littleproud.

“What they’re doing is actually degrading the environment,” Mr Littleproud told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

“This isn’t common sense at all when you’re going to have land clearing to the scale that they’re talking about and that’s before you even get to the transmission lines.”

Transcript

Chris Kenny: Let’s go to Canberra now and catch up with the Nationals leader, David Littleproud of course, who is a senator from Queensland. Thanks for joining us, David. I appreciate your time. Firstly on that, it’s such a paradox to be inflicting environmental damage in the interest of saving the planet supposedly, but is Steven right there? Are their planning controls completely inadequate in Queensland and elsewhere in the country?

David Littleproud: Oh, totally. In this senseless and reckless race towards renewables and about reducing emissions is forgotten the first principle, but what they’re trying to do it is to improve the environment and what they’re doing is actually degrading the environment. This isn’t common sense at all when you’re going to have land clearing to the scale that they’re talking about, and that’s before you even get to the transmission lines. And that’s not just in Queensland, there’s 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, new transmission lines that have to come in for these renewable energy projects. And, you have to wonder about the social conscience also of these corporates that are undertaking this. Is it more about profit or is it more about what they say it is, about trying to reduce emissions and improve the environment? Because they’re not, you don’t have to go too far south of there also to Yongala where the state government’s going to spend $12 billion in the biggest hydro project in our nation’s history and take out 770 hectares of pristine landscape.

And, you haven’t heard boo from the Greens about the fact that, again, this is probably ecologically, but also engineeringly one of the most challenging projects they’ll ever do and the only thing I’ll have to disagree with Steven on is that it’s not just our natural environments, also our agricultural landscape. I was in Wagga Wagga last week and we are going to see outside the New South Wales government renewable energy zone 1,000 acre… This is a 1,000 acre solar farm that’s going over productive landscape. That’s going to take away food security for Australians and the world by us putting it in place, these solar farms on productive landscape. Now, there is a solution to this. I’m not against us reducing emissions. The Nationals have long held the view that we can use this thing called small scale modular nuclear. We only have to peak over the Pacific. The technology is emerging. We can put in place the small scale modular nuclear technology, particularly where existing coal-fired power stations are and may shut down and we can plug them in without transmission lines.

Chris Kenny: Absolutely.

David Littleproud: And, that’s just common sense and we can protect the environment and keep a productive landscape.

Chris Kenny: It’s a tiny environmental footprint compared to wind and solar as we’re seeing. Apologies, I think when I introduced you, I inadvertently demoted you to a Senator there, David

David Littleproud: Might go there to retire, mate.

Chris Kenny: Exactly.

Sky News