First published JoNova; “More than 60% of voters surveyed by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication said they have heard “a little” or “nothing at all” about the 2022 law known as the Inflation Reduction Act”
Biden Is Spending $1 Trillion to Fight Climate Change. Voters Don’t Care.
President’s campaign is promoting the effort, hoping to attract young people
The Biden campaign and a collection of progressive groups are trying to change that. They believe the president’s record on climate change can boost his popularity with young voters.
The strategy is risky because climate has never been a priority with voters. And it is unclear whether climate policies could reverse the deep skepticism many young people feel toward Biden. Recent Wall Street Journal polls have found that Biden’s support among young people is shrinking compared with 2020 amid concerns about the president’s age and his support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
…
Biden’s economic policies have been unpopular with a majority of voters surveyed in recent Journal polls. More than 60% of voters surveyed by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication said they have heard “a little” or “nothing at all” about the 2022 law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained about $1 trillion in tax credits, grants and loans for clean energy.
Not only is Biden ignoring the priorities of 98% of voters, the 2% of Presidential voters who do care about climate change, over half of them likely haven’t noticed that the “Inflation Reduction Act” is actually a climate initiative.
Who knows, maybe if Biden had called the “Inflation Reduction Act” the “save the planet from climate change” act, his trillion dollar climate expenditure might have won 2% of the American people, rather than 1%.
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)
Dems’ Energy Permitting Reform Bill Includes Billions For Eco-Activist Groupshttps://t.co/okXWYcE3Ph
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.
“Do we need a clean energy industry that depends on government handouts forever? Yes, if you ascribe to the climate disaster mantra…. Does anyone consider letting market forces drive technology development?”
An op-ed in Monday’s Houston Chronicle, “Houston is making a losing bet on fossil fuels,” greeted visitors to CERAWeek. Author Randall Morton attacked oil company CEOs and Houston business leaders for defending a “declining” industry. His opening sentence? “Leaders of the oil and gas industry are in Houston for CERAWeek, grappling with the inevitable decline of the industry.”
Morton then goes after the “economic development leaders at the Greater Houston Partnership [who] are doubling down on this declining industry.” He specifically identifies the GHP’s Energy Transition Initiative – hydrogen and carbon capture – as failed technologies.
Fair enough, but he misses a critical point. These technologies are less about betting on “fading fossil fuels” than they are decisions to suck on the federal teat of subsidies. That reality was acknowledged by Energy Secretary Jenifer Granholm in her CERAWeek talk when she told the audience, “Many of you are taking advantage of those irresistible tax credits. Good!” (No mention from any federal officials about the deficit spending and monetary inflation used to pay for it.)
Subsidies Are for Losers
Changing human behavior, which is what subsidies are designed to accomplish, apparently doesn’t sway Morton. Maybe he wants even more government money for his favorite technologies, but he never tells us what those might be. He fails to understand an Economics 101 point: The market picks winners, leaving losers for government. And losers they have proven to be to date, not unlike synthetic fuels of a half century ago.
“Inflation Reduction Act”
There seemed to be no shortage of taxpayer money being thrown at green energy technologies, based on the legislation passed in 2021 and 2022. First, there was the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, then it was the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The former included a laundry list of favorite climate investments to help localities deal with the clean energy transition including $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, $5 billion for zero-emission and clean buses, $2.5 billion for clean ferries, and $65 billion for clean energy transmission.
The irresponsibly named IRA bill was a trove of subsidies and tax credits for clean energy. The Congressional Budget Office at the time of its passage estimated the bill to cost $391 billion between 2022 and 2031. An analysis by investment firm Goldman Sachs put the cost at $1.2 trillion, while a money manager estimated it at $1.4 trillion. Even the CBO has upped its initial cost estimate to $660 billion through 2031 and increased it to $786 billion for 2024-2033. Many of these subsidies, which originally had time limits, have had them removed—allowing subsidies for the life of projects, further bloating the cost of the bill.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote about the CBO’s revised estimates. They included two charts that dramatically show how much the various categories of spending are projected to increase and how those spending categories will spread over the forecast periods.
The Inflation Reduction Act conservatively has increased by nearly two-thirds since it was enacted in 2022.
You will note the magnitude of the spending increases. They will be even greater according to Goldman Sachs. For categories of green energy spending like electric vehicles, energy efficiency, and carbon capture & clean fuel, they will be much greater in 2031 and 2033.
Many of the subsidies in the IRA will continue for well after the 10-year cost assessment period inflating the overall cost of the bill.
In the world of industrial policy, which the Biden administration is engaged in, the question becomes should one reject the government’s free money? For Morton, no one should succumb to the siren song of subsidies, even if they were enacted to prompt these specific investments. Shunning the subsidies would open companies and CEOs to attacks from activists and politicians for not being patriotic and supporting the government’s effort to solve the existential climate crisis. And they could be slammed by shareholders for accelerating their company sunsets.
Do we need a “clean” energy industry? How about one that depends on government handouts forever? Yes, if you ascribe to the climate disaster mantra. How many years do we have before the world ends? This fear is what is driving the shoveling of taxpayer money into corporate coffers as long as they make the “correct” investments. Does anyone consider letting market forces drive technology development?
The Coal Question
Some of the claims Morton made were superficial at best. He tried to link Big Oil to King Coal. He was using the decline in U.S. coal production and the reduction in coal employment as the lesson for oil’s future.
Our coal production has declined as shown in the chart below, but as you can see in the second chart, our coal exports are up and we continue to import coal at about the same level as we did in the late 1990s. Coal’s decline was because we are blessed with huge natural gas resources that create less pollution.
Our coal use is down due to soaring natural gas production and lower cost to generate electricity.
Coal exports continue growing and our imports are up as global coal markets are posting annual records with no end in sight.
Final Word
Energy has turned into a subsidy play, something for everyone. Yes, so-called Big Oil is at the table. One can join Randall Morton in calling out hydrogen and CCSU as the wrong approach. But why not consider ending similar government favor for wind, solar, and batteries? Do consumers and taxpayers–and the freedom to choose–matter?
Energy expert Allen Brooks writes at Energy Musings, from which this article is adapted.
Half of all cars sold in America to run on electricity by 2030 under European-style rules.
Joe Biden has announced new rules that will see as many as half of all cars sold in America run on electricity by 2030.
The US President on Wednesday moved to adopt strict European-style tailpipe emission rules. The finalised regulations will require manufacturers to drastically cut the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from cars and trucks from 2027 through to 2032. The Telegraph has the story,
Battery EVs currently make up less than 8pc of sales, while plug-in hybrids represent just 2pc.
The President last year announced an ambition of electric vehicle (EV) sales reaching 50pc of all purchases by 2030.
However, the finalised targets have been softened after a backlash from unions and carmakers.
The changes unveiled by the President on Wednesday are “technology-neutral”, meaning emissions can be reduced through a combination of both higher EV and plug-in hybrid sales. The pace at which manufacturers must shift has also been softened in the run up to 2030.
John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said: “These adjusted EV targets – still a stretch goal – should give the market and supply chains a chance to catch up.
Mandating a change to EV ownership and further financial austerity onto those who can least afford it is facing a rebellion from those who need transportation. The problem is that manufacturers are loading up the “supply chain” with EVs on dealer lots, but they’re not seeing the “demand” for EVs coming from the public.
The current EV ownership profiles are reflected in the oligarchic elite owners are that they are:
Highly educated.
Highly compensated.
Multi-car families.
Low mileage requirements for the families’ second car, i.e., the EV.
Reside in a “temperate” climate like CA. or FL. Almost 40% of EVs are in CA., and CA. has 6 times as many EVs as FL.
Unlike the profile of current EV owners, the owners of internal combustion engine vehicles are dramatically different from most potential EV vehicle owners.
Many are single-car owners.
Most of the potential car buyers are not as highly educated,
Nor as highly compensated as the elite EV owners.
Mandating a change to EV ownership and forced austerity may face a rebellion from those who need affordable vehicle transportation.
EV sales are beginning to hit a speed bump.
Hertz, previously an eager early adopter of fleet electrification, announced a big sell-off of EVs.
Ford’s electric vehicle business lost nearly $4.7 billion in 2023 and could lose another $5 billion in 2024; thus, Ford slashed EV production, having earlier pulled back on planned battery factories.
Unsold new EVs are piling up on dealer lots, spurring aggressive discounting.
“No one wants to buy used EVs,” as Fortune reports, leaving EV used-car values in free fall.
According to one industry executive, the situation “has the potential to destroy billions” of dollars in value for auto firms.
1 – By law, the credit in the Inflation Reduction Act is supposedly available only when purchasing vehicles built with materials sourced primarily in the U.S.
2 – However, nearly all battery materials are currently foreign-made and will remain so for ages.
3 – An Inflation Reduction Act exception allowing credit for leased vehicles built with foreign materials. Evidently, the pen is mightier than the miner.
4 – Thus, leasing has soared to over half of all EV sales in America, as leasing is the only way to capture the federal $7,500 tax credit for most EVs.
The American government provides incentives and tax deductions to transition society to EVs, but those incentives are financial incentives for the continuation of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction “Elsewhere.” Is it ethical and moral to provide financial support to developing countries that are mining for exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries for Americans?
The putative EV revolution is stalling for three main reasons, and not because of “dead robots” or the other road bumps in recent news. What will happen is that:
We’ll run out of money to subsidize the common folk.
We’ll run out of copper and other foreign-sourced special metals.
Car drivers will run out of patience in putting up with inconveniences.
International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global gasoline consumption in 2023 blew past the pre-lockdown 2019 peak, even with roughly 30 million EVs on the world’s roads, up from near zero a decade ago. The primary reason may be that EVs are mainly 2nd vehicles with low mileage vs the high mileage workhorse vehicles that are internal combustion engines.
The CO2 emissions arising from building an EV before it gets driven revolve around a simple fact: a typical EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. That half-ton battery is made from a wide range of minerals, including copper, nickel, aluminum, graphite, and lithium. Accessing those minerals requires digging up and processing some 250 tons of earth per vehicle, mostly in poorer developing countries with minimal labor laws and environmental regulations.
The battery pack is a complex electrochemical system made from hundreds or thousands of parts, including sensors, safety systems, cooling or heating systems, and a boatload of power electronics.
The underlying material requirements from developing countries are the single constraint that will cause the EV to stall out before other factors kick in. All the world’s mines, both currently operating and planned, can supply only a small fraction of the 700 percent to 4,000 percent increase in various minerals like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other rare earth elements that are essential components in many of today’s rapidly growing electricity technologies that will be needed to meet the wildly ambitious EV goals.
The rate of EV adoption is currently braking before there’s a battery-dominated future because, again, we’ll run out of money, copper, etc., and political tolerance for enriching other nations — especially China, where 50 percent to 90 percent of the critical materials are now controlled and produced and will be for years yet to come, no matter how lawmakers rewrite the sourcing regulations.
Again, the elites have bought them and will continue to buy them, BUT we’re running out of elites to buy EVs!
There can little doubting the Today programme’s view on Labour’s decision to finally slay their proposed £28 billion green elephant.
Keir Starmer’s abandonment of the pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green projects is a terrible idea which will deprive Britain of the massive wealth which Joe Biden has created with his Inflation Reduction Act. It will fry us and drown us.
I know it must be true because I heard it this morning on the Today programme. There were no fewer than five separate items on it, by my count.
First we had Justin Rowlatt telling us we are all going to go to hell in a handcart because global temperature last year averaged 1.5 Celsius above 19th century levels. The Telegraph has the story.
Then we had Prof Sir Bob Watson, former chair of the IPCC, telling us that the Earth’s weather “far exceeds anything that is unacceptable” – as if it were somehow something that is decided by world leaders.
That comment says much about the mentality of people who populate these international global non-government organisations: they really do see themselves as gods. Watson went on to claim that climate change is damaging agricultural productivity when data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation shows the direct opposite – that yields for most of the world’s most important crops are increasing.
Then there was Barry Gardiner, Labour’s former climate change spokesman, hauled on the show and invited by Nick Robinson to say that Starmer had got it utterly wrong, and allowed to spew out spurious guesstimates on how much climate change is costing the UK.
“Storms are getting bigger,” he said, again directly contradicting the evidence – the State of the Climate report published annually by the Royal Meteorological Society shows a distinct downwards trend in average and extreme wind speeds in the UK in the past 30 years.
It has come to something when Dale Vince comes across as the – relative – voice of reason, suggesting that it might actually be bad thing for the Labour Party first to review public finances before it piles another £28 billion a year on the massive debts that face future generations.
In vain did I wait for someone on the Today programme to make the point that previous attempts by UK governments to subsidise green industries – like the infamous Britishvolt factory in Northumberland – haven’t exactly created wealth or jobs.
I waited, too, for someone to argue that actually Biden’s green bungs aren’t the only story behind the US having faster economic growth than Britain.
Chinese solar manufacturers are building factories in the U.S. to reap American subsidies created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Companies based in China are responsible for about 25% of the 80 gigawatts in new solar manufacturing capacity announced in the U.S. since the IRA became law in August 2022 and established robust tax credit programs to incentivize domestic green energy production, according to the WSJ. Assuming that the factory construction and expected outputs announced by these China-based solar companies stay on schedule, they could reap a combined $1.4 billion worth of value from IRA subsidies each year.
The fact that China-based companies could capture IRA subsidies contradicts one of the key goals of the IRA, which was to serve as a key tool for developing a domestic green energy supply chain, according to the WSJ. The Chinese companies using subsidiaries or partnerships to get in on the IRA subsidies include LONGi and Trina Solar. (RELATED: Chinese Solar Companies Have Been Dodging Tariffs, Biden Admin Says)
Leon Panetta Says China Could Use Dem-Backed Battery Factory To Spy On America https://t.co/vmSnfa3j9w
“We definitely don’t want to miss the wave,” Steven Zhu, the president of Trina’s U.S. operations, told the WSJ in reference to the subsidies made available by the IRA.
The supply chains of both Trina Solar and LONGi are reportedly linked to forced labor of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a 2023 analysis published by Sheffield Hallam University.
China dominates the global supply and refining capacity for the raw materials needed to mass-manufacture green energy-related products, and approximately 80% of the world’s solar panel production happens within China’s borders, according to the WSJ. Even though production costs are still higher in the U.S. with the help of subsidies, some Chinese companies are deciding that it is still worthwhile to set up shop in the American market.
Several of the companies that are anticipating access to IRA tax credits have shifted their production to other Asian countries in the past as American policy and tariffs changed, according to the WSJ. A White House spokesman told the WSJ that the China-based solar companies bringing operations to the U.S. with the IRA’s help mark a reversal in the decades-long trend of American jobs being offshored to China.
The potential for Chinese companies cashing in on IRA subsidies is not confined to solar manufacturing. Gotion, Inc., a subsidiary of the China-based electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech, is poised to major subsidized facilities in Illinois and Michigan despite opposition from locals and lawmakers stemming from Gotion High-Tech’s extensiveties to the Chinese Communist Party, which the Daily Caller News Foundation has covered in depth.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request 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.
The recently released North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s annual assessment of the U.S. electricity grid was ominous: “A large portion of the North American BPS (bulk power system, referring to power generation only) is at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions.” (emphasis added throughout)
NERC’s annual report, the Winter Reliability Assessment for the upcoming winter period (December 2023–February 2024), designated almost half the U.S. as having an “elevated risk” of insufficient operating reserves of power generation during extreme weather. Operating reserves are electricity supplies that are not being used but can quickly come online in the case of an unplanned event such as an equipment malfunction or fuel supply disruption. NERC also said that the risk of electricity shortages is even greater this year than last year.
Why has the U.S. electric grid, the world’s most technologically advanced nation, become so vulnerable to failure? NERC answers that question in the second paragraph of the press release: the increased use of heat pumps and electric heaters and the growth of intermittent electricity resources, like solar generation.
Here are the direct quotes from the “Announcement:”
As electric heat pumps and heating systems become more prevalent, their combined effect on system demand is even more pronounced, and
The growth of intermittent resources, like solar generation, on the distribution system significantly increases load forecasting complexity and uncertainty.
In other words, the “electrify everything” movement, including the war on natural gas, plus the over-building of wind turbines and solar panels due to massive federal subsidies, is destroying America’s power grid.
The next question is, why is this happening? The answer is simple: misguided federal energy policies. The U.S. power grid has been compromised by national governmental policies that “nudge” and mandate behavior through federal subsidies and regulations. These federal actions are destroying the integrity and ability of the U.S. power grid to perform reliably as it has for the last 150 years.
On the demand side, NERC sees the federal government policies to electrify everything as problematic, resulting in electricity demand faster than the infrastructure can be built to provide it. Changes are needed in national policies that will increase electricity demand faster than the power grid can handle it, including policies that encourage car buyers to buy electric vehicles, including:
Inflation Reduction Act of 2022: This act adds and expands tax credits for purchases of E.V.s, provides incentives to electrify heavy-duty vehicles like school buses, and funds the installation of E.V. charging infrastructure.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 2021 creates a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations.
E.V. Acceleration Challenge, which provides funding to expand E.V. fleets
Federal Sustainability Plan requires federal agencies to transition their fleets to all-electric by acquiring 100% light-duty zero-emission vehicles annually by 2027.
Regarding heat pumps, the replacement of existing and the installation of new residential and industrial heat pumps are being funded by many federal programs and agency loan/grant programs that include:
Inflation Reduction Act, 48C which provides $10 billion in manufacturing tax credits to install industrial heat pumps
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 2021 includes $400 million for small and medium-sized manufacturers to install heat pumps.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program offers various grants and loans for agricultural heat pump applications.
Federal laws, regulations, and government grants have distorted power grids by funding an over-supply of intermittent electricity generators, mainly wind turbines and solar panels.
Two of the worst federal programs responsible for the over-supply of wind and solar generation are the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). The Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides tax credits of $ 27.50 per megawatt-hour for electricity generated by wind and solar projects that begin construction before January 2, 2025. (On his “Power Hungry Podcast,” Robert Bryce had a fantastic discussion with Travis Fisher on this topic).
By Federal law, financial-related measures passed through the reconciliation process, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, can only last ten years. But, Congress found a clever way to get around that statute, as explained on the EPA website:
Starting January 1, 2025, the Inflation Reduction Act replaces the traditional PTC with the Clean Energy Production Tax Credit and the traditional ITC with the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit.
Instead of expiring ten years from the date the IRA was passed through reconciliation, the IRA changed the PTC and ITC to the Clean Energy Production Tax Credit on January 1, 2025, which never expires. The EPA website explains:
Through at least 2025, the Inflation Reduction Act extends the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of 30% and Production Tax Credit (PTC) of $0.0275/kWh (2023 value), as long as projects meet prevailing wage & apprenticeship requirements for projects over 1 MW.
For systems placed in service on or after January 1, 2025, the Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit and the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit will replace the traditional PTC / ITC.
The IRA does not specify when this tax credit expires, meaning it exists in perpetuity. The IRA’s framers may have thought they were clever, but the Supreme Court will likely weigh in on this sleight-of-hand name change.
My take: The U.S. economy’s most essential and fundamental component is its power grid. Without a stable power grid, the economy cannot function, and civil society will cease to exist. If the power grid fails, GDP will decline, and unemployment will skyrocket. This dangerous situation was not a natural occurrence and not an accident. Federal policies created it.
The potentially deadly combination of EPA policies that drive coal- and natural-gas-fired electric generation from the nation’s power grids, the “Electrify Everything” movement, the war on natural gas, and never-ending wind and solar subsidies are now undermining the U.S. economy.
Radical changes are needed throughout the federal government to get U.S. energy policies back to reality.
The whole Green New Deal is falling apart right before our very eyes. Offshore wind is collapsing. Biden’s favorite electric bus company Proterra just filed for bankruptcy…
Morano: “Everything is collapsing on its own now. You can no longer virtue signal this nonsense. We had world leaders at UN summit all proclaim to limit the earth’s temperature to two degrees all go to 1.5 as though they were playing The Price is Righ spinning a giant dial.
It’s no longer possible, as you just laid out, Jesse, on every metric of Biden’s green energy agenda. It is in complete collapse. And this is the key part despite the massive Inflation Reduction Act –so called. Despite subsidies, mandates, tax credits, and I’m talking about not just now but subsidies for many years in the future… It’s easier to transition your gender than your energy. It’s just not happening… This is a celebration. They’re collapsing; it’s time to celebrate.”
Jesse Watters: Primetime has just scored another big victory. The whales have received the stay of execution, along with my beach views. We’ve been telling you for months that Biden’s offshore wind projects are destroying the Jersey Shore. But just yesterday, the Danish Windmill company pulled the plug on two massive projects off the Jersey coast. The company’s admitting Bidenomics doesn’t work. Despite billions and giveaways the windmills still won’t work. They won’t make money because of high rates of inflation and China. But that’s not all. Offshore wind farms in Massachusetts were just cancelled. Offshore wind in Connecticut is collapsing. And offshore wind projects in New York are about to get canceled.
The whole Green New Deal is falling apart right before our very eyes. Biden’s favorite electric bus company Proterra just filed for bankruptcy. It’s what happens when your buses catch on fire. General Motors and Honda just killed their low-price electric car joint venture. Ford just stopped work on their new Michigan electric battery plant. The company is losing $36,000 per Evie per Biden’s handing out $7,000 coupons to buy electric cars and no one’s buying them. This is what happens when companies make cars for politicians instead of companies making cars for customers. No one even thought to ask the customers if they wanted an electric car.
The smart money is an oil. That’s right. Exxon Mobil and Hess have discovered 11 billion barrels of oil off the coast of South America. It’s the biggest discovery in a decade. It appears we’re going to run out of minerals for batteries before we run out of oil for cars.
Joe Biden tried to run our economy like Joe Stalin. But just like the Soviet Union, the math doesn’t add up. And now billions of dollars are gone. And all we have are cars that never made it off the lot and windmills that never made it out of the warehouse. Now we find no Democrats, and I do. We’re about to witness one of the biggest green bailouts in history. Marc Morano is the Climate Depot publisher and author of the Green Fraud. Did you see this coming?
Morano: I hate to say I told you so. But absolutely. I was working in the US Senate Environment Public Works Committee when what was really the first governor to make a splash with climate, was Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. He did it 2006, the California climate bill, the Global Warming Solutions Act, and he was praised as a man saving the planet. It was the ultimate virtue signal. Well guess what? Many other governors, Senators, countries, all wanted in on that virtue signal. So for decades, they kept coming up with the net zero the solar, the wind mandates, the tax credits, the subsidies, and it was small enough that it didn’t really affect the energy mix, or we weren’t feeling it, obviously enough.
And all of this happened as well as the Inflation Reduction Act last year. Everything is collapsing on its own now. You can no longer virtue signal this nonsense. We had world leaders at UN summit all proclaim to limit the earth’s temperature to two degrees all go to 1.5 as though they were playing The Price is Righ spinning a giant dial.
It’s no longer possible, as you just laid out, Jesse, on every metric of Biden’s green energy agenda. It is in complete collapse. And this is the key part despite the massive Inflation Reduction Act –so called. Despite subsidies, mandates, tax credits, and I’m talking about not just now but subsidies for many years in the future. And you’re right. We look to Europe to see the future. Germany is already bailing out offshore wind, they’re already going to double down and start bailing out. A report came out and said we have to spend 75 trillion on these green energy mandates.
It’s easier to transition your gender than your energy. It’s just not happening.
Jesse Watters: Marc, How arrogant you have to be to think you all of a sudden can just build all brand new cars, all brand new energy, put windmills all up and down the coast, put solar panels all over and just change the entire world economy like that. How arrogant you have to be?
We asked the question: ‘Where are the Volvo driving, save the whale liberals, when you need them? Well, the liberals came out and now you have 50 mayors in New Jersey opposing the offshore wind.
This is arrogance at its height. You can’t manage an energy economy. Before save the planet, you need to save the people in it. They forgot that simple rule, and they literally came up with their 5, 10, 20-year plans, and they’re not backing down. This green energy failure is only proof that they haven’t spent enough, or mandated enough.
This is a celebration. They’re collapsing; it’s time to celebrate.
Climate Depot’s Morano: “The Treasury Dept report is complete nonsense. The report claims that ‘climate change’ will have ‘substantial financial costs,’ create unemployment, food shortages, inflation, and make energy bills rise. The Treasury report has it completely backward: it is the Biden administration’s climate & energy policies that are already having ‘substantial financial costs,’ creating unemployment, food shortages, inflation, and making energy bills rise.”
Morano: “Everything is collapsing on its own now. You can no longer virtue signal this nonsense. We had world leaders at UN summit all proclaim to limit the earth’s temperature to two degrees all go to 1.5 as though they were playing The Price is Righ spinning a giant dial.
It’s no longer possible, as you just laid out, Jesse, on every metric of Biden’s green energy agenda. It is in complete collapse. And this is the key part despite the massive Inflation Reduction Act –so called. Despite subsidies, mandates, tax credits, and I’m talking about not just now but subsidies for many years in the future…
It’s easier to transition your gender than your energy. It’s just not happening…
This is a celebration. They’re collapsing; it’s time to celebrate.”
Alaska grift is reaching new levels to comport with the Inflation Reduction Act (aka Green New Deal). Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, all-in with Green Globalism, has appointed a energy security task force of cronies who lack real experience in or affinity with the state’s oil and gas sector.
“Why is a conservative pro-development governor pushing for policies that are counterproductive to natural resource development?”
“The Alaska Energy Security Task Force report does not mention maximizing the use of the abundant energy sources we have in our state today, such as coal, in-state refining, or the incentivization of production in the Cook Inlet where, according to the USGS, we are not in a natural gas shortage situation.”
Alaska grift is reaching new levels to comport with the Inflation Reduction Act (aka Green New Deal). Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, all-in with Green Globalism, has appointed a energy security task force of cronies who lack real experience in or affinity with the state’s oil and gas sector. Instead of inciting investment in Alaska’s prolific resource base, Biden’s obstruction and subsidy bribery will risk making the state a federal enclave, with its top import being federal dollars. With the feds owning 60 percent of the land in the state, they have a club in the closet.
“I think what we’re seeing from the federal government is an elevation of climate change and other sorts of ideological considerations over an acknowledgement of the need for energy security and affordability in Alaska,” stated Department of Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle, who pointed to the feds as “squarely responsible” for the lack of investment in the state and for “intimidating industry.”
Governor Dunleavy followed up by saying:
What we are seeing is a forced conversion to another type of approach to energy that is not being market driven.
and
When you sell uncertainty across the board, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that investors are hesitant to invest, especially in a place like Alaska.
These quotations sound nice, but on closer examination Governor Dunleavy is of a different stripe, and certainly out of step as a Republican in the state. In fact, Alaska politicians are working with Washington to implement Biden’s whole-of-government approach to climate and energy. At the same time, the state faces a growing scarcity of natural gas and increasing energy prices because of a lack of incentives for reinvestment in Alaska’s huge resource base.
Both the Governor and the Commissioner referenced the federal cancellation of leases in 2021 in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a factor in industry hesitation to move forward with investment in the Cook Inlet. The two faces of the administration are on full display.
On February 23, 2023, Governor Dunleavy issued an administrative order establishing the Alaska Energy Security Task Force to
develop a comprehensive statewide energy plan that will evaluate energy generation, distribution, and transmission for the State of Alaska and its communities. The development of this plan will include collaboration with public and private stakeholders.
This task force, and the subcommittees within it, held a series of meetings between April 25 and October 3, 2023, when the initial draft was first published.
Although it was not written into the administrative order, Dunleavy charged the task force with creating a plan that gets Alaskan electricity rates to 10¢/kWh. (The 10¢/kWh goal is referenced in the draft plan.)
Much of the concern around Alaska’s energy security has been centered on the notion that the natural gas supply in the Cook Inlet, supporting 80 percent of the power generation for the largest population center in Alaska, is declining.
The report is broken into 6 different focus areas – Railbelt, Coastal, Rural, State Energy Data, Incentives-and-Subsidies, and Statutes-and-Regulations.
The Railbelt proposed actions include adopting clean energy standards and significantly increasing load to drive down energy rates.
Within the Coastal areas: Actions include integrating heat pumps, moving industrial data centers near to hydropower facilities, incorporating battery energy storage systems, strengthening net metering, streamlining regulatory and land use administrative processes, prioritizing state funding to match federal dollars, establishing another bureaucratic entity “Alaska/Federal Renewable Energy Policy Force” to advance renewable energy transmission lines in federal lands and to foster, support and assist hydropower development.
Within the Rural areas: Actions include funding and constructing opportunities to connect rural communities through transmission lines and other shared projects and exploring opportunities to modernize rural grids.
The State Energy Data, Incentives-and-Subsidies, and Statutes-and-Regulations sections make up a little less than half of the entire report. The State Energy Data section proposes more government, e.g., a new Data Department and a data governance committee. Incentives and Subsidies has the highest count of action items listed under it and includes Establishing a state and/or federal Alaska Clean Energy and Transmission Line Fund or Alaska Energy Transition Fund to “Overcome the tyranny of distance.” It also includes the suggestion to “strengthen state and local procurement policies to provide preference for affordable and clean energy projects,” as well as establishing a Green Bank.
The Statutes and Regulations section recommends: “Maximize future optionality for use of Alaska sourced fossil fuels by monitoring and evaluating third party development of carbon capture and sequestration technologies and passing legislation establishing a regulatory framework for the geologic storage of carbon.” And of course they want to codify the clean energy standard, as well as codify the additional state spending to “Create a Data Department with the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA), using statute as necessary.”
Aside from the mention of an extraordinarily expensive long-shot LNG export pipeline, the Alaska Energy Security Task Force report does not mention maximizing the use of the abundant energy sources we have in our state today, such as coal, in-state refining, or even the incentivization of production in the Cook Inlet, where, according to the USGS, we are not in a natural gas shortage situation.
Inner Debate
The meeting minutes captured some of the disconnect between means and ends.
Mr. [Tony] Izzo [of Matanuska Electric Association] explained that he understood the discussion of 10 cents per kWh energy by 2030 to be a vision, similar to the vision of putting a man on the moon safely by the end of the decade.… Mr. Izzo gave the example that he believes that 10-cent power could be achieved for the majority of the Railbelt in 2024 with a large down payment of over a billion dollars to pay off debt and an annual subsidy of approximately $500 million to pay for the fuel.
He gave as another example that if MEA no longer had employee payroll, including himself, the price per kWh could decrease by 1.7 cents, from 20 cents to 18.3 cents, but the lights would probably not be on very often because no one would be there to run the plant or to conduct maintenance. He discussed that the more common sense recommendation could be to use the borrowing power of the annual payment to build an infrastructure….
So there is an imaginary billion dollars laying out there to do this? How does this result in 10¢/kWh power? I would love to have a $20 house payment if someone would just give me $600k.
The first round of public testimony on this plan was held on October 10, 2023. It was a two-hour session in the middle of a workday and only three members of the public testified. There were concerns about the condensed timeline and the unrealistic expectation of the public reading a one-hundred-and-thirty-page document over the weekend to present meaningful comments by the following Tuesday.
On October 20th, the draft plan was updated with significant changes, again leaving only a weekend for the public to figure out what had changed from the original.
The second round of testimony on October 24th, held after the workday, had far more participation. Much of the testimony centered around the timeline for review, with others (including myself) calling out the absurdity of missing cost analysis, any resemblance to the real world, and hypocrisy of leaving out maximizing the use of abundant sources of energy we have in our own state. This is nothing other than Inflation Reduction Act implementation plan based on wild suppositions and conditions that do not exist.
State residents are obviously not very interested in “energy transition investments” (coming in at #13 out of #17) versus affordable, reliable energy for economic and personal progress.
One notable testifier, John Hendrix, owner of the only Alaska-owned oil and gas company currently operating and largest acreage position in the Cook Inlet, commented that he had not been approached by the committee to talk about the looming gas shortage in the Cook Inlet. He expressed concern on the makeup of the task force – appointed members that are not part of the production process. He spoke about renewables and all the federal money as a threat and asked the committee why he should invest if they – Alaska and the feds – want to get rid of us? He commented for the record that 65 percent of the world’s fertilizer comes from natural gas and asked – “who dies and who doesn’t?”
Two-faced Governor
Governor Dunleavy’s press conference materials mentioned a Cook Inlet volume gap only to say that production would be incentivized to a profit share (from a royalty share) and only for new development, not existing.
Considering the plans from his State of the State address in January when he introduced the carbon management legislation, he made his intentions clear on the fate of the Cook Inlet: hydrogen and carbon sequestration. [1]
Governor Dunleavy has never stated he would change his mind if presented different facts. He sells his Biden bias with talk about an ‘all in’ energy strategy. Make no mistake: all-of-the-above is code for politically correct energies crowding out the economic. And who other than our governor gave a keynote speech at the SuperReturn International Conference for Private Equity in Germany on Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG).
Dunleavy blames the feds for overreach and on the other hand appoints a task force all about gobbling up federal dollars from the IRA in the name of Alaska’s energy security, not to mention the carbon management legislation. His dog whistle is in part damage control with the average voter. Why is a conservative pro-development governor pushing for policies that are counterproductive to natural resource development?
Third Draft Revision Needed
Interestingly, Governor Dunleavy had a press conference yesterday (10/26) to discuss the energy security for the Railbelt and to incentivize natural gas production in the Cook Inlet. A release to the media included thoughts around the Cook Inlet natural gas gap due to an looming shortage, the announcement that legislation was coming next session, and shared that there was a change in the upcoming lease agreement, a change from royalty share to profit share.
Oddly, existing leases are not affected. If this was truly about increasing production, why would they exclude existing leases from this royalty change? After the hundreds of hours spent in the task force meetings and the resulting draft of a master energy plan, this issue as discussed in the press conference was not mentioned one time. Was this meant as a surprise announcement or was this a knee-jerk reaction to the scathing testimony on the draft plan? Will there be a third revision to the draft plan?
Conclusion
Alaska is on a troubled energy path. Specifically, our state government has unanimously codified promising to “coordinate governmental functions” by “actively collaborating with federal agencies to achieve the state’s energy goals and to meet emissions, renewable alternative energy, and energy production targets” (see Appendix below). A reversal is required, and transparency and publicity will awaken our citizens to achieve just that.
Action Needed – The Alaska Energy Security Task Force is taking written comments through October 30th, 5 PM AKST – info@akenergysecuritytaskforce.com
[1] After giving lip service to oil and gas, Governor Dunleavy stated “… our potential will allow us to emerge as the global leader in new forms of low- and no-carbon energy…. With support for our carbon monetization bill, we’ll change the conversation about new revenue from the tired thinking of the past. Experts in this emerging industry have informed us that we can realize revenue to the tune of billions of dollars per year by creating a carbon management system. We’ve been told by some that we can generate as much as $30 billion or more over 20 years, just from our forest lands. That’s an absolute game-changer.”
APPENDIX (AS 44.99.115)
The State of Alaska recognizes that the state’s economic prosperity is dependent on available, reliable, and affordable residential, commercial, and industrial energy to supply the state’s electric, heating, and transportation needs. The state also recognizes that worldwide supply and demand for fossil fuels and concerns about global climate change will affect the price of fossil fuels consumed by Alaskans and exported from the state to other markets. In establishing a state energy policy, the state further recognizes the immense diversity of the state’s geography, cultures, and resource availability. Therefore, it is the policy of the state to
(1) institute a comprehensive and coordinated approach to supporting energy efficiency and conservation by
(A) encouraging statewide energy efficiency codes for new and renovated residential, commercial, and public buildings;
(B) decreasing public building energy consumption through conservation measures and energy-efficient technologies; and
(C) initiating and supporting a program to educate state residents on the benefits of energy efficiency and conservation, including dissemination of information on state and federal programs that reward energy efficiency;
(2) encourage economic development by
(A) promoting the development of renewable and alternative energy resources, including geothermal, wind, solar, hydroelectric, hydrokinetic, tidal, and biomass energy, for use by Alaskans;
(B) promoting the development, transport, and efficient use of nonrenewable and alternative energy resources, including natural gas, coal, oil, gas hydrates, heavy oil, and nuclear energy, for use by Alaskans and for export;
(C) working to identify and assist with development of the most cost-effective, long-term sources of energy for each community statewide;
(D) creating and maintaining a state fiscal regime and permitting and regulatory processes that encourage private sector development of the state’s energy resources; and
(E) promoting the efficiency of energy used for transportation;
(3) support energy research, education, and workforce development by investing in
(A) training and education programs that will help create jobs for Alaskans and that address energy conservation, efficiency, and availability, including programs that address workforce development and workforce transition; and
(B) applied energy research and development of alternative and emerging technologies, including university programs, to achieve reductions in state energy costs and stimulate industry investment in the state;
(4) coordinate governmental functions
(A) by reviewing and streamlining regulatory processes and balancing the economic costs of review with the level of regulation necessary to protect the public interest;
(B) by using one office or agency, as may be specified by law, to serve as a clearinghouse in managing the state’s energy-related functions to avoid fragmentation and duplication and to increase effectiveness; and
(C) by actively collaborating with federal agencies to achieve the state’s energy goals and to meet emissions, renewable and alternative energy, and energy production targets.————————-
Kassie Andrews is a long time Alaska resident with a particular interest in natural resources and energy policy. Also see her earlier blog at MasterResource, Alaska Energy vs. Woke Government.
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Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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