Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Biden White House readies national Net-Zero emissions building initiative

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

Residential and commercial buildings throughout the United States are in the bull’s eye of a White House plan “intended to help move the building sector to net-zero emissions.”

A “pre-decisional” draft quietly circulating since December outlines the vast scope of an initiative aimed at nothing less than the decarbonization of one of the nation’s largest economic sectors. 

bto-national-definition-zero-emissions-building-122023Herunterladen

“A broadly accepted minimum definition of a zero-emissions building, as well as a pathway for documentation, is foundational to efforts by public and private entities to transition the building sector to zero greenhouse gas emissions,” the draft states. “The intent of the National Definition of a Zero Emissions Building is to create a standardized, consistent, measurable basis for zero emissions buildings.”

“This clear market signal and consistent target, backed by measurable data, is intended to help move the building sector to zero emissions,” the White House draft continues. “The definition may serve as a framework that users can achieve through multiple pathways to influence the design and operation of buildings to substantially reduce building sector emissions.”

And which buildings are to be included in this definition? “This definition can be applied to existing buildings and to new construction of non-federally owned buildings,” the White House explains. “The definition applies to whole building operational emissions, including those from tenants.”

To meet the administration’s net-zero emissions criteria, a building must be highly energy efficient, free of on-site emissions from energy use, and powered solely from “clean energy,” defined as “carbon-free sources.”

Verification of each building’s compliance with the zero-emissions regime is a key element of the Biden program. “EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager will generate standardized documentation that can be independently verified through licensed professionals and/or third-party certification bodies or others as determined by organizations using the zero-emissions building definition.”

A Roadmap to Control

Anyone wishing to know how the administrative state seizes power needs look no further than the White House’s net-zero building emissions plan. It starts with a “broadly accepted minimum definition of a zero-emissions building … to transition the building sector to zero greenhouse gas emissions.” The White House fails to say by whom the definition is “broadly accepted” but quickly moves on to a scheme that will put the federal government in every building – existing and not yet constructed – in every community in the country.

Several well-trodden pathways are at its disposal, including regulation of fossil-fuel sources of energy that might otherwise make their way into buildings. Another is EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, who is accountable to absolutely no one but nevertheless has the power to generate standardized documentation that can be “independently verified” by third parties with a financial stake in the net-zero program. The White House draft places no restrictions on the size of the buildings subject to the program, meaning even smaller structures could fall under its net.

Building Codes

The administration’s move comes amid a nationwide fight — playing out in such places as North Carolina, Michigan, and Idaho — over efforts to adopt “climate-friendly” building codes at the state and local levels. Climate advocates, often under the banner of energy efficiency, demand that building codes for homes be updated to include thicker insulation, super airtight windows, and upgraded wiring to accommodate all-electric appliances and in-home chargers for EVs.

With home prices already at record-high levels, the 140,000 members of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) are mobilizing against state and local efforts to enact what are said to be more energy- efficient building codes for residences. Last year, NFIB’s North Carolina affiliate successfully lobbied against a Tarheel State plan to tighten energy efficiency standards designed to lower the carbon footprint of residential buildings. Ron Jackson, a home builder in predominantly rural Moore County, worried that the code would put the affordable housing he specializes in out of reach for nurses, police officers, and teachers.

“All that energy code was going to do in my price range is make it where the working man and woman would not be able to buy a home,” he told The Washington Post (Feb. 25). Jackson, who sells homes in the $250,000 range, cited figures from NAHB’s North Carolina affiliate, saying the code would add $20,000 to the price of such a home. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/21/homebuilders-energy-efficiency-climate/

What the White House says is merely a “definition” of a zero-emission building won’t stay a definition for long. It will be a launching pad for regulations – ideally at the federal, state, and local levels – that mandate which materials can go into a green building. Politically connected purveyors of those materials stand to profit handsomely from this arrangement.

On the other hand, prospective home buyers, particularly those on a tight budget, will ultimately pay the price exacted by the administrative regulatory state and its partners, the climate cartel.

Biden’s Impossible Dream: US Wind & Solar Energy ‘Transition’ Pure Fantasy

From STOP THESE THINGS

Believe the MSM, and you’d think that the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is a race that’s already won. Peel the onion back, however, and you’ll find a very different picture, indeed. The wilder claims from rent-seekers the louder the cheers of witless approval from the stands.

At present, the USA and Australia are running neck and neck in a contest to make the most outlandish promises about an all wind and sun powered future, where, we are told, electricity will be free, plentiful and as clean as a whistle.

There is an adage about telling big lies, so often, that the audience will, inevitably, believe every last bit of it.

So it is with the narrative that surrounds the so-called ‘net-zero energy transition’. The Australian’s Adam Creighton unpacks that glittering falsehood, below.

US energy transition? Don’t hold your breath waiting
The Australian
Adam Creighton
27 July 2023

A casual perusal of the news would leave anyone with the impression we’re well on the way to the sunlit uplands of our net-zero future, where the vast bulk of our energy is supplied by the wind and the sun.

In reality we’ve barely started the transition and it’s not going to happen, despite the trillions of dollars already thrown at the effort around the world. Last year, about 3 per cent of the world’s energy was supplied by wind and solar power, and only 4 per cent in the US – the remainder overwhelmingly came from coal, oil, gas and nuclear power stations.

Talk of transition has been conducted in inverse proportion to the actual transition. Science and economics have got in the way. The cost of batteries already has started to increase as government mandates to buy electric cars (new combustion engine cars won’t be available in California, for instance, after 2035) kick in.

Indeed, to accommodate the desired rollout of electric vehicles, the mining and processing of the minerals that underpin them, such as cobalt, nickel and lithium, would need to increase by several thousand per cent by 2040, according to Mark Mills, an energy expert at the Manhattan Institute.

“If it were to be achievable, it would be the largest single increase in demand or the supply of metals in all of human history,” he said earlier this year at an energy conference in New York.

A lesser known reason the transition is likely to prove elusive is the vast, unrealistic, increase required in the length and quality of transmission networks, as evidenced by research in the US published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“While the United States is building more transmission, the current pace of investment is well below what would be required for the net-zero future,” three economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the universities of California and Michigan conclude in their paper, entitled Transmission Impossible.

Unlike, coal, gas and nuclear power stations, which can be built relatively close to centres of energy demand, wind and solar power generation must be located in windy and sunny locations.

In the US, wind power stations are in the middle of the country, in states such as Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, which alone accounts for 26 per cent of US wind generation. California produces 27 per cent of the nation’s solar power, almost as much as the next three states combined. No matter how much those regions produce, the power is trapped, surplus to local requirements and unable to reach other parts of the country – in other words, those areas that will be forced to foot the bill.

“There are hundreds of locations mostly in the middle of the country that now experience negative electricity prices during more than 20 per cent of all hours,” study authors Nancy Rose, Lucas Davis and Catherine Hausman find. In Australia the government has earmarked $20bn to build an extra 10,000km of transmission lines. The situation is more challenging in the US, with more dispersed population centres and a patchwork grid of poles and wires, often up to 100 years old.

“Even the least aggressive scenario entails more than a doubling of transmission capacity by 2050 … It is difficult to overstate the scope of such an increase,” the study authors argue, pointing out that the cost would exceed the historically huge investment in the national highway system that began under Dwight Eisenhower, a project that occurred across a 35-year period.

As the world is gearing up to supercharge battery production it will need vast amounts of manpower, steel, transformers and copper to achieve such an enormous expansion of the grid.

To rely exclusively on wind and solar power to reach the Biden administration’s net-zero 2050 target (nuclear power is not popular) would require “three, four or five-fold” increases in transmission capacity by 2050. In other words, absent some epoch-changing technological development, it’s not going to happen.

In May, author and energy expert Robert Bryce calculated it would take the US, at current rates of transmission expansion, about 80 years to expand the existing network by 57 per cent.

Focusing on cost alone ignores the political and regulatory difficulty of co-ordinating new power lines across local and state jurisdictions, as well as pushback from local energy suppliers who won’t want to see new power lines that reduce consumers’ energy costs.

Possibly because of that, the bulk of the fiscal cost of the climate change provisions in the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, which amount to about $US400bn ($591.5bn) in total, relates to incentives to buy electric cars and for more wind and solar generation capacity.

It is true solar and wind power have declined significantly in cost in recent years, enabling rich nations to diversify their power supplies. But cost comparisons typically ignore the vast sums required to be spent on improving the transmission grid, which of course will be passed on to consumers via higher power prices.

For all the rhetoric about transition, it’s hard to see such an immense diversion of resources taking place. If it does, the “gold plating” problem that pushed up prices last decade will seem like a rounding error as investors in poles and wires recoup their costs from customers.

The fervour for the “clean energy transition”, including the widespread belief that it’s happening, is a triumph of politics over science and economics. In truth the world has no chance of becoming like renewable energy poster child Norway, which is unique in terms of its hydro-electric potential and extremely wealthy thanks to its vast oil and gas reserves it exports to the rest of the world.
The Australian

We apologise for this break in the transition, we’ll resume as soon as the ice melts.

Joe Biden must declare a climate emergency.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

We’ve passed into a ferocious new phase of global heating with much worse to come. Biden must declare a climate emergency.

I’m terrified by what’s being done to our planet. I’m also fighting to stop it. You, too, should be afraid while also taking the strongest action you can take. There has never been a summer like this in recorded history: shocking ocean heat, deadly land heat, unprecedented fires and smoke, sea ice melting faster than we’ve ever seen or thought possible. I’ve dreaded this depth of Earth breakdown for almost two decades, and, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been trying to warn you. As hard as I could. Now it’s here.

And mark my words: it’s all still just getting started. So long as we burn fossil fuels, far, far worse is on the way; and I take zero satisfaction in knowing that this will be proven right, too, with a certainty as non-negotiable and merciless as the physics behind fossil-fueled global heating. Instead, I only feel fury at those in power, and bottomless grief for all that I love. We are losing Earth on our watch. The Amazon rainforest may already be past its tipping point. Coral reefs as we know them will be gone from our planet by mid-century, and possibly much earlier given this surge in sea-surface temperatures. These are cosmic losses. And as a father, I grieve for my children.

Fossil fuels are causing this damage. Therefore, the only way out of this heat nightmare is to end them. No amount of tree planting, recycling, carbon offsetting, or wishful carbon-capture thinking will ever change this. The longer we allow the fossil fuel industry to exist, the more irreversible damage to Earth the people who profit from it will continue to knowingly cause. We are careening toward fossil-fueled heatwaves that will kill over a million people in single events. And it will not plateau there: more fossil fuels, more heat, more death. The only way out is to end fossil fuels.

Biden’s refusal to declare a climate emergency and his eagerness to push new pipelines and new drilling – at an even faster pace than Trump – goes against science, goes against common sense, goes against life on Earth. In the world of politics-as-usual, with its short-term goals and calculus of “safer to follow than to lead”, I suppose there are reasons and rationalizations for this planet-destroying choice. But speaking as a scientist, it seems ignorant and short-sighted. It’s certainly a form of climate denial. And I have no doubt that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists – and those who chose to stand with them – will, in the future, be considered criminals.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/27/joe-biden-climate-emergency-peter-kalmus

How morons like Kalmus can call themselves scientists is beyond me.

And, I notice, there is not a single mention of China!

And now, the climate gang Is coming for our thermostats

From CFACT

BY J. KENNERLY DAVIS:

In 2019, candidate Joe Biden pledged to voters that, if elected president, “We’re going to end fossil fuel.” Since taking office, he has worked ceaselessly with the radical environmentalists who call the shots and set the agenda to make good on his campaign promise by waging an all-out war against the production, distribution, and use of fossil fuels.

The Biden administration immediately cancelled the Keystone pipeline and then blocked other pipeline projects. It has drastically curtailed the issuance of leases and permits needed to develop fossil resources on public lands and offshore. It has denied applications to expand refinery capacity. And it has issued unattainable carbon dioxide emission limitations designed to force the closure of hundreds of fossil-fueled electric power plants currently in operation.

The Biden administration and its political allies in state and local governments have launched a series of aggressive regulatory initiatives designed to drastically restrict the availability and increase the cost of a wide range of fossil-fueled consumer products: gas stoves and furnaces, gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles, gasoline-powered lawn care equipment, wood stoves, and more.

The openly stated utopian goal of all these regulatory actions is to “decarbonize” the entire American economy and somehow smoothly transition the whole country to a supposedly climate-friendly “sustainable” future that is powered and heated and cooled by electricity produced by renewable wind and solar generators.

The Biden administration’s decarbonization campaign poses a grave threat to the reliability of the nation’s electric system. Electricity, unlike oil and gas and other forms of energy, cannot be stored in significant amounts. It must be produced by generators and supplied to customers in amounts precisely equal to the amounts demanded by customers at any given point in time. If the supply of electricity is not kept continuously in balance with the demand for it the electric system will crash, and a widespread blackout will result.

Electric system operators can easily adjust the output of fossil-fueled generators, and nuclear generators, to meet customer demand as that demand fluctuates throughout each day. With electricity available to everyone “at the flick of a switch,” each of us is free to manage our daily affairs in the way that we find most convenient. The overall economic efficiencies and societal benefits that result from such flexibility are enormous.

With renewables, it’s an entirely different story. Electric system operators have no such control over the output of wind turbine generators and solar panels. The amount of power supplied by these technologies depends entirely on the availability of steady wind and clear sunlight.

Widespread smoke from the recent wildfires in Canada cut solar output across the U.S. Northeast by 90%. Calm weather cuts the output of a wind farm to a faction of its specified production capability. If the wind drops unexpectedly, system operators have to scramble to purchase replacement power from neighboring systems, or they must quickly cut power to customers enough to maintain system balance.

Emergency power supply cuts are enormously disruptive for commercial customers, and tremendously expensive. Power cuts associated with wildfires in California have cost customers billions of dollars.

Independent regulators responsible for maintaining the reliability of the electric system are warning with increasing urgency that the forced retirement of fossil-fueled power plants and the growing reliance on weather dependent renewables pose a serious threat to the nation’s power supply. They are predicting that emergency power cuts will become more and more common in the future.

Faced with such a threat, any responsible administration would moderate its energy and environmental policies. But that’s not what progressives do. They never change course, regardless of the objective evidence confronting them. They double down.

If system operators cannot control the output of wind turbine generators and solar panels to meet fluctuating customer demand then, to advance the decarbonization agenda, system operators must be given the authority and resources they need to control customer demand on an ongoing basis and limit that demand to levels that can be meet by the fluctuating capabilities of weather dependent generators.

Under pressure from environmentalists, more and more electric companies are installing equipment and implementing protocols that will allow them to remotely control customer demand continuously, not just during emergencies. California regulators have announced a goal to place 7,000 megawatts of customer demand under centralized control by 2030.

To sell this normalization of power cuts, the companies have launched sophisticated media programs designed to convince customers that flick-of-the-switch power is an irresponsible indulgence that must be foregone, and demand “flexibility” must be embraced, to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.

They came for our gas stoves and furnaces. They came for our cars and trucks, our wood stoves and firepits, our lawn mowers and leaf blowers. And now, they are coming for our thermostats.

J. Kennerly Davis (Ken) is a regulatory attorney with over 40 years of experience in the electric and gas power industry. He can be reached at j.kendavis@verizon.net

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Energy Appliance Victory! (DC Circuit vs. DOE)

From Master Resource

By Mark Krebs

“The ‘wheels of justice turn slowly,’ but they indeed turned, even within the District of Columbia’s ‘uni-party.’ As for holding on to this victory, it is far from a slam-dunk for preserving consumer choice and free markets. I expect the struggle to escalate in Biden’s all-of-government war against natural gas and other fossil fuels.”

Beleaguered energy consumers were just handed a far-reaching victory by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit). The ruling vacated a Final Rule from the U.S, Department of Energy (DOE) that would have banned the manufacture and sale of non-condensing boilers for use in commercial applications. DOE’s rule was challenged several years ago by natural gas interests–and later joined with a separate but similar case brought by the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI).

For those fluent in legalese, the Court’s historical review and logic can be downloaded here. The Court found that DOE failed to meet the standards of “clear and convincing evidence” necessary for DOE to mandate more stringent minimum efficiency standards. Such evidence is required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). 

DOE’s failures were major and numerous. Previously, the Court had afforded DOE ample opportunities to rectify them, but they didn’t. Ultimately (reading in between the lines), it appears that the Court lost its patience with “the Agency” (DOE).  One of the far-reaching results of this victory is that it undermines a veritable super-weapon of the administrative state; the Chevron Deference.  This aspect will be discussed in more detail further down.

DC Circuit has set a precedent that illustrates how DOE routinely bends the rules to achieve its “administrative state” objectives.  Consequently, DOE should exercise more care and transparency going forward with both present and future developments of appliance minimum efficiency standards.  However, it is probably more likely that DOE will find ways to get around it; perhaps  drastically.

Over the years, I’ve provided updates via MasterResource on the status of these issues.  Some of the most relative to this “victory” are as follows:

The last link shows the extent that the gas industry took to politely provide DOE the opportunity to do the right thing. This started with a February 12, 2017, request for error correction that was ignored by DOE. The reason it was ignored was because it went beyond correcting a mere typo. Rather, it was aimed at correcting a major conceptual error in EERE’s Monte Carlo analyses. That error effectively assumed consumers (even commercial ones) NEVER make rational economic decisions. That error also cascades through subsequent analysis to render the DOE conclusions meaningless.

The end-result of this (amid many other analytical biases discussed in the Court ruling) is fatally skewed economic “determinations” that almost always favor stricter standards, regardless of the true economics.. As a result of this Court Order, such routine biases are now on public display to demonstrate the full intent of regulatory failures that occur within the intentionally opaque bureaucratic processes to ostensibly overcome so-called market failures. 

Page 2 of the Court’s July 7th, 2023 decision, is a list of the “usual suspects” who attempted to thwart us, mostly other government entities. Why such a show of force?  Perhaps because their Chevron Deference was and is vulnerable to the reality of their analytical misdeeds? And if you can’t trust the government to deal fairly with the “small stuff,” why should you trust them to get the “big stuff” right?

The “wheels of justice turn slowly,” but they indeed turned, even within the District of Columbia’s “uni-party.” As for holding on to this victory, it is far from a slam-dunk for preserving consumer choice and free markets. I expect the struggle to escalate in Biden’s all-of-government war against natural gas and other fossil fuels. 

Where do we go from here?

It is too early for consumers and the natural gas industry to declare victory, although the evidentary record is now ensconced and the DC Circuit is a major court. It is time to build on what is a superior case. Specific recommendations follow:

  • The spanking DOE took on the random base case modeling assignment approach provides an opportunity to argue for DOE to revise its entire consumer cost analysis approach. This does not mean an abandonment of Monte Carlo-based probability-based analyses. The full implications of this decision as it extends to all DOE “covered products” needs to be publicly debated and especially for rulemakings already well underway and approaching the Final Rule stage.
  • Fossil-fuel providers need to independently develop and maintain  fuel price information that reflects marginal energy costs, the costs that consumers actually pay, for key markets rather than rely on average estimates from the Energy Information Administration.
  • DOE should be required to develop a public process to take recommendations on revising its consumer life cycle cost analysis approach.
  • Fossil fuel industries must work together and fund together continued and robust efforts to fight anti-consumer government actions and for their own future. We may win some and lose some, but that’s a far sight better than losing everything. Losing everything is still a real if not increasing possibility in a winner-take-all scenario that appears to be unfolding. Case-in-point: The U.N. Is Planning To Seize Global ‘Emergency’ Powers With Biden’s Support. What constitutes a global emergency? The most obvious are pandemics and climate change.
  • Most important of all, fossil fuel industries should exploit this victory to illustrate just how fallible government agencies canb be.
    This decision goes far beyond the particulars of packaged commercial boilers. It goes to the heart of the question of government agency standing relative to actual stakeholders. Ever since the “Chevron Deference” was put in place in 1984, federal courts have deferred to an agency’s ostensibly unique “subject matter expertise” for interpretating ambiguous statutes. Such is clearly the case when reviewing regulatory actions like promulgating rulemaking for mandating minimum energy efficiency standards for appliances. On May 1, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court granted review in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451, on whether to overturn or limit Chevron Deference. Subsequently, perhaps the most important victory in this case is that it becomes a “poster child” for why the administrative state’s abuse of the Chevron Deference should end. At least in this oinstance, the Courts found DOE to be not worthy of deference.  Perhaps SCOTUS will follow their lead.

In closing, I want to acknowledge Tom Tanton for his wise help in fine-tuning this article.  I also want to acknowledge the legal expertise of Barton Day, as well as Spire’s Mark Darrell and for both of them in unfaltering perseverance throughout this multi-year struggle.—————————————————————————————————————–

Mark Krebs, a mechanical engineer and energy policy consultant, has been involved with energy efficiency design and program evaluation for over thirty years. Mark has served as an expert witness in dozens of State energy efficiency proceedings, has been an advisor to DOE and has submitted scores of Federal energy-efficiency filings. His many MasterResource posts on natural gas vs. electricity and “Deep Decarbonization” federal policy can be found here. Mark’s first article was in Public Utilities Fortnightly, titled “It’s a War Out There: A Gas Man Questions Electric Efficiency” (December 1996). Recently retired from Spire Inc., Krebs has formed an energy policy consultancy (Gas Analytic & Advocacy Services) with other veteran energy analysts.

Massive Desert Solar Projects Are Sucking Up Groundwater, Angering Locals

From The Daily Caller

By NICK POPE

Massive solar development projects in Southern California have strained local water availability, threatening desert ecosystems and angering residents who have been impacted by the strain on the water supply, according to an Inside Climate News report.

The small communities around Desert Center, California, depend on naturally-occurring underground water reserves, known as groundwater aquifers, but the water-intensive development process for large solar projects has caused groundwater levels to fall, according to Inside Climate News. Crucial local water wells have dried up and land beneath homes has sagged as a result of development activity, while desert ecosystems have been damaged as well, according to Inside Climate News.

Locals complain that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the corporations driving the developments in California’s Colorado Desert have not allowed them to provide sufficient input in the decision-making process for the developments, according to Inside Climate News. Despite the BLM’s assurances that “renewable energy development on BLM-managed public lands will continue to help communities across the country be part of the climate solution, while creating jobs and boosting local economies,” residents say that they have not reaped much benefit from the solar projects while the strain on their groundwater supply has intensified, according to Inside Climate News. (RELATED: Biden Admin Cracks Down On Chinese Solar Panels, Undermining The Green Agenda)

“No one took into consideration a community lived out here,” said Teresa Pierce, a resident of a nearby community who has helped to organize other locals to respond to the resource scarcity and solar developments, according to Inside Climate News.

Developers rely on the groundwater aquifer because there is no other feasible water supply in the area, rendering transport of water from other locations to the development sites prohibitively expensive, according to Inside Climate News. The development has depleted the water reserves for local communities like one trailer park which a property manager said would be “dead without water” if the local scarcity continues to worsen, according to Inside Climate News.

Another local who has two palm trees and no house on his property saw his electricity bill go from $15 to $1,800 in just one month, as his electric irrigation pump that keeps the trees alive worked much harder to reach underground water reserves that have fallen due to the development’s extensive use of the groundwater supply, according to Inside Climate News. Drilling new, deeper water wells can cost up to $100,000, according to Inside Climate News.

The BLM was aware that its approved solar projects on public lands may have been using too much water from the area’s underground water reserves by its own standards, but the agency has advanced the projects nonetheless, according to former BLM employees cited by Inside Climate News.

Beyond the problems posed by the strain on the groundwater aquifer for humans, solar developments have overtaken many small bodies of water across the desert which formerly provided critical habitat space to the animals inhabiting the desert region, according to Inside Climate News.

The BLM has approved seven utility-scale developments in the region spanning about 19,000 acres already, with more projects under consideration, according to Inside Climate News. Another 120,000 acres are available for development in the region surrounding Desert Center, according to Inside Climate News.

The Biden administration has publicly touted its spending and regulatory efforts designed to protect 30% of America’s lands and waters from development by 2030. The administration also heavily promotes solar panels as part of its larger “green” energy agenda.

Unanimous Supreme Court Ruling Delivers Blow To Biden’s WOTUS Regs

From Climate Change Dispatch

By THOMAS CATENACCI

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a ruling narrowing the federal government’s authority to regulate bodies of water and effectively upending a Biden administration policy that recently went into effect.

The high court’s decision, which was delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) broad definition of Waters of the United States (WOTUS). [emphasis, links added]

The case centered on Michael and Chantell Sackett, two Idaho residents whom the EPA prohibited from building a home near a wetland years ago, citing the Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972.

“The EPA ordered the Sacketts to restore the site, threatening penalties of over $40,000 per day,” Alito’s majority opinion stated.

“The EPA classified the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot as ‘waters of the United States’ because they were near a ditch that fed into a creek, which fed into Priest Lake, a navigable, intrastate lake. The Sacketts sued, alleging that their property was not ‘waters of the United States.’”

The ruling ultimately held that the federal government’s WOTUS definition must be restricted to a water source with a “continuous surface connection” to major bodies of water. 

While the decision was unanimous on the merits, the court split 5-4 on determining how the federal government should go about defining water sources.

“Understanding the CWA to apply to wetlands that are distinguishable from otherwise covered ‘waters of the United States’ would substantially broaden [existing statute] to define ‘navigable waters’ as ‘waters of the United States and adjacent wetlands,’” Alito wrote.

The ruling, which was cheered by Republican lawmakers and groups representing landowners, comes months after the EPA finalized and implemented a new WOTUS regulation.

On Dec. 30, the final working day of 2022, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quietly announced that they had approved the WOTUS regulation and that it would be implemented in March.

After announcing it, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the rule “safeguards our nation’s waters.”

The rule opened the door for the federal government to regulate wetlands, lakes, ponds, streams, and “relatively permanent” waterways, largely mimicking a pre-2015 environmental rule set during the Obama administration that implemented the changes in an effort to curb water pollution.

The regulation was the broadest interpretation to date of which water sources require protection under the CWA.

Industry groups, Republican lawmakers in Congress, and multiple states blasted the regulation as an example of federal overreach and demanded that it be rescinded.

In April, a federal judge granted a request from 24 states and several trade groups to pause the implementation of the regulation. The House and Senate both approved a regulation rejecting the regulation.

“Today, the Supreme Court sent a loud and clear warning shot to the Biden administration about its attempts to overregulate the lives of millions of Americans,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., the ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“By rejecting the ‘significant nexus’ test, the Court protected America’s farmers, ranchers, builders, and landowners from overreach under the Clean Water Act, and ruled President Biden’s recent WOTUS rule goes too far,” Capito added.

“I was proud to both support the petitioners on this case last year and lead a successful effort this year in Congress to overturn the Biden WOTUS rule and am thrilled with the Court’s decision today, which is a major win for individual freedom.”

Read rest at Fox News

Biden’s environmental injustice

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

President Biden recently issued a 5,400-word executive order directing all federal agencies to emphasize “environmental justice” in every decision they make.

After ducking questions for weeks on what remediation, remuneration and environmental justice the administration is providing East Palestine, Ohio residents following a toxic railway chemical spill, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained the EO in her inimitable style:

The President has “the most ambitious climate agenda than any other president in history, and one way that you can look at this today is that he’s continuing to deliver on that ambitious agenda, and he’s not done yet. This is a continuing continuation of what he’s promised the American people.”

In plain English, the order enables each agency to implement this infinitely malleable “justice” concept to justify whatever policies and regulations it is implementing in the name of abating the “climate crisis” and “fundamentally transforming” America’s energy and economic systems. It also allows agencies to ignore any “justice” issues that might interfere with their plans.

The Environmental Protection Agency quickly issued a press release citing justice and “equity” rationales for eliminating coal and gas power plants, internal-combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters – all of which it says contribute to global warming.

EPA claims “children are uniquely vulnerable” to climate-related impacts like rising temperatures that can cause “lifelong consequences” for their concentration, learning, academic achievement and earnings potential. Moreover, these effects “disproportionately fall on children who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color, low income, without health insurance, and/or have limited English proficiency.”

Of course, air conditioning reduces high temperatures in schools and homes, thereby avoiding these far-fetched problems. During wintertime, gas furnaces (or reliable, affordable coal or gas-generated electric heat) keep students warm when outdoor temperatures plummet to deadly lows.

However, both cooling and heating systems will become unavailable or unaffordable to these same classes of people in the wake of government decrees that coal and gas be banished, and electricity provided by expensive, weather-dependent wind and solar. That’s already happening in Europe.

The Economist reported that 68,000 people died in Europe this past winter because energy prices have rocketed so high that many families can no longer afford to heat their homes properly.

Meanwhile, EPA asserts that closing coal and gas power plants would prevent 1,300 “premature deaths” by 2042 from global warming. That’s a hypothetical 65 deaths annually.

Allowing for Europe versus US population differences, more than 30,000 Americans would die needlessly every year, if energy prices soar as high as they have in Europe. Minority and low and middle income families would be disproportionately affected and least able to afford proper winter heating. Without affordable, dependable AC, thousands more would likely die during sweltering summers. Just keeping lights on and computers running requires reliable, affordable electricity.

EPA didn’t consider these realities in its news release, regulations or “environmental justice” contortions, because the agency is pushing an agenda, not providing honest, scientific evidence. The agency and Biden EO routinely ignore inconvenient realities like the following, as well.

Eliminating coal and gas power plants will triple America’s need for electricity generation, to replace that power and provide battery backup storage. Rushing to do this before America has sufficient reliable alternative electricity supplies will destabilize power grids, causing repeated blackouts, disproportionately affecting families that cannot afford emergency backup generators (most of which require fossil fuels).

EPA rules dramatically reducing tailpipe emissions will force families to buy electric cars that average over $65,000 in price – and light, medium, heavy-duty and long-haul trucks that could cost twice as much as gasoline or diesel versions. Blue-collar families will be hammered hardest.

Farmers will be compelled to pay far more for electric tractors, and for natural-gas-based fertilizers and pesticides that will likewise be much more expensive. Food prices will soar still higher, forcing disadvantaged families to choose between food, heat, clothing and other needs.

Families and landlords will also be required to replace high-efficiency gas furnaces with pricey electric systems … or expensive heat pumps that don’t even work well in sub-freezing weather.

Middle class families will see their living standards plummet. Poor households will be unable to improve their lives. Rural communities will become increasingly isolated, turned into energy colonies for heavily Democrat urban voting blocs, with wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines horizon to horizon.

Federal agencies will likely just parrot the Bank of England’s callous, imperious attitude: People just “need to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power.” Ruling elites will do fine. Why would they worry about us commoners?

Soaring prices for intermittent electricity will force many factories and businesses to close. Workers will have to take low-pay jobs installing, maintaining, repairing and replacing wind turbines, solar panels and other equipment – and hauling worn out, obsolete and broken parts and dead battery modules to enormous rural landfills.

“Clean, renewable, sustainable” energy technologies require vastly more non-renewable, unsustainable metals, minerals and other raw materials than their fossil fuel counterparts. The overseas mining, processing and manufacturing operations run on fossil fuels and emit vast quantities of carbon dioxide and toxic air and water pollutants, generally under minimal or no laws governing pollution … or slave and child labor, workplace safety, health, or other environmental justice and human rights issues.

The supply chains and even finished product chains increasingly run through China, which is also taking over electric vehicle markets. Especially under a Biden Administration that opposes almost any mining or processing in the USA, China will only increase its dominance of cobalt, graphite, lithium, nickel and other critical material supplies, all but necessitating tepid responses to Chinese (and Russian) military and territorial ambitions. The injustices inflicted on Asian and African communities are serious and obvious.

Yet even doubling or tripling today’s global mining levels would not meet the soaring materials demands for the millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, millions of heating systems and transformers, and hundreds of thousands of miles of new transmission lines that an American Net-Zero economy would require. Soaring demand for insufficient supplies will send prices skyward.

A global energy transformation would likely be catastrophic for affordable energy, economies, jobs, living standards, shortened human life spans, human rights, wildlife and environmental quality.

Abundant, reliable, affordable, mostly fossil fuel energy has liberated people from back-breaking toil. The energy scarcity and de-development promoted and imposed by Biden and other Western governments is rolling living standards, health and personal freedoms backward, in the name of “climate justice.” The adverse effects will be worst for women, the poor and people of color, especially beyond US borders.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism: “The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its actions felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social and educational institutions, and all the political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.” [emphasis added]

That description sounds all too appropriate for the situation America and the world increasingly confront today. The gravest threat to our living standards, freedoms and true justice is not from climate change. It is from dictatorial edicts imposed in the name of controlling Earth’s perpetually fickle climate.

Author

  • Paul Driessen
  • Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for CFACT and author of Cracking Big Green and Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death.

Joe Biden Wants Every US Military Vehicle To Be Climate Friendly

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

If you thought we were potty enough in this country, than God we are not living the senile idiot who supposedly is in charge of the USA:

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said she supports requiring the military to have an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030:

ERNST: “Do you support the military adopting that EV fleet by 2030?”

GRANHOLM: “I do, and I think we can get there as well. And I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally traded fossil fuels where we know that global events such as the war in Ukraine can jack up prices for people back home does not contribute to energy security.”

Granholm added: “I think energy security is achieved when we have homegrown, clean energy that is abundant like you see in Iowa. We think we can be a leader globally in how we have become energy independent.”

Could you imagine?! It’s bad enough that the Department of Defense has a scorecard to keep itself accountable as it advances “environmental justice for communities across America.”

The DOD has at least 640 staff working “on environmental justice, either in a full- or part-time capacity.”

President Joe Biden has been pushing this agenda since last April. He admitted it would cost billions:

While delivering Earth Day remarks from Seward Park in Seattle, Washington, Biden said last April his administration is working to make “every vehicle” in the United States military “climate-friendly.”

“One of the things I found out as President of the United States, I get to spend a lot of that money,” Biden said at the time. “We’re going to start the process where every vehicle in the United States military, every vehicle, is going to be climate-friendly — every vehicle — I mean it.”

He added: “We’re spending billions of dollars to do it.”

No wonder we couldn’t execute proper plans in Afghanistan or Sudan. The military is more concerned about environmental justice.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/energy-sec-granholm-supports-requiring-military-to-adopt-all-electric-vehicle-fleet-by-2030/

In the US they are lucky to have the GOP to oppose these foolish policies, and hopefully reverse them someday.

Which is more than we can say in the UK.

Here’s a simple question for the Simpleton Joe:

Next time you invade a country, how will you know they will have sufficient EV charging stations?

Biden’s green spending blitz could plunge world into ‘dark ages’, warns Hunt

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

 April 17, 2023 by oldbrew

Subsidising net zero type so-called climate policies in the US is not only enormously expensive but globally disruptive as well, it seems. Climate protection becoming climate protectionism?
– – –
Joe Biden’s flagship green energy policy risks plunging the world into the economic “dark ages”, Jeremy Hunt has warned.

The Chancellor urged world leaders not to put up trade barriers after the US President passed a $369bn package of subsidies to support climate and energy businesses, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has drawn an estimated $200bn in investment since it was passed last year, according to estimates from the Financial Times, and both the EU and Britain have been forced to draw up responses of their own.

It has sparked fears of a new era of protectionism, where economies are closely managed through tariffs and subsidies.

Mr Hunt said the British Government would provide “some” support for businesses to stop investment fleeing overseas but said it would be measured.

The Chancellor told Sky News: “First of all it’s wasteful to spend money subsidising factories that would have been built anyway.

“Secondly, when you take subsidies away, you can end up with a business that’s not viable.”

“If we were to turn our backs on free trade, that will be a disaster for the world economy. We will enter into a dark ages period. We do not want to move to protectionism.”

His comments came after British battery maker AMTE Power said it was considering moving investment to the US because of its generous subsidies for green technologies.

Separately, Mr Hunt has been boosted by new forecasts showing Britain’s economy is on track to not only avoid recession this year but grow.

The British economy will defy gloomy predictions and emerge slightly larger at the end of this year, according to one of the City’s most closely watched forecasters.

Full report here.