Any time Congress considers subsidizing politically-favored sources of energy, it should consider the following questions:
What if the subsidies do not make a politically-favored energy source cost-effective?
What if the politically-favored energy source turns out to be less than advocates envision?
Can Congress kill a subsidy program after it has created a constituency that is receiving taxpayer dollars?
Won’t [...]
Later this week, the U.S. House will take up the Waxman-Markey global warming bill, the centerpiece of which is a cap and trade program that advocates argue will reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The bill features a remarkably aggressive timetable, one that would force businesses to cut emissions by 17% (relative to the 2005 baseline) [...]
On Monday, Representatives Waxman and Markey released yet another version of their far-reaching energy tax bill. The bill has now grown to 1201 pages and is available here.
This will not the be the last version of this bill. Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson previously opposed the bill and sought some concessions to benefit farmers. But [...]
by Robert Bradley
I have previously described Exxon Mobil as the anti-Enron. In an opinion-page editorial in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle, I contrasted the two companies in terms of both energy strategy and public policy.
More could be said than is in the editorial (reprinted below). Enron’s first fraud, engineered by Andrew Fastow, came with the purchase of [...]
PDF (869 KB)
Coal-fired electricity generation is far cleaner today than ever before. The popular misconception that our air quality is getting worse is wrong, as shown by EPA’s air quality data. Modern coal plants, and those retrofitted with modern technologies to reduce pollution, are a success story and are currently providing about 50% of our [...]
Even among those economists who want the government to “do something” about global warming, most prefer an explicit carbon tax to the stealth tax of “cap and trade” under discussion in the Waxman-Markey bill. Many economists, even those employed by the federal government, have explained the technical reasons [.pdf] that a stealth tax of cap [...]
President Obama’s automobile choice shows that he cares about features other than fuel economy, so why is he forcing the American people to choose fuel economy first and foremost?
When President Obama took office, he got a new car—an 8 mile-per-gallon custom Cadillac limousine. The reason his car gets such poor fuel economy is that it [...]
***Update: A few minutes before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s markup of the bill, Representative Waxman released a new 946-page Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute. The text is available here. ***
***Second Update: The House Energy and Commerce Committee have released a summary of the changes in the Amendment in the Nature [...]
IER has prepared the following to assist people to understand what the hurdles are regarding the renewable electricity mandates currently under discussion in various forms. Because of the language invoked by proponents of the various renewable portfolio standards/renewable electricity standards/renewable electricity mandates, there has been scant attention paid to the scale of the hurdles being [...]
The editor of National Journal’s Energy & Environment blog recent asked the following question of some policy experts:
A cross-section of Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are backing legislation that would require U.S. electric companies to generate 15 percent of their power from renewable sources of energy and to demonstrate annual electricity savings [...]
