Energy Policy

Burning Desire

by Anne Laurie| February 18, 20125:35 pm| 81 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Election 2012, Energy Policy

Secondary to John’s earlier post, Rick Ungar at the Washington Monthly had already dipped a toe into the murky waters:

According to the Automobile Club of America, gasoline prices have risen, on average, 13.1 cents in the past month—despite the fact that gas prices traditionally fall in the month of February as people drive fewer miles during the wintery month.
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What’s more, virtually every projection out there suggests that gas prices are about to make a dramatic rise to, potentially, record levels with some suggesting that $5.00 a gallon gas or more —double the prices of just a few months ago—could very well be in our future.
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This becomes a particularly odd statistic when one considers that Americans are using less gasoline than it has at any time in the last fifteen years. Currently, we burn up 8 percent less gas than we did during the peak year of 2006 while most experts expect the trend to continue to where we will be using 20 percent less gasoline by 2030…
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While Wall Street’s ‘priority one’ is to make money, it is clear that, for this year, priority two is the destruction of Barack Obama’s presidency. Accordingly, from a Wall Street point of view, it certainly is a happy coincidence that that priority one, making big money on oil speculation, could directly lead to accomplishing their second highest mission. I am left to wonder whether this is a happy Wall Street coincidence or a clever strategy that could pay off big-time come November.
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Gasoline prices have a ‘real time’ impact on middle-class voters. Can you imagine a better way to make voters good and angry than to insure that they are paying five bucks a gallon for the gasoline that will be powering them to the voting booth in November? And if you subscribe to the theory that the President’s opponents would like to keep economic growth down until the election is over, what better way to accomplish such a goal than to force a precipitous rise in gas prices?…
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As a result of what is coming, it might be a good idea for the Obama Administration to start talking about the reasons for rising gas prices and I’d start talking about it now. This is one instance where silence is anything but golden and without a plausible explanation as to why the Administration is not responsible for what might be a dramatic rise in gas prices, it may be President Obama who is left holding the pump nozzle come December.

Of course, if the President does talk about “the reasons for rising gas prices“, he’ll be accused of both scare-mongering for electoral advantage and of depressing the vote for down-ticket Democrats by poor-mouthing what will be labelled as his administration’s failures. But if you believe that more information is always better, it’s another piece in the jigsaw puzzle…

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Round and Round and Round We Go

by John Cole| February 18, 20124:55 pm| 37 Comments

This post is in: Election 2008, Election 2012, Energy Policy, Serenity Now!

Here we go again:

Rising gasoline prices, trumpeted in foot-tall numbers on street corners across the country, are causing concern among advisers to President Obama that a budding sense of economic optimism could be undermined just as he heads into the general election.

White House officials are preparing for Republicans to use consumer angst about the cost of oil and gas to condemn his energy programs and buttress their argument that his economic policies are not working.

In a closed-door meeting last week, Speaker John A. Boehner instructed fellow Republicans to embrace the gas-pump anger they find among their constituents when they return to their districts for the Presidents’ Day recess.

“This debate is a debate we want to have,” Mr. Boehner told his conference on Wednesday, according to a Republican aide who was present. “It was reported this week that we’ll soon see $4-a-gallon gas prices. Maybe higher. Certainly, this summer will see the highest gas prices in years. Your constituents saw those reports, and they’ll be talking about it.”

Seems like only yesterday:

Policy differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been far and few, but a new one emerged on Monday over a proposed gas tax holiday. Obama says he’s against while Clinton says she’s in favor, putting her on the same side as John McCain, who proposed such a holiday last week.

Gas prices could hit $4 this summer, raising the ire of voters and putting pressure on presidential candidates to promise immediate action.

Speaking on Larry King Live on Monday night, Clinton outlined a series of steps to address the issue at the beginning of the show, reflecting the growing importance of pocketbook concerns among voters. “I would also consider a gas tax holiday, if we could make up the lost revenues from the Highway Trust Fund,” she said, without specifying how to make up those lost revenues.

Earlier Monday at a community college in the Philadelphia suburbs, Obama rejected a tax holiday as bad economic policy. “I’ve said I think John McCain’s proposal for a three-month tax holiday is a bad idea,” Obama said, warning consumers that any price cut would be short lived before costs spike back.

“We’re talking about 5 percent of your total cost of gas that you suspend for three months, which might save you a few hundred bucks that then will spike right up,” Obama said. “Now keep in mind that it will save you that if Exxon Mobil doesn’t decide, ‘We’ll just tack on another 5 percent on the current cost.’”

I’m so glad to see this election cycle we’ll be covering all the previous election’s greatest hits: Iran, abortion, gas prices, immigrant bashing, gay bashing, and the Bush tax cuts. Just this morning Santorum rolled out the “Obama isn’t a real Christian” bullshit, so we’ve got that to look forward to again. Maybe we should be happy they threw in contraceptives so we could have some new material this election.

GAMETIME:

Who will be the first Republican to call for a national gas tax holiday? My guess- ROMNEY.

Who will be the first Democrat to trip over himself rushing to a microphone to undercut Obama and call for a gas tax holiday? My guess- MANCHIN.

Round and Round and Round We GoPost + Comments (37)

Newt Gingrich Secures All Important “Barrens Chat” Vote with Key Chuck Norris Endorsement

by John Cole| January 20, 20127:15 pm| 51 Comments

This post is in: Energy Policy, Gamer Dork, Teabagger Stupidity

Was he this much of a clown in the 70’s (Chuck, not Newt):

For my wife, Gena, and I, we sincerely believe former Speaker Newt Gingrich is the answer to most of those questions and deserves our endorsement and vote.

We agree with our friend and governor of the great state of Texas, Rick Perry, when he suspended his campaign and endorsed Gingrich, that Newt “has the heart of a conservative reformer.” We believe Newt’s experience, leadership, knowledge, wisdom, faith and even humility to learn from his failures (personal and public) can return America to her glory days. And he is the best man left on the battlefield who is able to outwit, outplay and outlast Obama and his campaign machine.

I may have let my nerd show in the title, so my apologies.

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Pipeline Execution

by @mistermix.bsky.social| January 10, 20129:05 am| 43 Comments

This post is in: Energy Policy

When President Obama makes his February decision on the Keystone XL pipeline deal, which Republicans forced as part of the last hostage crisis, he might want to note that a similar pipeline is getting some bad press up in America’s Hat:

Environmentalists accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government of taking the side of big oil over ordinary citizens after the Conservatives said foreign-funded “radicals” were distorting a pipeline approval process.

Blaming “outside agitators” is usually a sign of weakness, so I wonder if the Harper government is going to have trouble pushing through a pipeline that goes across the Rockies and the BC coast to transport crude oil to supertankers. Canadians can tolerate abominations like dollar coins and socialist medicine, so if they can’t put up with a pipeline, why should God-fearing real Americans?

(Thanks to beaver-tail-eating reader Bob for the link.)

Pipeline ExecutionPost + Comments (43)

Elected conservatives outsource all their work to corporations, leaving me wondering what they do all day

by Kay| July 16, 20119:04 am| 33 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Domestic Politics, Education, Energy Policy, Free Markets Solve Everything, Fuck The Middle-Class, Fuck The Poor, Glibertarianism, Grifters Gonna Grift, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Good News For Conservatives

Excellent all-in-one-place piece on ALEC in ProPublica:

This week, both the Los Angeles Times and The Nation put the spotlight on a little-known but influential conservative nonprofit that creates “model” state legislation that often make its way into law. The organization has helped craft some of the most controversial—and industry-friendly—legislation of recent years.
The American Legislative Exchange Council,ALEC, crafted a model resolution for states calling the EPA’s attempts to regulate greenhouse gasses a “trainwreck” and asking Congress to slow or stop the regulations, the Times reported. A press release on ALEC’s site says that at least 13 other states have passed resolutions

It calls itself a “policy making program that unites members of the public and private sectors in a dynamic partnership” based on “Jeffersonian principles.” Critics say it has devolved into a pay-for-play operation, where state legislators and their families get to go on industry-funded junkets and major corporations get to ghostwrite model laws and pass them on to receptive politicians.

I know the information on ALEC has been floating around for months on liberal sites, so it’s heartening to see that news outlets (LA Times, NPR) are now picking it up.

Here’s where you can find the ALEC-drafted bill your state legislator is introducing as his or her own work, “word for word”, in the case of the recent Arizona immigration law:

The Center for Media and Democracy has obtained copies of more than 800 model bills approved by corporations through ALEC meetings, after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center. We have analyzed and marked-up those bills and made them available at ALEC Exposed.

Looking at the categories, it’s easy to understand why monied interests are drafting this legislation and introducing it in state legislatures all over the country. The profit incentives are clear when they are privatizing public schools and destroying unions, or limiting the right of individual citizens to hold a wrongdoer responsible for money damages suffered, or gutting environmental regulations, or rewriting a state tax code. Those are obvious. What’s interesting is the voter ID bill. That really sticks out. No profit incentive there, so what’s that all about, I wonder?

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Kicking our fossil fuel addiction

by Libby Spencer| July 10, 20114:53 pm| 46 Comments

This post is in: Energy Policy, Science & Technology

I had no idea this was happening. Good news for us treehuggers:

Plunging prices and booming investments are beginning to reshape the energy market, according to a couple of reports that were released this week. A report produced on behalf of Bloomberg says that investments in renewable energy have gone up by roughly a third over the last year, to $211 billion. Led by China’s renewable push, the world is now on a trajectory that will see its investments in renewable electricity surpass those in fossil fuels within a year or two. As a result of these investments, the US is now producing more renewable energy than nuclear power. …

Part of the reason is cost. Although wind turbines are very mature technology now, their cost per MW still fell by 18 percent over the last two years; photovoltaics have dropped a staggering 60 percent in that time. “Further improvements in the levelised cost of energy for solar, wind and other technologies lie ahead, posing a bigger and bigger threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years,” according to the report’s authors.

This is worldwide. The US is lagging a bit behind but if expenditures on expanded renewable energy capacity stays on the same trajectory, “we’ll be investing more in renewables either this year or next,” than is being spent on fossil fuel power plants. Also, too, no more justification for building new nuke facilities. Win-win. [Via the Great Orange Satan.]

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Because, Because…Soshalism, That’s Why!

by Tom Levenson| June 26, 20116:08 pm| 117 Comments

This post is in: Energy Policy, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Decline and Fall

Not much blogging to come (will anyone be able to tell the difference?–ed.) this week, as I’m writing this from Doha, Qatar, where the biennial World Conference of Science Journalists is about to begin.

But as my body adjusts to the eight hour time difference, I chanced across this piece in The New York Times, which captures in the story of one small household appliance why American Exceptionalism may kill us all yet:

One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.

These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. The recent study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States — and that 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. That is more power than the state of Maryland uses over 12 months.

That set-up: the HD box and recorder, can add ten bucks or more per month to a household electricity bill, but the drain isn’t obvious, because the damn things are always on.

It was said of Pythagoras that he was the only man who could hear the music of the spheres; the rest of us were so accustomed to it, having been cradled in such harmony from womb to grave…and so it is with that 60 cycle hum, or its metaphoric equivalent. We can’t monitor that whose absence we’ve never known.

What’s truly galling, though, is that there is no technical reason either to spend that money, or to burn the fuel — much of it coal — to make the power required:

show full post on front page

The perpetually “powered on” state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Fixes exist, but they are not currently being mandated or deployed in the United States, critics say.

Not our fault, says Big Cable:

“The issue of having more efficient equipment is of interest to us,” said Justin Venech, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. But, he added, “when we purchase the equipment, functionality and cost are the primary considerations.”

Which is to say the old brush off. You know, “You’ve got a problem, which means I’ve got a problem. You.”*

Except, you know, reality:

But energy efficiency experts say that technical fixes could eliminate or minimize the waiting time and inconvenience, some at little expense. Low-energy European systems reboot from deep sleep in one to two minutes.

Alan Meier, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said of the industry in the United States, “I don’t want to use the word ‘lazy,’ but they have had different priorities, and saving energy is not one of them.”

It’s hard to deny that charge, given this:

But as of Sept. 1, typical electricity consumption of Energy Star qualified products would drop to 97 kilowatt hours a year from an average of 138; and then by the middle of 2013, they must drop again to 29 kilowatt hours a year. Companies have fought the placement of the “Energy Star” seal on products and the new ambitious requirements, which may still be modified before enacted.

Mr. Wilson recalled that when he was on the California Energy Commission, he asked box makers why the hard drives were on all the time, using so much power. The answer: “Nobody asked us to use less.”

But of course, it isn’t just bad software and slothful, ~~monopolist~~ oligolopolist** greedoid big Cable that’s to blame.*** There is a pattern of trading energy efficiency — conservation — for other pleasures. The internal combustion engine of 2011 is a vastly more efficient machine that that of the 1973 oil crisis — but the power numbers for just about every car have shot up relative to comparable categories of automobile from thirty and forty years ago, wiping out much of the efficiency gain.

Here, we like having zero time-lag when we wish to couch-potato. While we enjoy the latest episode of whatever, we are heading for real trouble with our energy sector. Global climate change is some ways — well, not the least of it — but the effect that we’ll notice second or third, well after we’re wondering why it costs so much to live like an American.

There is a response, of course. We could try real conservation — actually building energy efficient structures and tools and transportation systems, which, if implemented — with tech that exists right now — would represent a meaningful step towards an energy demand that an alternative energy mix (that would for decades + still include stuff we burn) could plausibly meet. It would indeed mean changes in habits and cultural practices — and those are very hard to achieve, I know. But consider the alternative.

If we don’t, then when the rest of the world — and our kids — ask us what the hell happened, we’ll have to tell them we were too anxious to start watching Survivor to stop and think.

*H/t science writer Jon Cohen, for reminding me of that old gem.

**There are, after all, now two or three-ish cable sources in my ‘hood, + satellite. Pricing policies suggest oligopoly, not monopoly. Not much difference from this consumer’s point of view, but still, worth correction.

***Meanwhile, this article, plus the pleasures of Netflix streaming, are leading me to think about copying some friends and simply dump cable in favor of an HD antenna for over-the-air broadcasts (NFL), and broadband internet for everything else.

Image: Jan Breughel the Elder, Landscape with Windmills, 1607

Because, Because…Soshalism, That’s Why!Post + Comments (117)

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

We still have time to mess this up!

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense