In the Pipeline: 1/25/13

What the hell, it’s only money, right? Daily Caller (1/24/13) reports: “California has been a leader in Renewable Energy production, in part due to federal and state level policies that provide incentives for producers of renewable power. However, a new report found that California’s Energy policies will raise state power rates and associated costs by nearly 33 percent… The report by the free-market Pacific Research Institute specifically focuses on the additional costs imposed by a state mandate that requires 33 percent of its power come from renewable sources, like wind, solar and geothermal by 2020. PRI estimates that the California renewable portfolio standard will be an additional $5 billion in 2020.”

“We don’t even have a grid in America.”  Are you sure this guy is a Senator?  Does he use electricity?  Does he do anything well except marry rich girls? Politico (1/24/13) reports: “Kerry said there was an ‘extraordinary amount of opportunity’ in modernizing the American energy grid that would allow producers to sell energy across the country rather than restricting it to a small region… ‘We don’t even have a grid in America,’ Kerry said. ‘We have a great big open gap in the circle of America. We’ve got an East Coast grid, a West Coast grid, you’ve got a Texas grid, and then you have a line that goes out from Chicago over to the Dakotas. We can’t sell energy from Minnesota to Arizona, or from Arizona to Massachusetts or the cold states and so forth. It doesn’t make sense. And we can’t be a modern country if we don’t fix that infrastructure.’”

Hide your cats. WSJ (1/24/13) reports: “‘A lot of you press me . . . on: ‘Where is the bill on climate change? Where is the bill?’ There doesn’t have to be a bill,’ Mrs. Boxer explained in a briefing the day after Mr. Obama’s speech. ‘I’m telling you right now, EPA has the authority in the transportation sector, the electricity sector, and the industrial sector under the Clean Air Act’ to do everything that legislation might otherwise do… In other words, with the election over, all pretense is gone. Democrats won’t waste political capital on a doomed cap-and-trade bill. Yet they’ll get their carbon program all the same, by deputizing the EPA to impose sweeping new rules and using their Senate majority to block any GOP effort to check the agency’s power grab.”

Ripper, you little!  There’s oil in the outback.  Trillions worth.  Throw some shrimp on the barbie, mates and bust out the Fosters, cause we’re gonna be rich. The Telegraph (1/24/13) reports: “Up to 233 billion barrels of oil has been discovered in the Australian outback that could be worth trillions of dollars, in a find that could turn the region into a new Saudi Arabia.”

Since renewable portfolio standards clearly aren’t working, Soviet style coercion should do the trick, right? Aspen Daily News (1/23/13) reports: “Aspen City Council directed staff to come up with ideas for new regulations that would limit local electricity consumption in a work session on Tuesday… Imposing new regulations on energy use is one potential solution that council is considering in an effort to reach its goal of using only renewable energy to run the city’s electric utility by 2015. Currently, about 75 percent of the city’s portfolio is renewable, according to Dave Hornbacher, the city’s utility director, and that number is about to jump to 89 percent with the addition of more hydropower from southwest Colorado. That translates to 8.9 million kilowatt hours per year of coal-generated electricity that needs to be replaced with renewable fuel sources by 2015 if the city wants to reach its goal, he said.”

The following think tank chiefs are opposed to a carbon tax.  The list to date follows.  If your guy is not on the list, it is because he either favors a carbon tax, wants to retain the option of favoring a carbon tax at some point in the future, or has yet to contact us.

Tom Pyle, American Energy Alliance / Institute for Energy Research
Myron Ebell, Freedom Action
Phil Kerpen, American Commitment
William O’Keefe, George C. Marshall Institute
Lawson Bader, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Andrew Quinlan, Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Tim Phillips, Americans for Prosperity
Joe Bast, Heartland Institute
David Ridenour, National Center for Public Policy Research
Michael Needham, Heritage Action for America
Tom Schatz, Citizens Against Government Waste
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
Sabrina Schaeffer, Independent Women’s Forum
Barrett E. Kidner, Caesar Rodney Institute
George Landrith, Frontiers of Freedom