Question: Would Warren & Co. go all in on wind if they weren’t able to feed themselves greedily from the public coffers?
The Daily Caller (8/13/13) reports: “A subsidiary of the Warren Buffett-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings is looking to capitalize on federal tax subsidies by installing 448 wind turbines across five Iowa counties in order to generate up to 1,050 megawatts of power by 2015. Construction on the wind farms is scheduled to begin next month, meaning MidAmerican will qualify for generous wind tax credits offered by the federal government. ‘MidAmerican Energy Company does plan to use federal wind production tax credits for the recently announced wind expansion,’ a company spokeswoman told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email. ‘The specific amount is not available.’”
When government becomes the judge, jury, and executioner, it really limits your options. You either play ball or perish. Really though, you can’t blame the refiners for not wanting to participate in Soviet style mandates.
The Wall Street Journal (8/14/13) reports: “Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its annual renewable-fuels mandate, telling refineries how much ethanol they must blend into the nation’s gas supply. This quota, which grows each year, is becoming a horrific financial burden on the industry, forcing many refineries to buy federal ethanol ‘credits’ to satisfy the rules. The skyrocketing price of those credits is adding hundreds of millions of dollars to refineries’ annual costs. So it was more than a little curious that the EPA, as part of its rule, announced it was exempting just one mystery refinery (out of 143) from this year’s mandate. The dispensation amounts to a significant financial favor to one lucky player, as I wrote in the Journal on Friday. Further reporting has revealed that the refinery is Alon USA Energy’s Krotz Springs facility in Louisiana. There’s reason to wonder why Krotz Springs alone got a deal.”
All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey. San Francisco regulators, refuse to hike the rates. Green schemers for now, they’re are being held at bay. California green dreamin’, will wait another day.
CBS SF Bay Area (8/14/13) reports: “Proponents of a green power alternative to PG&E in San Francisco are frustrated, but not deterred by delays to the city’s long-awaited renewable energy program. However, this week’s setback when the SF Public Utilities Commission refused to move forward on a key approval has sent the program back to the drawing board. For nine years, the city has been putting together CleanPowerSF, which would cost customers more than PG&E, but would provide renewable or green energy.Supervisor John Avalos, a big supporter, said it’s been an uphill battle to come up with a program palatable for regulators, who on Tuesday, refused to sign off on a rate schedule.”
Come on Josh, if you’re going to keep blatantly promoting “misinformation” the least you could do is say it on the record.
The Washington Free Beacon (8/14/13) reports: “Environmentalist filmmaker Josh Fox grew frustrated during a recent public radio interview when asked about apparent falsehoods in his Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary Gasland. Fox asked an interviewer with Aspen public radio station KAJX to go ‘off the record’ so he could explain why he represented a gas extraction lease created by a group of Pennsylvania landowners as a $100,000 offer from a gas company to extract natural gas from his land. The document presented in Gasland was a draft of a lease that Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance (NWPOA), a Pennsylvania landowners group, offered to gas companies exploring potential shale drilling operations in the area hoping to secure favorable terms for landowners, according to NWPOA members. It was not, as Fox claimed in the film, an offer from one of those companies. The group also says Fox was never a member, as he told KAJX on Monday.”
