You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em…
The Boston Globe (8/9/13) reports: “A group of environmentalists has dropped its campaign to place a so-called carbon tax on the next statewide ballot, citing the complexity of the issue, weak fund-raising, and potential constitutional challenges to the question. The group, the Committee for a Green Economy , had hoped to place a question on the 2014 ballot asking voters to approve a new tax on gasoline, heating oil, and other fossil fuels based on the amount of carbon dioxide they produce, with the aim of reducing pollutants that contribute to climate change. The committee, however, failed to file a petition with Attorney General Martha Coakley by Wednesday’s deadline, the first step in qualifying an initiative for the ballot.”
It’s never fun to say I told you so with so many Spaniards suffering as a result of their inept government.
Salon (8/14/13) reports: “The Spanish government is in debt to its power producers to the tune of 26 billion euros, the results of years spent regulating costs. To make up the difference, it’s imposing a levy on rooftop solar panels — effectively negating the economic benefit of generating clean energy. The tax will more than triple the time it takes for consumers to recoup their investment in rooftop panels, reports Reuters. It will also prevent people from selling any extra energy they generate that way back to the grid. Those who leave their panels up without connecting them to the grid, which is how the government will monitor and tax their energy production, face a fine of between 6 million and 30 million euros.”
Intermittent is a four letter word.
The New York Times (8/14/13) reports: “The 21 turbines at the Kingdom Community Wind farm in Vermont soar above Lowell Mountain, a testament in steel and fiberglass to the state’s growing use of green energy. Except when they aren’t allowed to spin at their fastest. That has been the case several times in the farm’s short existence, including during the record July heat wave when it could have produced enough much-needed energy to fuel a small town. Instead, the grid system operator held it at times to just one-third of what it could have produced.”
We look forward to Admiral McGinn supporting opening ANWR, the OCS, and onshore as part of his readiness efforts.
Politico Pro (8/15/13) reports: “The Navy’s new energy chief doesn’t have any uncertainty about the scope of his mission. As the leader overseeing the service’s push to develop advanced biofuels and deploy more renewable energy, retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn says he has ‘to try to take the politics out of something which is essentially a national security issue.’ It’s no easy task. He faces production issues, technological barriers, increasingly tight budgets and scrutiny from congressional Republicans unhappy with the military’s green spending. But McGinn — the recently confirmed assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and the environment and outgoing president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy — says it all comes down to numbers.”
The most transparent administration in history.
The Daily Caller (8/15/13) reports: “A federal judge said that the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of private emails account may have been an attempt to skirt public scrutiny and transparency laws. The court decision comes after investigation uncovered that top agency officials were using such accounts to conduct official business. ‘The possibility that unsearched personal email accounts may have been used for official business raises the possibility that leaders in the EPA may have purposefully attempted to skirt disclosure under the FOIA,’ wrote U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in his decision.”
Stop the RINsanity!!!!
The USA Today (8/15/13) reports: “When members of Congress decided in 2007 to require that Americans put 36 billion gallons of ethanol in their gas tanks annually by 2022, they must have thought there was an award for bad public policy. The idea never made the slightest sense. The law, an expansion of a mandate adopted two years earlier, called for impossibly large quantities of corn to go into fuel production rather than onto people’s tables, driving up food prices. This year, the mandate requires 16.6 billion gallons of ethanol, absurdly consuming 37% of the nation’s corn crop and requiring farmland roughly equal to the size of Kentucky. Now unforeseen events are adding a tragicomic twist.”
Happy Friday.
Gizmodo (8/16/13) reports: “Stop me if you heard this before but an electric car and an electric pole walk into a bar… Okay, seriously. This is one of those ridiculous local news stories that are too perfect to be true but actually are. A Tesla Model S crashed into a utility pole in Tennessee and caused a local blackout. An electric car causing a blackout by crashing into a pole is a little funnier than a regular car driving into a gas station, right? The crash, which occurred in the afternoon, was actually a result of a DUI. A 34-year-old woman was behind the wheel at the time and said she was ‘messing with the radio’ (that darn giant touchscreen!) when the crash happened. When police arrived on scene, the electric car was 100 feet away from the downed utility pole and power was out locally: In order to load the crashed vehicle onto the flatbed, officers apparently had to obtain ‘technical instructions’ in how to turn off the Model S.”