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A broad, diverse, and growing chorus of voices continues to tell Washington that Enough Is Enough as politicians like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) squabble for more special-interest handouts veiled as so-called “fixes” to the fundamentally failed Renewable Fuel Standard. While Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the recently announcement RFS compromise struck at last week’s White House meeting a terrific decision and a win-win, we beg to differ. There’s nothing terrific about...
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Today President Trump will meet with the big U.S. automakers. The topic of discussion will be the administration’s decision to reconsider the excessive and unnecessary fuel efficiency standards imposed by the Obama administration. The American Energy Alliance has applauded that decision, and encourages the administration to see it through. The automakers themselves last year requested the exact action that the administration is undertaking. But now the automakers are planning to ask the...
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The Department of Energy’s proposed grid resiliency rulemaking was the wrong solution for a genuine problem. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rightly voted to terminate the rulemaking , instead requesting information from grid operators and the public about how to address the undervaluation of coal and nuclear power generation in electricity markets. But before we move forward with that discussion, something must be noted: the wind and solar companies and their lobbying arms that...
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The American Energy Alliance urges all Senators to oppose Grassley amendment #1835 to the Hatch substitute for HR 1 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This amendment seeks to protect the users of complex international tax structures from being touched by reforms included in the Hatch Substitute, a provision known as the Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT). The BEAT provision targets asset stripping where large companies use international subsidiaries to game the system to reduce their tax...
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Congress is at long last coming to grips with the failure that is the wind production tax credit (PTC). The bill passed by the House Thursday will cut the rate at which wind production is subsidized by about one-third and will allow the quarter-century-old program to finally end as scheduled in 2020. Hurdles still remain on the Senate side of things and the fight is far from over. At least one senator, however, isn't afraid to call out the wind PTC as the costly, cronyistic subsidy that...
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At the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, former President Bush admitted to going against his “free market instincts ” when he bailed out the banks following the financial crisis. “History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much,” he added. We couldn’t agree more. Abundant, affordable energy is the foundation of modern prosperity. One of the most pernicious things that the Obama administration did was...
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WASHINGTON – Thomas J. Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, has issued the following statement on today’s release of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: “This pro-growth tax reform plan is a breath of fresh air for American businesses and the American people. The immediate lowering of the corporate tax rate to 20 percent will free up capital to boost investments, jobs, and incomes and the termination of distortionary practices like the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit will...
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Earlier this week a group of Senators from some of the states that are victims of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) decided to fight back against the ethanol mafia. It’s about time. The spectacle last week of a few Midwestern Senators making threats and holding up nominations to protect a government handout that only benefits their wealthy backers in the ethanol industry was a new low even for Congress. Members of a party that ostensibly opposes regulation and federal mandates went full...
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Over the last few weeks and months, Senator Grassley and his paymasters in the biofuel industry created a lot of sound and fury about an eminently reasonable proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) . Namely, matching the biodiesel mandate in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) more closely to the amount of biodiesel actually produced in the United States. This minor proposed adjustment to the federal biodiesel mandate prompted howls of anguish from Big Ethanol and their...
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Earlier this week, an article in The Guardian by John Abraham on fossil fuel subsidies piqued our interest and we granted it a coveted spot in our daily news roundup, In the Pipeline: But I think it deserves a bit more attention. As the above excerpt indicates, Abraham’s article is a paean to a study that seeks to redefine subsidy. According to the study’s authors and to Abraham, rather than subsidy  meaning a benefit given by the government to groups or individuals, usually in...
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