Products and Power

  In July 2011, President Obama announced yet another federal intervention into the economy: increased fuel-efficiency mandates for vehicles. Although his speech was jocular and peppered with humor, it was also filled with very misleading “facts” about energy markets. In the present piece I’ll address some of the biggest whoppers. The President Agrees: Rising Oil Prices Are Bad! Although we won’t have many kind things to say about the speech, at least the president acknowledged...
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  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a court brief  in 2011 in its ongoing litigation over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. Amazingly, they are saying it would be absurd to follow the law. I’m not joking, as I will demonstrate below. The Institute for Energy Research (IER) has consistently opposed granting the federal government even further intervention into the operation of the economy and specifically of energy markets. Ironically, EPA’s own court documents...
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  In late March the EPA proposed new rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants to 1,000 pounds per megawatt-hour. This move spells a death-blow to the coal-fired power plant, as the New York Times admits in its coverage of the announcement:

The Obama administration’s proposed rule to control greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants — the first ever — could go far toward closing out the era of old-fashioned coal-burning power generation. … Recently built...

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  On February 13, 2012, IER submitted its comment on EPA’s proposed light-duty truck greenhouse gas emissions standards. As we will see, even relying on the EPA’s own analysis shows just how absurd federal intervention into energy markets has become. The debate would be funny, if it didn’t have such serious consequences in terms of economic welfare and indeed traffic fatalities. Takeaway Messages For those readers with a busy schedule, the following bullet points summarize the...
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  Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been known to say some wacky things. After the 9/11 attacks, he opined that they “could even do some economic good.” In 2002 he wrote that only a housing bubble could rescue the U.S. economy. After the tsunami, Krugman argued that the Japanese nuclear disaster “could end up being expansionary.” And this past August, Krugman went on CNN to claim that a fake alien invasion  could pull the world out of recession in...
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  Those familiar with federal regulations know that when an owner seeks to do develop his or her property—perhaps by clearing a marsh in order to build a shopping mall—there must often be an “impact” assessments (relating to the local environment, economy, etc.), which can cost a pretty penny. In addition to the direct burden of taxes, such regulations stifle innovation and job creation. In an interesting twist , in late March Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) proposed that the EPA get a...
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving ahead with its efforts to impose a “Tier 3” tightening of standards that would further reduce the permissible levels of sulfur in refined gasoline. According to a study by Baker & O’Brien, Tier 3 standards would impose upfront costs on refiners of just under $10 billion, and cause a permanent increase in refining costs of 6 to 9 cents per gallon of gasoline. These economic harms would come with only a relatively small reduction in sulfur content, because previous regulations have already greatly reduced the sulfur content in gasoline.
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"So if somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them…” – Barack Obama speaking to San Francisco Chronicle, January 2008

**Update April 19, 2012** Thirty-four gigawatts (GW) of electrical generating capacity are now set to retire because of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Mercury and Air Toxics Rule (colloquially called Utility MACT)[i] and the Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR)[ii]  regulations. Most of these retirements...
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  The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a report in 2011 on the feasibility of meeting the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) passed during the Bush administration. To no one’s surprise, the NAS found that the United States could not meet the mandated 2022 biofuels targets for cellulosic ethanol without unexpected technological breakthroughs. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has been forecasting that result since the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act...
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“The Obama agenda seeks to control the way we live, work, and act by controlling the sources of energy we use. This rule gives more power to Obama regulators by giving fewer sources of affordable energy to American consumers.” – IER President Thomas J. Pyle

WASHINGTON D.C. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is preparing today to issue a proposed rule for greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants, a move that industry experts  believe “effectively bans new coal...
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