Threats

Last week, activist groups WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) filed a lawsuit seeking to force the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to review nearly 400 oil and gas leases on federal lands. If successful, the lawsuit would advance the radical “keep it in the ground” movement via shady legal tactics and further impair the nation’s fiscal health and energy security. The lawsuit, filed in the D.C. District Court, challenges 397 oil and gas leases in...
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Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require states to generate a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. Currently 29 states and the District of Columbia have an RPS program. A new study shows that Americans in these states are paying a hefty price for their RPS. The study from Utah State University and Strata Policy looks at Kansas’ RPS and the costs incurred by Kansans since the Sunflower State adopted the mandate in 2009. Key findings include the following:

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Last month I wrote a post titled, “Climate Change Crowd Moves Goalposts—Again.” I was referring to the rhetorical strategy of de-emphasizing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a metric for gauging the impact of climate change. I speculated that this was because the climate change activists recognized that on the original terms of the debate—as staked out in the IPCC reports, for example—their case was quite weak. Somebody who knew how to actually read the latest IPCC report would see...
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As biofuels lobbyists and the Obama Administration are battling over the final numbers for the 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard, the Administration is attempting to prop up the biofuels industry through military purchasing. The Administration recently announced they would be granting $210 million in military contracts to spur the creation of commercial scale biofuels by constructing three biorefineries to produce “drop-in” biofuels.[1] This is not the first time the federal government has...
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Despite the brutal bipartisan legislative defeat in 2009 of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, there continue to be policymakers who want to impose a carbon tax. This time, the failures of current tax incentives and proposed regulations that attempt to lower our carbon dioxide emissions and encourage renewable energy are the impetus for the imposition of a carbon tax.  But as we have explained many times, carbon taxes are economically harmful, not matter how they are dressed up. ...
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Nine months after the deadline, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally sent its final 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volume requirements to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. The RFS requires refiners to blend a certain percentage of renewable fuels into the gasoline supply. The countdown is on for one last big lobbying push by renewable fuel interests push for higher requirements than what was included in EPA’s proposed 2014 RFS rule. EPA...

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The state of Nevada—like many others—has implemented a “Renewable Portfolio Standard,” or RPS. According to the state mandate—which was first implemented in 1997 but has since been periodically revised—the state utility, NV Energy, must produce at least 25 percent of its total retail electricity with eligible renewable sources by 2025, and 6 percent of the total must be satisfied with solar energy in particular. Beyond the arbitrariness of these political goals—isn’t it a...
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On these pages, we have been chronicling the sad saga of alternative-fuel company KiOR, which is facing class action lawsuits and an SEC investigation because it allegedly misled investors about the plausibility of its biofuel production targets. In the present post we’ll summarize the latest developments, which show that KiOR is teetering on the edge of collapse but has gotten a last-minute stay of execution. Last month, KiOR stock fell 39 percent (the biggest drop on record since the...
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For decades, principled defenders of free energy markets have pointed out the absurdities of government support for biofuels. The decentralized market system provides the proper feedback—in the form of the profit/loss test—to investors to determine the correct mix of various sources in the country’s overall energy output. If it really made economic sense produce over 14 billion gallons of ethanol in 2014, then it wouldn’t take government interference to force that outcome. The fact...
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This year marks the complete phase-out of the traditional incandescent light bulb. Starting on January 1, it effectively became illegal to manufacture or import the good old-fashioned light bulb in the United States, though stores are still allowed to sell down their pre-existing inventories. Specifically, provisions in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act phased in energy-efficiency standards for light bulbs of various wattages that incandescent bulbs can’t achieve. The...
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