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On this episode of The Unregulated Podcast Tom Pyle and Mike McKenna ponder why Team Biden can’t get their talking points together, the ramifications of the Trump trial, and what it all means for the 2024 presidential contest.
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#183: A Bronx Tale (5/24/24)
Links:
Haley Voting for Trump
www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics…analysis/index.html
Source: CNN
Greater Idaho
nypost.com/2024/05/22/us-news/…join-greater-idaho/
Source: NY Post
Harvard Corporation Rejects 13 Over Faculty Recommendation
Harvard Corporation Rejects FAS Effort to Let 13 Pro-Palestine Student Protesters Graduate | News | The Harvard Crimson (thecrimson.com)
Source: Harvard Crimson
Stop Copper Thieves, Improve Traffic Safety at the Same Time
jalopnik.com/oakland-thwarts-co…ign-tec-1851491153
Source: Jalopnik
More than half of Americans think the U.S. is in a recession. It’s not.
www.axios.com/2024/05/23/us-rece…economic-data-poll
Source: Axios
Red Lobster Bankrupt
slate.com/life/2024/05/red-lob…-endless-shrimp.html
Source: Slate
Ford Backs Car Rule in Court
www.reuters.com/business/environm…rules-2024-05-20/
Source: Reuters
VW Abandons Ship
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…ed-checkout=true
Source: Bloomberg
Embrace Chinese EVs (that only took a few days…)
On Tariffs and the EV Transition – Energy Institute Blog (wordpress.com)
Source: Energy Institute
WASHINGTON, DC (5/22/24) – Yesterday, the Senate passed S.J.Res.58, the Congressional Review Act resolution disapproving of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy conservation standards for residential gas furnaces, with a bipartisan vote of 50-45. The DOE’s extreme rules will eliminate the most affordable home heating options, reducing choice and raising costs for American consumers. AEA included S.J.Res.58 in the American Energy Scorecard.
Following the passage of this bill, AEA President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement:
“The Biden Administration’s relentless attack on the lifestyle and pocketbooks of American families hit a roadblock today thanks to the leadership of Senator Ted Cruz. Whether it is gas stoves, or cars, or in this case furnaces, Senator Cruz is fighting the misguided attacks on domestic oil and natural gas and helping shield American families from even higher prices brought about by the policies of President Joe Biden. The American Energy Alliance applauds Senator Cruz for advancing free markets and helping to keep home heating and cooling affordable.”
Additional Resources:
John Podesta, President Biden’s climate czar, recently suggested that a carbon border tax could be proposed during the second term of the Biden administration.
A carbon border tax involves levying taxes on imports based on their estimated greenhouse gas emissions. Given the interconnected nature of the global economy and the presence of foreign components in most consumer products, a tariff targeting greenhouse gas emissions on imports essentially functions as a tax on everything. As we have pointed out in numerous places, the brunt of this energy tax would be borne by the American people, particularly the most vulnerable: the impoverished, the elderly, and individuals on fixed incomes as the costs of taxes on imported goods will ultimately be passed to them.
Furthermore, carbon border taxes are susceptible to political manipulation due to the complexities involved in assessing the true carbon intensity of products sourced from various countries with differing regulatory frameworks. The sheer complexity of rating products would create massive compliance costs that would raise the cost of doing business throughout the economy.
The effort to impose a carbon border tax is being aided by some Republican members in the Senate as last June Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and several other Republican senators introduced legislation to establish the administrative framework needed to implement such a tax called The PROVE IT Act.
The PROVE IT Act assigns the Department of Energy (DOE) the task of creating a comprehensive report evaluating the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked to various product categories to determine their average emissions intensity domestically and internationally. While proponents may portray it as a straightforward data-gathering initiative, the legislation marks the first step towards gathering crucial data for potential carbon taxes and tariffs in the United States. It grants the DOE broad discretion in methodology, paving the way for rent-seeking and intense lobbying efforts from affected industries, which will ultimately skew the report’s findings as accurately measuring and quantifying GHG emissions presents significant challenges. GHG emissions measurement is inherently imprecise, with virtually all human activities contributing. Additionally, the Act’s focus on establishing an average emissions intensity for national products overlooks regional variations in emissions within the vast United States, which can affect companies differently. Expectations of calculating emissions profiles for other nations are also overly optimistic, given potential data limitations and cooperation issues, particularly from countries like China. Despite acknowledging these challenges, the Act mandates the DOE to compile a report, potentially flawed and incomplete, for regulatory and taxation purposes.
Currently, it appears that Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) is seeking cosponsors for a House version of the PROVE IT Act. While it’s no shock to witness Democrats embracing policies prioritizing climate change without much heed to cost or efficacy, it’s disheartening to witness Republicans aiding them in this endeavor. A faction within the Republican Party is eager to impose protectionist trade policies that might benefit a small number of companies in their districts. These Republican members know energy taxes are not popular, so they have obscured their efforts to hike energy prices behind rhetoric about being tough on China. In the process, they are finding common ground with a segment of the Democratic Party that is focused on supporting climate action in any form. Together, both groups are very willing to pass the costs of those policies onto the rest of us.
In December, the American Energy Alliance and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity released a survey on voter attitudes toward climate and energy policies, and we posed this question to 1,600 likely voters in eight swing states: “How much are you willing to pay annually to address climate change?” The median response was $10 per year. Surprisingly, over one-third of respondents, including 17 percent of surveyed Democrats, expressed unwillingness to pay anything at all. Moreover, when confronted with the prospect of a proposed tax on imported goods, voters displayed a resounding opposition, with nearly a 2-1 margin against it. This sentiment was echoed across the board, with a widespread consensus emerging that the federal government should refrain from imposing measures that increase the cost of energy, exacerbate inflation, or escalate taxes on energy. Carbon border taxes do all of that.
Previous instances have shown that tariffs did not meet their intended goals, including revitalizing protected industries, maintaining job opportunities, and improving environmental results. These are identical aims outlined by supporters of carbon border taxes, and there’s little evidence to suggest outcomes will vary at present. Republicans should heed this: the American people reject new energy taxes.
#182: Romney Being Romney (5/17/24)
Links:
Alsobrooks beats Trone
www.npr.org/2024/05/14/12514704…an-alsobrooks-trone
Source: NPR
David Trone and the History of Candidates Lighting their Money on Fire
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024…rone-funding/
Source: Washington Post
Biden Hits Chinese Electric Vehicles, Chips and Other Goods With Higher Tariffs
www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/pol…hina-tariffs.html
Source: NY Times
Romney: Biden Should have pardoned Trump
Source: MSNBC
www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna152420
IER/Rig Zone
www.rigzone.com/news/how_much_oil…4-176766-article/
R&D Energy/Climate Poll: Trembath Tweet: EVs
“The Biden administration’s proposed tailpipe regulations that would ‘require auto companies to sell more electric vehicles after 2030’ is one of the worst performing ideas in the entire poll.”
Source: www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-partisa…ergy-policies
EIA EV sales lower.
www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62063
Tweet of the week: x.com/Brooks_Gate/status/1790389822302965799
Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized its power plant rule and, in most cases, has made it more restrictive than what it proposed last year, incorporating comments from environmentalists rather than addressing concerns about the impacts on consumers and the utilities who serve them. EPA’s power plant rule targets electricity from coal and natural gas, which together make up about 60 percent of the electricity generation in the United States while providing firm power to the grid and back-up to intermittent and weather-driven solar and wind plants. The rule is likely to face challenges in court and from Congress.
Existing natural gas plants are not included in the current rule as EPA administrator Michael Regan says the agency is taking more time to strengthen rules for existing gas power plants. For now, the agency is gathering input for that proposed rule in a “non-regulatory docket,” which the EPA website says are “not related to the development of a rule.” The agency did not say how long that process might take, but some believe it will be after the election so as not to alarm Americans by the threat to the grid that a very restrictive regulation would cause. The reliability of the U.S. electric grid is being threatened by intermittent and weather-driven wind and solar power and a reduction of firm power from retirements of coal, natural gas and nuclear power capacity.
According to Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, “The path outlined by the EPA today is unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable” because the rule oversteps EPA’s authority, relies on technologies that are not ready to deploy and does not give existing coal and new gas power plants enough time to comply. The group’s members spread throughout rural America get 63 percent of their electricity from fossil fuels, as does most of the nation.
Besides the power plant rule, the EPA is also finalizing rules to limit toxic wastewater pollution from coal plants, strengthen regulations on coal ash and limit mercury and other toxins from burning coal for electricity. This is consistent with President Biden’s promise to end fossil fuels in the United States, despite those fuels supplying the vast majority of energy.
Bipartisan Congressional Objections
A group of House Democrats, led by House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), urged EPA Administrator Michael Regan to “defer finalizing the proposed rules until an updated reliability assessment of the proposal is complete and made public.” Congresswoman Kaptur is worried that closing so many electricity plants will lead to power disruptions whose effects will ripple through the economy and people’s lives.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), the co-chair of the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus, said that while “decarbonization of the electric power sector is an important environmental priority,” it “must be accomplished in a manner that preserves electric affordability, reliability, and security.” He also said that EPA and the White House ought to go through Congress in pursuing an emissions reduction blueprint rather than relying on regulations.
Last year, Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hold “a series of technical conferences to analyze the impact of the [rule] on electric reliability.” FERC did not respond to the request so there is no independent analysis of the potential impact on the grid.
Carbon Capture Technology Still in Its Infancy
EPA’s justification for the rule relies on projections about how fast new technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions develop, notably carbon capture and storage (CCS) on power plant smokestacks. CCS proposes to capture carbon dioxide to keep it out of the atmosphere and would store it, usually underground. That technology is not fully proven despite the Department of Energy (DOE) spending hundreds of millions of dollars funding carbon capture projects, and comes with controversies, such as building more pipelines through communities, which in many cases are not wanted. The carbon dioxide that is captured also can be sold to enhance oil recovery, something environmental groups also oppose.
DOE spent $684 million on carbon capture projects at six coal plants with just one currently operating in Texas after shuttering in 2020 because it could not sustain itself during the pandemic. The other five plants could not sustain themselves financially from the outset. Since the CCS technology is far from being economically viable, if generators are required to add it to reduce 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions, the generators will be forced to close. Prospects might be more advantageous if the Biden administration treated all technologies alike. However, with severe penalties and restrictions on fossil fuel technologies and massive subsidies and regulatory exceptions on renewable technologies, the playing field is not level.
Chamber of Commerce Found Multiple Errors in the Original Rule Analysis
An analysis by the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute found significant issues with EPA’s modeling and assumptions associated with the original rule that are likely to still apply. The analysis questioned the EPA’s methodology, highlighting exaggerated emissions reduction claims, overlooked electricity demand factors and questionable deployment timelines for carbon capture and sequestration. As such, the Global Energy Institute found that the EPA may have had its “thumb on the scale” when it came to justifying the rule, in pursuit of its political goals.
Specifically, the Chamber of Commerce found:
Conclusion
EPA’s final power plant carbon rule would give some units more time to capture their carbon dioxide emissions, but most aspects of the final rule are stricter than what the agency proposed last year. Under the EPA final rule, newly-built gas plants and existing coal plants will need to eventually control 90 percent of their carbon emissions, which means capturing carbon dioxide emissions using technologies that remove it out of the smokestack before they can be released into the atmosphere, using a technology, carbon capture and sequestration, that is not commercially available or economic. That means that U.S. consumers will be faced with either exorbitant costs for control equipment and greater electric usage being forced upon them by President Biden through his mandates, regulations and standards or be put in a situation of electric reliability akin to third world nations as wind and solar power are inherently unreliable.
*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.
On this episode of The Unregulated Podcast Tom Pyle and Mike McKenna talk the 2024 race for the White House, Team Biden’s stunning endorsement of child mining, and are joined by Isaac Orr, the Vice-President of Policy Research at Always On Energy Research, for a discussion on Biden’s regulatory assault on America’s electric grid.
Links:
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The Biden administration will allow consumers to get up to $7,500 on tax credits for electric vehicles containing Chinese graphite through 2026–a two-year extension, making it easier for car manufacturers to make and sell vehicles eligible for the tax credit. The Treasury Department published final rules governing the tax credits, which are designed to encourage EV production and push supply chains for minerals and batteries into the United States. Democrats in Congress expanded EV tax credits in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to spur rapid electrification of the passenger-automobile fleet, but included a series of escalating requirements that the vehicles exclude critical minerals and other materials from some foreign countries, especially China. China produced about 77 percent of the world’s graphite in 2023 compared to none for the United States.
The graphite restriction was set to take effect in 2025, and because most graphite comes from China, the number of electric vehicles eligible for the tax credit would have dropped, reducing EV sales. Only 22 of 122 EV models on sale in the United States currently qualify for part or all of the $7,500 tax credit. Industry officials objected to the 2025 date as it would be harder to meet Biden’s EV mandates and they would have to pay fines for not meeting EV sales targets. The federal government also determined that it was too difficult to trace the origin of graphite because natural graphite is often mixed with synthetic graphite made from petroleum coke. Other low-value materials, including minerals contained in electrolyte salts and electrode binders, get similar treatment.
To qualify for the two-year extension, automakers must show the government how they will reorient their supply chains and document the origins of their graphite. Because it can take a long time to reshape manufacturing processes, companies will need to move quickly to find more graphite sources outside China so they have electric vehicles eligible for the tax credit in early 2027.
Not Everyone is Happy About the Extension
Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), an author of the IRA legislation who pressed for measures to remove Chinese materials from EV supply chains, criticized the Treasury’s two-year extension. He said it delays domestic investment while benefiting “foreign adversaries” such as China and Russia. “Treasury has provided a long-term pathway for these countries to remain in our supply chains,” Manchin said. “It’s outrageous.”
The North American Graphite Alliance, which represents producers, said it was disappointed that automakers were given more time to wean themselves from Chinese graphite. It urged the administration to hold firm to the new timeline, so that car companies and battery makers will lock into purchase contracts for 2027.
Automakers Make Changes to Supply Chains
To get their electric vehicles to qualify for the tax credit, automakers have been adjusting their supply chains for batteries and minerals that have been heavily dependent on China. Car companies and their joint-venture partners are spending tens of billions of dollars to construct battery factories in the United States, allowing companies to qualify some models for a portion of the tax credit that requires that electric vehicles batteries are made in North America–a threshold that began this year. The mineral rules, however, are harder on auto supply chains because most of the core raw materials, such as lithium, nickel, graphite and manganese, are either extracted or processed in China. China is especially adept at processing the minerals to make them market-ready from their raw or concentrated form, using inexpensive coal power.
The various phase-ins of the IRA rules have resulted in some EV models falling in and out of eligibility as new rules take effect. The battery requirements that began in January rendered several models ineligible because certain components were sourced from outside North America. General Motors, for example, built about 20,000 electric vehicles—including the Chevrolet Blazer and Cadillac Lyriq SUVs—that did not qualify because of the battery rules. In March, the company adjusted its supply to regain eligibility for those models. Companies appear to be concentrating more on pleasing the government’s EV demands than they have been on meeting consumer demands, judging by the slowing EV demand in the auto market.
Conclusion
The Biden administration recently made a number of rule changes that impact the EV tax credit. The rules specify how much government ownership and control in foreign places such as China makes a supplier a “foreign entity of concern.” They detail how consumers can claim the credits when they purchase new and used cars from dealers rather than waiting to get them on their tax returns. So far this year, more than 100,000 credits worth more than $700 million have been claimed at the point of sale.
One of the recent changes allows automakers to continue to use graphite from China in their electric vehicles through 2026 as the industry indicated that they needed more time to find other suppliers. The Treasury Department also noted that the origin of graphite supplies was difficult to track and is allowing automakers the 2-year extension as long as they work on changing suppliers and document the origin of their graphite. Biden is again doing all it can to get Americans to change their personal mode of transportation to electric vehicles and to allow China to keep its dominance in mineral supply chains and EV batteries.
*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.
On this episode of The Unregulated Podcast Tom Pyle and Mike McKenna discuss the harrowing rise in inflation, the continued occupation of campuses across America by the Hamas Wing, a big week in Congress, and more.
Links:
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democratic politicians have urged President Biden to declare climate change, which Biden calls an existential threat, a national emergency. According to Bloomberg’s sources, that means that Biden could impose a draconian crackdown on fossil fuels, including suspending offshore drilling, restricting exports of oil and LNG, and ‘throttling’ the industry’s ability to transport its production via pipelines, ships and rail. Industry experts warned that the measure would discourage investment in domestic energy production and result in higher retail prices. The result would be a recipe for massive economic disaster. Implementation would provide Biden with control over the entire U.S. economy, control of production, manufacturing, distribution, and consumption with his pet renewable projects providing most of the new energy. Fossil fuels supply about 80 percent of the nation’s energy.
According to the White House, the idea of declaring a climate emergency, first considered in 2021 and again in 2022, is again being considered. Declaring a climate emergency would provide the president with dictatorial powers to hamstring the domestic oil and gas industry more than his executive orders and regulations have already accomplished, which has resulted so far in economic costs of over a $1 trillion. The price tag on private households and businesses of Biden’s regulatory actions is triple the regulatory cost under the Obama administration and 30 times higher than the new regulations under President Trump, according to the American Action Forum.
In what is effectively seen as the Environmental Protection Agency’s “plan to ration electricity”, the Wall Street Journal observed: “The Biden Administration’s regulations are coming so fast and furious that its hard even to keep track.” The Journal said the EPA “proposed its latest doozy—rules that will effectively force coal plants to shut down while banning new natural-gas plants.” These are rules in EPA’s finalized power plant rule.
Independently making a move to declare climate a national emergency ignores that the demand for oil and natural gas is global and will not be reduced because Biden puts limits on U.S. domestic oil and gas production and distribution. Such a move would inevitably create billions of dollars in capital migrating to other parts of the world where environmental regulations are far less stringent than in the United States. The U.S. oil and gas industry has dramatically cut emissions of both methane and carbon dioxide even as it has achieved new records in production. The United States has an Environmental Quality Index much higher than other major oil and gas producing countries. For oil, the United States has an index score of 51.1 compared to 39 for the next 20 oil producers, and for natural gas, the average is 38.6 to 51.1 for the United States.
According to White House officials, they have not made a decision on an emergency proclamation, nor is any declaration imminent. White House discussions over potential policy steps can span years, and many do not come to fruition. According to White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez, Biden has “delivered on the most ambitious climate agenda in history. President Biden has treated the climate crisis as an emergency since day one and will continue to build a clean energy future that lowers utility bills, creates good-paying union jobs, makes our economy the envy of the world and prioritizes communities that for too long have been left behind.”
Her statement, however, ignores the fact that gasoline prices have risen over 50 percent since Biden has become President and residential electricity prices have risen 27 percent. It also ignores the high inflation that has resulted under Biden’s Presidency and the high borrowing costs that are limiting new development projects despite substantial subsidies for the administration’s favorite pet projects funded by American taxpayers.
If Biden were to proclaim a climate national emergency that would veto the extraction, processing and use of fossil fuels in the United States, the massive subsidies and mandates to support favored green industries such as solar, wind, electric vehicles and battery technologies would grow even more. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, subsidies for renewable energy producers more than doubled between 2016 and 2022, forming nearly half of all federal energy-related support in that period. The subsidies, via investment tax credits and other instruments mainly based on debt, made available in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 totaling over an estimated $1 trillion over the next ten years increases that number even more. There are also the hidden costs involved with the countless mandates to force “green” initiatives on the public.
Declaring a climate emergency would benefit China since China leads the world in providing batteries, solar panels, critical minerals and components of “green products.” Any plan to force Americans to buy Chinese products increases China’s carbon dioxide emissions as China burns 9 times as much coal as the United States and produces more carbon dioxide emissions than the United States, EU, and Japan combined. If President Biden was able to immediately stop all fossil energy use in the United states, the temperature impact would be a reduction in global temperatures of 0.173°C by 2100—a trifling amount.
Proclaiming a national emergency excuses executive authority from the constraints of the normal rule of law. It evades public opinion, the checks and balances of legislation, and the censure of constitutional impeachment. An emergency declaration allows the president to access funds from the Treasury even for purposes that Congress might have specifically rejected, taking away the House’s “power of the purse.” Thus, accountability to the people for the expenditure of their money, the Constitution’s safeguard for imposing popular will on government, is made redundant. Research by the Brennan Center for Justice catalogs 123 statutory authorities that become available to the president when he declares a national emergency.
Conclusion
President Biden has threatened to make climate a nation emergency several times where he would then be able to force major reductions on the production and distribution of fossil fuels. Most recently, such a proclamation would be to gain the support of the youth who see climate change as an issue. But such a draconian move would be an economic disaster as energy is the backbone of the economy. Biden and his White House staff are right in proclaiming that he has taken more action regarding the environment than any other President and those actions are costing American taxpayers trillions, most of which are being funded from increased national debt.
*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.