October 2013 Climate Change Summary Report

“EPA gets ahead of itself, and technology, with coal rule”

October 31, 2013: An op-ed in The Hill by Peter Glaser, energy and environmental attorney based in Washington D.C. and a lobbyist with Troutman Sanders representing the National Mining Association, which is working against EPA climate regulations, states: “With its proposed rule to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from future coal electric generation plants, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a new front in its anti-fossil fuels campaign that ultimately will dramatically raise energy prices by making energy scarce.  But in its zeal to prevent the construction of new coal plants, EPA has climbed far out on a legal limb, and its proposal is highly unlikely to stand up in court. The agency is acting outside its authority under the Clean Air Act, which requires it to prove its proposed standards for new coal plants are achievable by demonstrated, cost-effective technology.  EPA does not meet this requirement.  EPA would mandate that all new coal plants use technology that captures most of the plant’s CO2 emissions.”

“Truckers Tap Into Gas Boom”

October 29, 2013: The Wall Street Journal reports: “Operators of some of the largest U.S. truck fleets, including Lowe’s Cos.,  Procter & Gamble Co. and  United Parcel Service Inc., are accelerating a shift to natural gas fueled trucks, betting on new engine technology that promises to drop the cost of shifting from diesel fuel. Home-improvement retailer Lowe’s wants its delivery company to shift all of its several hundred trucks to natural gas by 2017. P&G already has 7% of its trucks on gas and could reach as much as 20% within two years. UPS says it plans to buy 1,000 natural gas trucks by the end of next year. FedEx Corp. plans to shift 30% of its long-distance trucks to natural gas over the next decade. The nation’s supply of relatively cheap natural gas is helping spur this shift. So are new natural gas engines that can power heavy-duty trucks that weigh up to 80,000 pounds. The first, a 12-liter Cummins Westport Inc. natural gas engine went on sale in July. Next year, Volvo AB, the Swedish heavy truck maker, will introduce a natural gas engine for its trucks.

“West Coast states, British Columbia to link emissions policies”

October 29, 2013: Associated Press reports: “The governors of Pacific coastal U.S. states and a Canadian province official are joining forces in a new effort to fight climate change. In an agreement announced Monday, the governors of California, Oregon, Washington and the environment minister of British Columbia, Mary Polak, will place a price on greenhouse gas pollution and mandate the use of cleaner-burning fuels. Polak and the governors gathered in San Francisco in the hope of stimulating a clean-energy economy in the region, which has a combined gross domestic product of $2.8 trillion. California and British Columbia already have placed a price on greenhouse gas emissions — through cap-and-trade and a carbon tax, respectively — and adopted clean fuel standards.”

 

“Thorning: Green Agenda Putting Golden State in the Red”

October 25, 2013: Submitted in response to this week’s National Journal Energy Insiders blog, Margo Thorning, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at ACCF, states: “California’s green agenda is neither a model nor a cautionary tale for the U.S. It is a red flag that should serve as a lesson of what happens when you strangle an already weak economy with severe regulations that will have no net environmental gain. One only needs to look at the data.  This week, the U.S. unemployment ticked downward slightly to 7.3%, yet jobless numbers in California remain substantially higher at 8.9%.  Also, data on electricity prices from DOE’s Energy Information Administration highlights the competitive disadvantage California’s cap and trade system for GHG emissions and renewable energy mandates impose on business and the burden it places on households. Industrial electricity prices averaged 10.9 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) in California in July 2013 compared to only 6.76 cents per kwh for the U.S. (a difference of 60 percent).   Residential electricity prices averaged 16.2 cents per kwh in July 2013 in California versus an average of 12.0 per kwh for the U.S. as a whole (a difference of 35 percent).”

“U.S. carbon emissions keep falling”

October 23, 2013: Politico reports: “The U.S. energy sector’s carbon dioxide emissions fell last year to their lowest level in almost two decades, continuing a trend that has both supporters and opponents of President Barack Obama’s climate policies claiming vindication. The nation’s energy-related CO2 emissions dropped by 3.8 percent in 2012 as Americans drove fewer miles, cars continued to become more fuel efficient, power companies increasingly switched from coal to natural gas and the U.S. economy as a whole got more bang for each unit of energy, the federal Energy Information Administration reported Monday. That brought last year’s carbon emissions to their lowest level since 1994, the agency said in the new report, just days after reopening its doors with the end of the government shutdown. During that same 28-year period, real U.S. gross domestic product rose 56 percent.”

“SAUNDERS: Tempering the allure of alternative fuels”

October 23, 2013: An op-ed in The Washington Times by Paul J. Saunders, executive director of the Center for the National Interest and senior adviser to the undersecretary for global affairs in the George W. Bush administration, states: “America’s skyrocketing oil and natural-gas output is not only fueling massive and widespread economic growth, but also producing considerable hot air in policy discussions. Most dangerous are illusions of ‘energy independence’ and ‘energy leverage’ that ignore fundamental economic and political realities of the modern world. Blind pursuit of these twin goals is unlikely to bring the results that some claim and could, in fact, have costly unintended consequences, both at home and abroad. Domestically, new oil- and gas-extraction technologies are already supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and could mean more than 2 million jobs in the next 20 years. Over the same time frame, they will likely add more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy and generate an equivalent amount in federal, state and local tax revenues, according to recent studies. Lower energy prices are also making U.S. manufacturing more competitive and encouraging foreign companies to build and expand factories in America.”

“U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fall in 2012”

October 22, 2013: The Hill reports: “The Department of Energy on Monday said that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined in 2012 to their lowest level in nearly two decades. The departments’ Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report on Monday citing a drop in energy consumption, which led to a 3.8 percent decline in emissions. Residential consumers were responsible for half of the overall drop in energy-related emissions, while the transportation sector contributed to 22 percent of the decline. The report also credited the natural gas surge for providing a substitute to coal-fired generation, which has a higher carbon output.”

“Obama’s Climate Action Plan is its own worst enemy”

October 18, 2013: An op-ed in The Hill by Brian H. Potts, a partner at the law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP and author of numerous articles on the Clean Air Act, states: “Like most of the federal government, the Environmental Protection Agency has been almost completely shut down.  Not much of EPA’s work had been deemed essential.  Yet while EPA employees were sitting idly by waiting for Congress and the President to send them back to work, industry lawyers were tirelessly working on ways of undercutting President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.  And the plan has many weaknesses.  But none as big as the one I’m about to report. Released in June, Obama’s climate plan directed EPA to issue two new power plant rules: one governing the future construction of power plants (to be finalized in 2014) and another for existing power plants (to be finalized in 2015).”

“Supreme Court to Hear Some Greenhouse-Gas Challenges”

October 16, 2013: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would consider challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s permitting requirements for power plants and other facilities that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, throwing the Obama administration’s regulations into a state of uncertainty. The court’s announcement breathes new life into lawsuits by industry groups and several states that alleged the EPA overreached when it introduced its first greenhouse-gas regulations in 2009 and 2010. A Washington-based federal appeals court in June 2012 sided with the EPA on nearly every issue in the dispute.” Energy Guardian also reports.

“A Carbon Reckoning”

October 16, 2013: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has spent the last few years stretching its legal authority, and now it will have to defend its actions before the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the Justices agreed to review how far the agency can go in regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, the Court consolidated six cert petitions and will consider a single legal question: Does the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ‘mobile sources’ like cars also apply to emissions from ‘stationary sources’ like power plants? To put it another way: Can the EPA make up the rules as it goes along?”

“Citizens Climate Lobby advocates carbon tax to fight global warming”

October 9, 2013: Los Angeles Daily News reports: “Robert Haw says solving the problem of global warming is easy. No, really. He’s dead serious. Haw has a bona  fide plan and he’s taking it to each of the 535 members of Congress. As president of the Pasadena-Foothills Chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby, the JPL scientist from Altadena says his group is creating a buzz in Washington with a rebate version of a revenue-neutral carbon tax that combines market forces with consumerism to drive up the cost of fossil fuels and make renewable energy more affordable. So far, the plan has picked up endorsements from former Secretary of State George Schultz and supply-side economist Arthur Laffer, who was an adviser to Ronald Reagan.”

“New analysis confirms the danger of climate change”

October 9, 2013: An editorial in The Washington Post states: “IF ONE body represents the international scientific consensus on global warming, it is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations panel that just released the first portion of its fifth authoritative report on the science. Backers point out that more than 800 authors and 50 editors from dozens of countries have produced a comprehensive and carefully worded analysis of the greatest environmental threat facing the planet. Critics pore over every sentence looking for errors. They even found a few among the thousands of pages in the IPCC’s last report. But the bottom line remains this: The likelihood that human-induced global warming will have severe effects on humanity is far too high to ignore.”

“Global Air Emissions Deal Approved”

October 7, 2013: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The airline industry is set to introduce a global market-based scheme to curb aircraft pollution by 2020, heading off the threat of a renewed trade spat. The United Nations’ aviation body on Friday agreed to adopt market-based conservation measures to tackle emissions from commercial aviation, and will spend the next three years designing a program ahead of its planned introduction at the start of the next decade. The agreement by the 191-member International Civil Aviation Organization follows years of squabbling over how to curb aircraft emissions, a small but fast-growing source of greenhouse gases that was targeted with a controversial system introduced by the European Union.”

“How to Tax Carbon”

October 4, 2013: The American Conservative reports: “Rather than acknowledge climate change as a major public-policy issue and draft a serious proposal to deal with it—to counter the left’s plan to expand dramatically the size, scope, and cost of the federal government—the right has too long pursued a course of obstructionism that amounts to little more than political theatre. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar circumstances allowed Democrats to pass Obamacare after decades of agitating for universal healthcare. …So it is today with climate change. Despite the consensus of 97 percent of scientists that the planet is warming and that human activity is a significant part of the cause, a March 2013 Pew Research Center poll found that just 44 percent of Republicans believe in climate change at all. To the extent that establishment conservatives talk about climate change, it’s to question its scientific validity or complain about the left’s policy response.”

“We need climate-change risk assessment”

October 4, 2013: An op-ed in The Washington Post by Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, Hank Paulson, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, and Tom Steyer, founder of Farallon Capital Management and co-founder of Next Generation, states: “If the United States were run like a business, its board of directors would fire its financial advisers for failing to disclose the significant and material risks associated with unmitigated climate change. Managing risk is necessary for individuals, investors, businesses and governments. As individuals, we buy insurance for our homes, vehicles and health because the future is unpredictable. Businesses take similar actions and save, when they can, for the next economic downturn. Investors diversify their portfolios and hedge their bets for the same reason. And for governments, managing risk can mean anything from maintaining a standing army (in case of war) to filling a strategic petroleum reserve (to protect against severe shocks in oil prices).”

“HARPER: U.N.’s latest climate report buries inconvenient facts”

October 3, 2013: An op-ed in The Washington Times by Christopher Harper, professor at Temple University and former employee of 20 years at the Associated Press, Newsweek and ABC News, states: “Some inconvenient truths have emerged recently for those who argue man is to blame for excessive global warming, but most of the media tended to shrug at these and other facts. For example, temperatures throughout the world have remained relatively constant over the past 15 years. Also, the population of polar bears — the poster animals of climate disaster — has reportedly been growing in the Arctic. Nevertheless, much of the media lined up in lockstep with the doomsayers as the United Nations‘ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first report in six years, its fifth since 1988.”

“U.S. Rises to No. 1 Energy Producer”

October 3, 2013: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The U.S. is overtaking Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, a startling shift that is reshaping markets and eroding the clout of traditional energy-rich nations. U.S. energy output has been surging in recent years, a comeback fueled by shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas that was unimaginable a decade ago. A Wall Street Journal analysis of global data shows that the U.S. is on track to pass Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas combined this year—if it hasn’t already. The U.S. ascendance comes as Russia has struggled to maintain its energy output and has yet to embrace technologies such as hydraulic fracturing that have boosted American reserves.”

 

“Lower temp on climate change hype: Column”

October 2, 2013: A column in USA Today states: “There’s something about the issue of climate change that prompts people to immediately head off to opposite sides of the room — with very few people congregating in the middle. On Friday, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its first overview of climate science in six years. The report ought to strengthen the pragmatic middle. That’s because we know pretty much what the report will say, because of extensive leaks of its contents. Here is what it will mean and, not the least, what it won’t tell you. The panel’s main message will be that global warming is real and mostly caused by man. But it will not support the alarmist predictions of global temperature rises by the end of the century of up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Climate of Uncertainty”

October 2, 2013: An editorial in The Wall Street Journal states: “Between 1998 and 2012 the global economy more than doubled in size—to some $71 trillion in GDP from $30 trillion. That’s the good news. Over the same period the world pumped more than 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is supposedly the bad news. Yet global surface temperatures have remained essentially flat. That’s the mystery: If emitting CO2 into the atmosphere causes global warming, why hasn’t the globe been warming? That’s the question we would have liked to see answered by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which Friday published the summary of its fifth report on what co-chairman Thomas Stocker calls ‘the greatest challenge of our times.’ It would have also been nice to see some humility from the IPCC, which since its last report in 2007 has seen some of its leading scientists exposed as bullies, and some of its most eye-catching predictions debunked. (Remember the vanishing Himalayan glaciers?)”