EDITORIAL: Another Green Subsidy Bust

Move over, Solyndra. Another green boondoggle from the Obama era has failed, and taxpayers are out as much as $510 million. Late last week Judge Karen Owens approved a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization by Tonopah Solar Energy. Tonopah operated the Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nevada that received $737 million in guaranteed loans from the Obama Administration.

The plan includes a settlement with the Department of Energy that leaves taxpayers liable for as much as $234.68 million in outstanding debt, but the total public cost is even higher. Crescent Dunes also received an investment-tax credit, and the 2009 stimulus legislation allowed it to receive a cash payment in lieu of credit. In 2017 the plant received more than $275.6 million from Treasury under the Section 1603 program, which it used to service its outstanding liabilities. So taxpayers already gave Crescent Dunes cash to pay off its taxpayer-backed loans.

...The feds called Crescent Dunes a success until forced to admit it was a failure. As late as April 2017—when the plant was in the throes of a months-long shutdown—DOE pronounced it a “milestone for the country’s energy future” and a “success story” taken from “mirage to reality.” But in August spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes admitted that “this project has consistently faced technical failures that have proven difficult to overcome."

Under the settlement, taxpayers could recover up to $100 million if the plant can resume operating and meet milestones for energy production and revenue. Don’t count on it. In 2019 NV Energy terminated its power purchase agreement, so now Crescent Dunes doesn’t have a buyer for its power, which is far more expensive than what other renewable-energy plants in Nevada charge.

The Crescent Dunes failure shows again what happens when government invests in commercial ventures beyond its expertise for political purposes. Scarce resources are misallocated and taxpayers lose. We wish we could say the politicians have learned from failure, but the Biden Administration is coming to town promising much more of the same.

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California's Energy Regulations Hurt the Poor, While 'Green' Subsidies Benefit the Rich

Steven Greenhut

A prominent new study from UCLA researchers about California's energy policies is fascinating not so much for its Captain Obvious conclusions, but because it points to a growing rift on in the environmental world between those who favor the state's far-reaching "green" policies—and those who want to hector us to use less energy.
"Wealth is a prominent driver of demand for residential energy," the authors wrote. "Worldwide, wealthier groups lead more materially and energetically intensive lives than the less affluent, consuming in excess of what they require to meet their essential needs." That's stunning for its inanity. Is anyone shocked that those with higher incomes live in bigger houses, and spend more to cool them, than those with lower incomes?
...the study has raised an interesting—albeit stunningly obvious—point, as California continues its headlong rush toward a green-energy future based on command-and-control edicts, subsidies and quasi-market mechanisms such as cap and trade. It found that incentive programs for electric cars and solar panels and some other costly energy policies, "have been found to disproportionately benefit wealthier individuals."
Well, poor people generally aren't installing solar panels or buying $50,000 cars. One need not peruse the study's charts of Los Angeles County to know that Electric Vehicle adoption is higher in Beverly Hills than Watts. I'm all for the development of alternative energy industries, but using public funds, and hobbling old-line energy industries with excess regulations and taxes, is a wealth transfer from poor to rich. As usual, the state's progressive policies have unintended consequences.
...California is the world's fifth-largest economy. It's a land of unfathomable wealth, yet it also has the nation's highest poverty rate. That rate is above 20 percent, according to the Census Bureau's cost-of-living-adjusted model, even though California has the most-generous anti-poverty programs, also. One reason for those dismal numbers is our state's environmental policies, which increase that cost of living.
California has adopted slow-growth policies that limit housing construction by driving up the cost of developable land. The state imposes regulatory costs that, in some localities, comprise 40 percent of the cost of a new home. The result are median-home prices that are unattainable for low-income and even middle-class people. We all like open space, but every policy choice comes at a price, often a high one.
Similarly, our energy prices are among the highest in the nation. Thanks to California-specific formulations, our gasoline costs more than other states, except for remote Hawaii. Our water and electricity policies boost the costs of those necessary products—and the state adds to our sky-high tax burdens by doling out subsidies. California imposes alternative-energy requirements that force it to import 29 percent of our electricity, raising prices on those who can least afford it.
Then researchers are shocked to discover that California's energy policies impose disproportionate costs on poor folks...

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Michael Moore Is Now the Green New Deal’s Worst Enemy

James Delingpole

Left-wing documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is promoting a new documentary he executive produced about the environment — Planet of the Humans — and many of his usual supporters are going nuts. What can the veteran left-wing activist possibly have done to earn such disapproval? Simple. Moore has backed the most powerful, brutally honest and important documentary of his career. It’s also by far his bravest because it not only confronts the modern left’s greatest shibboleth — “clean” energy — but it does indeed offer a great deal of succour to Moore’s avowed enemy President Donald Trump. It might even help Trump clinch the next presidential election for it undermines the entire basis of the Green New Deal being pushed in one form or another by his opponents. Renewable energy, the documentary makes abundantly clear, is not the solution to the problem — but an even bigger problem than the one it is supposedly solving. The documentary was directed by Jeff Gibbs, who, like Moore, is very much a man of the left. Gibbs was a producer and composer on Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. In his youth, he was the kind of committed, long-haired eco activist who sabotages diggers by putting sugar in their gas tanks. And it’s this left-wing, activist background of Gibbs and Moore which makes the movie’s message so much more compelling. Renewable energy, it tells us, is not clean energy but dirty energy because it does tremendous damage to the environment. The people who make money out of it are the worst kind of crony-capitalists. Anyone who claims to believe otherwise is either an idiotic dupe or a wicked liar. Though I’ve written about this myself in countless Breitbart columns, I’m a conservative writer largely preaching to the choir. Coming from two ardent leftists, on the other hand, and aimed at least in part at a leftist audience, the message of Planet of the Humans is dynamite. “I’m in a strange position,” the soft-spoken Gibbs tells us at the beginning of the movie. “I’m against our addiction to fossil fuels and have long been a fan of green energy. But everywhere I encountered green energy, it wasn’t what it seemed.” And so we watch the scales begin to fall from Gibbs’s eyes...MORE

UPDATE: Here is the video 

https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE

Senate pushing bipartisan green energy social engineering bill

Daniel Horowitz

While there is no bipartisan clamor to use GOP Senate control to force votes on sanctuary cities, there is a rush to pass a bipartisan bill dumping more money into green energy programs. Some might have thought we were done with the green energy venture socialism after the Obama era of Solyndra scandals, but in Washington, both parties are addicted to corporate welfare. Hence the rush to pass S. 2657, the American Energy Innovation Act.
It’s hard to call this bill bipartisan, given that the lead GOP sponsor is Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Yet even after voting against Kavanaugh and flirting with support for impeachment, she seems to control the Senate floor agenda more than anyone pushing the Trump agenda on immigration.
On Monday, the Senate voted to proceed with debate on her compilation of 50 energy bills. However, instead of focusing on all the ways government, and the federal courts in particular, impede the exploring, production, and transportation of proven and successful forms of energy production in this country, the bill focuses on pumping more money and government preferences into tenuous forms of green energy. Party like it’s 2009?
The bill is full of subsidies and government research for alternative energy and for “carbon capture” investments. While it stops short of creating “climate change” carbon mandates, the entire premise of the bill accepts the universe in which the Left operates; namely, that we need to move away from reliable energy and work on global warming priorities.
Specifically, the 555-page bill would offer parochial research grants and subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric power. It also promotes carbon capture to reduce carbon emissions. The bill’s authors say the legislation “encourages smart manufacturing” in the industrial and transportation sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bill reauthorizes and grows all the Department of Energy programs the president promised to cut when he took office in 2017. The cost is estimated at $579 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
We know from past history that mandates and market distortions, responsible for creating junky products at a higher cost, begin with government subsidies and “encouragements” signaling to the market that “green” is the way to go. This bill promotes all sorts of workforce pilot programs for cutting greenhouse emissions and for green energy social engineering of our economy, industries, and labor market. It of course has numerous provisions to tip those programs to “minority outreach” companies.

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Why Climate Activists Threaten Endangered Species With Extinction

Last Saturday, police in New York arrested 70 people protesting the lack of attention to climate change. They unfurled a banner that read, “climate change = mass murder" with the word "change" crossed out and replaced by the word "emergency.” It was just the latest in a series of high-profile protests organized by an exciting new environmental group, Extinction Rebellion. In April, police in London arrested more than 1,000 people committing civil disobedience during a week of protests...One of the main demands of the activists is a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies like solar and wind farms. In many countries, wind turbines pose the single greatest threat to bats after habitat loss and white-nose syndrome. In some places such as Texas, where white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungus, has only recently arrived, wind turbines are the single greatest threat to bats. And scientists say wind turbines are the single greatest human threat to migratory bats, which live in different habitats during summer and winter months. Some, like the hoary bat, fly south to Mexico during the winter as insects become more scarce in North America. In 2017, a team of scientists warned that the hoary bat, a migratory species, could go extinct if the expansion of wind farms continues. “Unprecedented numbers of migratory bats are found dead beneath industrial-scale wind turbines during late summer and autumn in both North America and Europe,” writes Paul Cryan, a research biologist with the US Geological Survey. Wind turbines have also emerged as one of the greatest human threats to many species of large, threatened and high-conservation value birds, after habitat loss from agriculture. Wind energy threatens golden eagles, bald eagles, burrowing owls, red-tailed hawks, Swainson’s hawks, American kestrels, white-tailed kites, peregrine falcons, and prairie falcons, among many others. The expansion of wind turbines could result in the extinction of the golden eagle in the western United States, where its population is at an unsustainably low level. Any additional mortalities to the golden eagle threatens the species with extinction, scientists with US Fish and Wildlife warned 10 years ago, before the last decade’s massive expansion of wind farms...MORE

“Collapse” Of German Onshore Wind Is “Jeopardizing” German & EU Renewable Targets

The growth of onshore wind energy is collapsing in Germany, according to European wind energy trade body WindEurope, and in the process is jeopardizing not only the renewable energy targets of Germany but of the whole European Union. WindEurope spoke out last week regarding reports that there was only 134 megawatts (MW) of new onshore wind capacity installed in Germany during the first quarter of 2019 — an 87% drop as compared to the first quarter of 2018. These figures were reported by German non-profit wind association FA Wind (Fachagentur Windenergie an Land) in late April and were described as a “drastic slump” and a “temporary low point” of a larger decline which has been increasing for a year now...MORE

In letter to AOC, Big Labor says Green New Deal would cause 'immediate harm' to union workers

Big Labor is not buying the Democrats' Green New Deal, saying the proposed economic and energy reforms would cause “immediate harm” to millions of union employees and threaten their livelihoods. The AFL-CIO, which represents 12.5 million union workers, outlined its opposition to the proposal in a recent letter to its leading sponsors: U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy,” the AFL-CIO Energy Committee told the congresswoman and the senator in a letter dated March 8. “We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families. We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered,” they wrote. “We are ready to discuss these issues in a responsible way, for we all recognize that doing nothing is not an option.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last week that unions were not consulted before the plan was released in February. “Look, we need to address the environment. We need to do it quickly,” he said, the Washington Post reported. “But we need to do it in a way that doesn’t put these communities behind and leave segments of the economy behind. So we’ll be working to make sure that we do two things: that by fixing one thing we don’t create a problem somewhere else.”...MORE

U.S. Expected to Produce Half of Global Oil and Gas Output by 2025

Relentless American shale development is set to allow the U.S. to leapfrog the world’s other major oil and gas producers, with the potential for the country to account for roughly half of global crude and natural growth by 2025, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. In its annual World Energy Outlook report, the IEA said its main projection scenario through to 2040 foresees the U.S. accounting for nearly 75% and 40% of global oil and gas growth, respectively, over the next six years. Growth is expected to be driven primarily by shale fracking, which should lead U.S. shale oil supply to more than double, reaching 9.2 million barrels a day by the mid-2020s, the agency said. “The shale revolution continues to shake up oil and gas supply, enabling the U.S. to pull away from the rest of the field as the world’s largest oil and gas producer,” said the Paris-based organization that advises governments and corporations on energy trends. “By 2025, nearly every fifth barrel of oil and every fourth cubic meter of gas in the world come from the United States.”...MORE

Why Wind Power Isn’t the Answer

...Four days earlier, to much less fanfare, two Harvard researchers published a paper showing that trying to fuel our energy-intensive society solely with renewables would require cartoonish amounts of land. How cartoonish? Consider: meeting America’s current demand for electricity alone—not including gasoline or jet fuel, or the natural gas required for things like space heating and fertilizer production—would require covering a territory twice the size of California with wind turbines. The renewables-only proponents have no trouble mobilizing against land use for the extraction of hydrocarbons. Consider the battle in Colorado over Proposition 112, which will prohibit oil- and gas-drilling activities within 2,500 feet of homes, hospitals, schools and “vulnerable areas.” Environmental groups including 350.org, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace have endorsed the initiative, which will appear on the November 6 ballot. If it passes, Proposition 112 would effectively ban new oil and gas production in Colorado, the nation’s fifth-largest natural gas producer. Or consider the months-long demonstrations that ended last year in South Dakota over the Dakota Access pipeline. More than 700 climate-change activists and others were arrested during protests claiming that Dakota Access, by crossing the traditional lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, was violating the tribe’s cultural and spiritual rights. These energy- and land-use battles are waged by climate activists and environmental groups whose goal is to shutter the hydrocarbon industry. Most of these groups, including 350.org and Sierra Club, routinely claim that the American economy can run solely on renewables. Further, the Sierra Club has tallied 74 U.S. cities that have pledged to get all of their electricity from renewable energy. But the new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, shows yet again that wind energy’s Achilles heel is its paltry power density. “We found that the average power density—meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant—was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts,” said lead author Lee Miller, a postdoctoral fellow who coauthored the report with Harvard physics professor David Keith. The problem is that most estimates of wind energy’s potential ignore “wind shadow,” an effect that occurs when turbines are placed too closely together: the upwind turbines rob wind speed from others placed downwind. The study looks at 2016 energy-production data from 1,150 solar projects and 411 onshore wind projects. The combined capacity of the wind projects totaled 43,000 megawatts, or roughly half of all U.S. wind capacity that year. Miller and Keith concluded that solar panels produce about 10 times more energy per unit of land as wind turbines—a significant finding—but their work demands attention for two other reasons: first, it uses real-world data, not models, to reach its conclusions, and second, it shows that wind energy’s power density is far lower than the Department of Energy, the IPCC, and numerous academics have claimed. Further: “While improved wind turbine design and siting have increased capacity factors (and greatly reduced costs), they have not altered power densities.” In other words, though Big Wind has increased the size and efficiency of turbines—the latest models stand more than 700 feet tall—it hasn’t been able to wring more energy out of the wind. Due to the wind-shadow effect, those taller turbines must be placed farther and farther apart, which means that the giant turbines cover more land....MORE

Oil company, ranchers disagree on terms of development

The ranchers stood out in the room full of lawyers in suits at Tuesday’s Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission hearings. The Moore family — Frank, David, Keith and Josh — sat through hours of testimony, starting with an acrimonious battle between two gas companies over drilling in western Wyoming. The four Moores wandered the hallways during breaks, returning to hear discussion of a single well north of Lander that owed taxes. Their time to speak finally arrived late in the afternoon. At issue is whether landowners have a window of time when they protest industry activity on their property before operations begin; specifically at issue is protest of bonding — security held by the state to cover potential damages. It’s an unusual disagreement for the commission and one that may not lean in the landowners’ favor. It comes down to interpreting statute. The company says it’s lived up to its responsibilities according to the law and is concerned that a change in interpretation would set a bad precedent for industry. The Moores say the law gives them 30 days for protest. The commission, represented by Eric Easton of the Wyoming Attorney General’s office, read it differently: once prerequisites are met for bonding, the company can proceed while landowner objections are handled...The work wasn’t so much the problem with the Moores, who began discussing access and timing with Seitel in May, they said. Those discussions continued via email, phone and in-person meetings for months. But the Moores wanted the work done at times of the year when it would not impact ranching. Seitel couldn’t reach agreement with the Moores. In August, the company posted a $24,000 bond, an amount double the minimum bond demanded by statute. The Moores filed a protest Aug. 30. They believe they had 30 days to protest. What they didn’t understand — and what was not communicated to them when they reached out to OGCC staff — was that the protest wouldn’t hold up Seitel’s work, said Frank Moore. For the Moores, the heart of the issue isn’t the bond amount. Bonding was the only means by which they could protest. “Our concern was the time of the year they were coming in,” Frank Moore said. “It was the very first thing we discussed, and we discussed it every time we talked.” The company’s operations took place in August and September, when fire danger was high and both wildlife and grazing could be impacted, he argued...MORE

California ‘Cooked The Books’ To Justify Solar Panel Mandate

California regulators relied on precarious assumptions and incomplete data to rationalize their decision to require every home in the state be fitted with solar panels. The California Energy Commission made history when it voted in May to mandate every home carry solar panel installations. The rule — the first of its kind in the country — will apply to all newly built homes and low-rise apartment buildings beginning in January 2020, with some exceptions for shaded houses and people already involved in other renewable energy programs. The new mandate was the latest in California’s bid to be a leader in renewable energy development. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, a major proponent of climate change legislation, has continually pushed for a higher renewable energy mix in the state while attempting to phase out coal generation. Besides touting the environmental benefits that would come with such a mandate, the California Energy Commission argued that it would ultimately save residents money. However, one policy expert has dumped cold water on those claims. Steven Sexton, an assistant professor of public policy and economics at Duke University, outlined where the Commission relied on biased analysis and made flimsy assumptions on what the future costs of solar technology would be — mistakes that don’t reveal the true costs of owning solar panel, according to him. “Though the solar mandate is unlikely to deliver huge savings to consumers, it certainly will raise the price of new and old homes,” Sexton wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. The Commission argued that homeowners would save money with solar panels. Instead of using an independent investigation, however, they relied on economic analysis from Energy and Environmental Economics Inc., a consultancy group that proposed the very mandate they were studying...MORE

Ontario government cancels 758 renewable energy contracts, says it will save millions

TORONTO -- Ontario's new Progressive Conservative government is cancelling 758 renewable energy contracts, in what it says is an effort to reduce electricity bills in the province. Energy Minister Greg Rickford said the move will save provincial ratepayers $790 million -- a figure industry officials dispute, saying it will just mean job losses for small business. In a statement Friday, Rickford said the government plans to introduce legislation during its summer sitting that would protect hydro consumers from any costs incurred from the cancellation. "For 15 years, Ontario families and businesses have been forced to pay inflated hydro prices so the government could spend on unnecessary and expensive energy schemes," Rickford said. "Those days are over." The government announcement does not indicate which specific projects are being cancelled. Rickford said the move is part of a campaign pledge the Progressive Conservatives made during the spring election to end the projects. "We clearly promised we would cancel these unnecessary and wasteful energy projects as part of our plan to cut hydro rates by 12 per cent for families, farmers and small businesses," Rickford said...MORE

Trump plans to withdraw climate skeptic's nomination to environmental office: report

The White House is planning on withdrawing the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to lead the Council on Environmental Quality, according to The Washington Post. Administration officials told the publication that Hartnett White's nomination did not garner enough momentum and some Senate Republicans had expressed reservations about her experience. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment. Hartnett White, who is a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has expressed uncertainty on how much humans have contributed to climate change. “I’m not a scientist, but in my personal capacity, I have many questions that remain unanswered by current climate policy,” she said at her confirmation hearing. “I think we indeed need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role," she continued. She was also a critic of the Obama administration’s environmental initiatives, calling them a “deluded and illegitimate battle against climate change” in an op-ed for The Hill last year and arguing against regulations such as the Clean Power Plan rule for power plants. The Council on Environmental Quality deals with a variety of issues such as infrastructure, conservation and air quality...more.

This very well may be a case of Republican Senators from the Midwest worried about losing the subsidies for ethanol:

Republican Senators Deb Fischer, of Nebraska, and Joni Ernst, of Iowa, repeatedly questioned White over her position on ethanol, asking whether she would commit to supporting the Renewable Fuel Standard, always rely on “accurate information” when advising the president on the issue and commit to not ending the Renewable Fuel Standard before 2022.

The greed of green: PACE’s predatory lending on solar

By Peter Hong

Well, predatory lending is back. But this time, lenders aren’t just prowling for green; they’re wrapped in it under the façade of environmental “do-goodism.” This latest scam is the so-called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) lending industry, which provides financing for energy efficiency or renewable energy upgrades, like solar panels and window insulation. PACE loans are placed on a homeowner’s property tax bill as an assessment. Rather than make a monthly loan payment, borrowers typically pay the assessment on an annual or semi-annual basis; local governments then pass these payments on to the lenders. Because the loans are based on the value of the assessed property, the borrower’s creditworthiness is of little interest to PACE lenders. Also, the industry uses as its brokers plumbers and repairmen who pitch financing schemes to customers as a means of soliciting contracts and earning referral fees on the side. Like their predatory lending brethren of the past, these lenders and their contractor-brokers appear to prey on vulnerable and unsophisticated homeowners — particularly the elderly. A report by Elder Law & Advocacy, which offers legal services to senior citizens in the San Diego area, cited numerous accounts of misleading tactics being used by PACE lending brokers and sales personnel. One case cited a 79-year old widower who was offered new energy-efficient, noise reduction windows at a 1.5 percent financing rate with no payoff penalty, only to receive poorly insulating, noise amplifying windows — at a 26.99 percent interest rate!  Another account documented an 82-year old man who was never told that he would lose his ability to refinance his home if he took on a PACE loan.  And the horror stories don’t end there. Complicating matters is the entanglement of government at all levels to promote the PACE lending industry. Local governments in PACE communities effectively serve as the industry’s collections agency for the payment of assessments, which the government distributes to the lenders. Also, because PACE loans are technically property tax assessments, they generally get creditor priority status in case of non-payment or default. Yes, you read that correctly: in case of default, a loan for residential solar panels gets paid first — even before a homeowner’s mortgage. Non-payment of a PACE loan can result in a home or property being seized as collateral and sold to repay the PACE lender. In other words, you could lose your home, not because you defaulted on the mortgage you assumed to buy the house, but to pay off a loan for solar panels or attic insulation or LED lighting...

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Wind energy goes big in Texas

Check out any old Western movie and you’re bound to see tumbleweeds rolling across the open prairie. One thing we learned from those old films is that beside cowboys and Indians, outlaws and sheriffs, two other things that Texas had, and still has a lot of, is open space and wind. The open space gave rise to a booming cattle ranching industry long ago, although it has been suffering recently from a drought that has cost farmers and ranchers billions. The move to exploit the state’s abundant wind resource came more recently. They did that through the construction of massive wind farms. We tend to associate renewable power with liberals and environmentalists, not something you’d expect to see a lot of in oil- and gas-rich Texas. But it happened anyway. It didn’t just happen, of course. Strong state government incentives somehow survived administration changes that went from liberal Ann Richards to conservatives such as George W. Bush and Rick Perry. It’s a model that few other states have followed, although many more could benefit from. According to the U.S. Energy Information Association, Texas has six of the 10 largest wind farms in the nation. The largest, some 220 miles west of Dallas, is the Roscoe Wind Farm, which also happens to be the largest in the world. It consists of 627 turbines, spread across 100,000 acres that produce 781.5 MW. That’s enough electricity to power 265,000 homes. But Roscoe is one of many wind farms. Altogether, 11,592 wind turbines currently are installed (likely more by the time you read this) in Texas with a combined capacity of 20,321 MW. In the year ending in October, wind power was responsible for 12.68 percent of the total electricity production in the state. That’s a record...more

America’s First Solar Roadway Is A Total Disaster

by Andrew Follett

 A prototype solar roadway in Idaho was supposed to represent a possible green energy future, but technical issues have exposed just how far off the technology is from prime time. Screenshots taken by Twitter users from the roadway’s official webcam show smoke coming out of a nearby electric box. Firefighters soon showed up to the scene, prompting the solar project’s official webcam to issue an update: “The Solar Roadways electrical system is currently undergoing maintenance. Please check back late next week.” Roughly 25 out of 30 panels installed on it broke within a week after developers pumped $3.9 million into it over 6.5 years of development. Despite massive internet hype, the prototype of solar “road” can’t be driven on, hasn’t generated any electricity and 75 percent of the panels were broken before they were even installed. Of the panels installed to make a “solar footpath,” 18 of the 30 were dead on arrival due to a manufacturing failure. Rain caused another four panels to fail, and only five panels were functioning shortly thereafter. The prototype appears to be plagued by drainage issues, poor manufacturing controls and fundamental design flaws. Every single promise made about the prototype seems to have fallen flat and the project appears to be a “total and epic failure,” according to an electrical engineer...more

Green Elites Face Trump Threat

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

 Whatever you think of Donald Trump, his candidacy represents an important opportunity. It’s a chance to dismiss a very particular elite about whom it could be said, borrowing from Cromwell, “For any good you have been doing . . . in the name of God, go!” We are referring, of course, to America’s green-energy elite. With a Hillary Clinton victory on Tuesday, America’s ludicrous Tesla subsidies would be certain to continue—because so many Democratic politicians aligned with the company, especially in California, are themselves too big to fail. Washington’s Kafkaesque fuel mileage rules would only become more Kafkaesque. By forcing car makers and their customers to invest in economically unjustified fuel-saving technology, they’ve already perversely contributed to last summer’s breaking of a decade-old record for miles traveled and fuel burned. Ethanol’s alleged greenhouse benefits have long since been scientifically debunked. Its putative contribution to America’s “energy security” has been rendered a joke by the fracking revolution. Never mind. Corn farmers like a handout, and corn-state senators like being re-elected. The cost to American motorists: $10 billion a year. And making sure it remains so—we hardly needed the latest WikiLeaks dump to tell us—have been a handful of activist hedge-fund billionaires like Tom Steyer and Nat Simons. In the recent dump of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, we see these men, in return for being willing to write four-figure checks to Democratic candidates, fishing for reassurance that policies that cost the American people billions, with no benefits, will be embraced by the next Democratic administration...Mr. Trump may be rude, crude, and largely visionless to boot. Yet purely by virtue of being out of sympathy with such elites his election would go a long wNay to de-corrupting America at least as far as energy policy is concerned...more (subscription)

Renewables costing German households ever more cash

Germans will be paying 8.3 percent more to subsidize the renewable energy industry in 2017, after grid operators announced that households will be paying 6.88 cents for every kilowatt hour of energy used to fund renewables. The previous subsidy was 6.35 cents per kilowatt hour, Bild reports. Germany has one of the most ambitious green energy policies in the world, the so-called Energiewende (energy transition), which aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 in comparison with 1990. In order to encourage companies to invest in green energy, the German government has guaranteed firms a stable income for 20 years after a green energy source is connected to the grid. But when the market price of electricity falls, households and companies make up the costs through a legal mechanism called the EEG levy. When this mechanism was first introduced in 2000, households were paying 0.19 cents a kilowatt hour, meaning a 36-fold increase between then and now. “The EGG levy is growing this year four times faster than the economy," Ulrich Grillo, head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) told Bild. "The current subsidy system is running out of control.”...more

DOE, DOI: New US offshore wind strategy could create 86 GW market by 2050

• Ernest Moniz, the Secretary of Energy, and Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior, have announced the publication of a collaborative strategic plan aimed at accelerating the development of offshore wind energy in the United States.
  
• Moniz and Jewell said the new National Offshore Wind Strategy could help enable the development of 86 GW of offshore wind by 2050.
  
• The Department of the Interior has already awarded 11 commercial leases for offshore wind development that could support up to 14.6 GW of capacity.
  

Government officials chose the completion of the first U.S. offshore wind project to announce a strategic plan aimed at encouraging more offshore development. Last month Deepwater Wind completed construction of its 30-MW Block Island wind project in Rhode Island. The company is trying to build on that success with a proposed 90 MW wind farm off the southeast end of Long Island that is designed to be the first phase of the company’s much larger Deepwater One project. That plan envisions as much as 1,000 MW of offshore wind power in the waters between Montauk, N.Y., and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Despite successes in Europe and potential along the U.S. coasts, offshore wind power has been slow to get off the ground in the United States. A joint Department of Energy-Department of the Interior plan aims to address that situation. The plan targets three key challenges: reducing technical costs and risks, supporting effective stewardship, and improving market conditions for investment in offshore wind project...more

Ethanol is the Wrong Solution

By Marita K. Noon

University of Michigan’s Energy Institute research professor John DeCicco, Ph.D., believes that rising carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming and, therefore, humans must find a way to reduce its levels in the atmosphere—but ethanol is the wrong solution. According to his just-released study, political support for biofuels, particularly ethanol, has exacerbated the problem instead of being the cure it was advertised to be.

DeCicco and his co-authors assert: “Contrary to popular belief, the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas emitted when biofuels are burned is not fully balanced by the CO₂ uptake that occurs as the plants grow.” The presumption that biofuels emit significantly fewer greenhouse gases (GHG) than gasoline does is, according to DeCicco: “misguided.”

His research, three years in the making, including extensive peer-review, has upended the conventional wisdom and angered the alternative fuel lobbyists. The headline-grabbing claim is that biofuels are worse for the climate than gasoline.

Past bipartisan support for ethanol was based on two, now false, assumptions.

First, based on fears of waning oil supplies, alternative fuels were promoted to increase energy security. DeCicco points out: “Every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has backed programs to develop alternative transportation fuels.” Now, in the midst of a global oil glut, we know that hydraulic fracturing has been the biggest factor in America’s new era of energy abundance—not biofuels. Additionally, ethanol has been championed for its perceived reduction in GHG. Using a new approach, DeCicco and his researchers, conclude: “rising U.S. biofuel use has been associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO₂ emissions.”

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