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The Domestic Side of Waxman
August 6, 2009 For the first 25 years the Waxman bill spends more on foreign than on domestic emission reductions. But on the domestic side, the main effect is on electricity. The graph shows the four main factors reducing electricity emissions. The next one, not shown, is geothermal, which is three times smaller than wind. Solar is 100 times smaller.
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The Waxman-Markey Bill Passed the House
July 16, 2009. The Senate is now working on its version. What it passes will go to House/Senate conference committee. Then both Houses can try to pass the same thing. There are 1400 pages of details, but here's the big picture.
• A cap on GHG emissions drops about 2% a year, starting in 2012.
• It covers about 85% of emissions--from gasoline to natural gas to electricity.
• It's enforced by issuing "allowances" -- about 5 billion tons/year at first.
• Emitters must have and allowances (pollution permits), OR they must ...
• buy a foreign or domestic "offset". Up to 2 billion available per year.
• In spite of all the extra offsets, emitters will meet the cap at first because it's cheap to cut emissions a little. But they will still buy over a billion extra offsets to save up for the future so they don't have to meet the cap in later years when it's expensive.
• The W-M bill claims it will reduce capped emissions by 83% in 2050, but really the EPA finds that it will reduce emissions only 39%.
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When Is a Cap Not a Cap?
June 14, 2009. Carbon-emission caps are financially dangerous, so their designers build in "safety valves" one way or another. The EPA has found that Waxman's cap will cut our emissions 39% instead of the claimed 83%. But even that ... more >>
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July 16, 2009. Waxman's Bill Also Has Serious Problems
Problem 1: Wasting Money. Under a cap, if you pay extra for some wind generators, that saves carbon (locally), so some coal plant does not need it's carbon permits, so it sells them (remember this is cap and TRADE) to some other coal plant or oil refinery and they emit as much carbon as the wind generators save. Build 1000 extra wind turbines and save no carbon. That's how the cap works. The W-M bill includes a Renewable Electricity Standard that will make us spend lots of extra money for wind turbines—beyond what would be built from present subsidies and the cap. But these will save no carbon. They just increase cost. In five years this will cause a political backlash.
Problem 2: Foreign Offsets. The EPA estimates that at first 75% of the cost of cap and trade will be the cost of foreign offsets. This would not be too bad except that money works against us. China, India, Brasil, etc. make a lot of profit from offsets. But if they commit to a cap, their own cap would make them do their most profitable offset projects for free. So they profit most by refusing a cap and letting us pay for all their carbon reductions by buying offsets. Not only will be spend $20 billion a year on these, but they encourage developing countries not to cooperate.
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Congress Voted for the Cap Just Like It Was a Tax
June 29, 2009 No, no, no said the Environmental Defense Fund. We can't have a re-funded carbon tax. Any tax would sink like the 1993 BTU (gas) tax, which passed the House 219 to 213. So they pushed through a cap, which passed the House 219 to 212.
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Senate Energy/Climate Bills
June 1, 2009. Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) Introduces Bill to Accelerate CCS. (Let Chu do this!)
June 1, 2009. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) Introduces Bill to Repeal Analysis of Indirect Emissions from Ethanol. (Artificial stupidity)
May 22, 2009 The Senate Energy (under Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM) and Natural Resources Committee continues its work to mark-up elements of a comprehensive energy bill.
House Climate Bill
Waxman and Markey got their ACES (American Climate and Energy Security Act) bill, HR2425 out of their committee before Memorial Day, as promised. It's core is cap-and-trade, but that's not what costs the money.
The bill claims to reduce capped emissions by 83% by 2050, but loopholes limit the reductions to 35% or so -- this is from the EPA analysis. The Renewable Portfolio part of the bill (RPS) fights the cap. The result is that RPS raises costs considerably and saves no carbon at all— this has not come out yet. Official site
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Is a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) a Good Idea with a Carbon Cap?
About as good as wearing a belt and suspenders. It costs you more and does no good.
Why? Because emissions will equal the cap with, or without, an RES. Caps work. So an RES will save no carbon. A cap doesn't tell people how to save carbon, it just pressures them to save carbon by making emissions expensive. People will find most all the cheap methods -- especially wind turbines. So RES can't build the cheap ones, those will be done anyway. Instead RES will build wind turbines that are more expensive. This will raise the cost of meeting the cap.
This conclusion was checked with a government expert, who agreed, but did not want to be quoted. See also the German Green Party.
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Obama's Team and their Views AP, June 2, 2009
Obama faces a number of energy/climate challenges in the coming months. He seems mainly focussed on the upcoming "Kyoto II" meetings in Copenhagen in December. To succeed there he needs to show the U.S. is serious. The House Bill (see below) is both a help and a hindrance. It's moderately serious, but it locks in cap and trade, which looks like a very tough sell at Copenhagen. After 15 years the developing countries still say No, and probably won't change their minds in the next six months.
Another problem is that Obama called for no free permits, and the House bill gives away 85% at the start, declining to zero after 15 or 20 years.
Also Obama and Energy Sect. Chu are ramping up research a bit. (2 days of Afgan war)
$140 million is designated for geothermal demonstration projects
$80 million will support development of engineered reservoirs for geothermal energy
$100 million will be used to explore for new geothermal resources
$25.6 million on concentrating solar power R&D
$40.5 million on solar grid connection and training for solar energy installers;
$51.5 million on photovoltaic technology development.
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http://zfacts.com/p/1144.html | 01/18/12 07:16 GMT
Modified: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:48:02 GMT
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