There’s more bad news in the continuing saga of the Chevy Volt. The Associated Press is reporting today that General Motors will recall 8,000 Volts in order to make modifications to keep them safe during crashes, all on the eve of the North American International Auto Show kicking off in the Motor City next week. (Bear in mind that only about 8,000 Volts were sold last year.) Guess who’s headed to the auto show, likely to bask in the glory of the industry they claim to have saved? The Obama …
For President Barack Obama, 2011 began with a bang — a bold pronouncement that his green dream for America would bring forth a jobs explosion and a new economy fueled by alternative energy, a vision he likened to President John F. Kennedy’s “moon shot” in the 1960s. Much to Obama’s chagrin, the year has ended in a whimper with his green energy “sun shot” sputtering to the ground before it even took off. The President set the bar awfully high in his State of the Union Address last January, hailing …
How’s this for a waste of taxpayer money? According to Energy& Environment News, the Department of Energy is paying $230,000 for a website to promote career paths in the green energy sector–and it has, ironically, prohibited the listing of actual jobs in the industry. Here’s the report: The Department of Energy has awarded a $230,000 contract to the Association of Energy Services Professionals to develop a website on energy efficiency jobs — but the agency has prohibited the listing of actual position openings. Instead, the website will include information on what …
It’s been a mixed day in the world of the American auto industry. While Ford Motor posted huge sales for November — propelled by a strong demand for SUVs — General Motors has been forced to make the unusual offer of buying back cars from consumers. Tom Krisher at the Associated Press reports that GM is taking action in response to news that its highly touted electric Chevy Volts have been found to catch fire: In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, CEO Dan Akerson insisted that the cars …
Senator Max Baucus (D–MT) isn’t shy about picking winners and losers. Last December, he led the charge to keep in place a subsidy of $6 billion per year to the ethanol industry. Now he’s picking the oil and gas industry as losers by proposing to eliminate subsidies for big oil and using the increased revenue to subsidize a different set of political winners. Baucus would provide even more incentives for more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative energy fueling stations. But what Senator Baucus labels as an oil and gas subsidy …
Last week, The Washington Post pointed out one near-fatal flaw to Obama’s plans for subsidizing green energy and electric cars: snowstorms. On Wednesday a snowstorm hit D.C. commuters harder than usual, causing gridlock on the road and dragging a normally 20-minute commute into, in some cases, over six hours as people crowded the roads struggling to get home. With current technology, electric cars typically have much shorter battery lives, especially in cold weather. In an instance where a regular combustion engine car would keep its occupants safe and warm while …
What was normally a peaceful, quiet way of life for residents of Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, suddenly became loud and unbearable when utilities operating three new wind turbines flipped the switch to “on.” A recent New York Times article reports that some Vinalhaven residents are learning “the hard way” that wind power has its costs. While residents welcomed the arrival of the turbines in late 2009, it is apparent that they did so with certain expectations. Those expectations came from what schoolteacher Sally Wylie call an …
One year ago today, a bipartisan Congress voted to lift the ban on oil and gas drilling off America’s coasts and cleared the way for our Nation to responsibly develop more of our own energy resources, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create new jobs. Next, the Bush Administration put forward a robust plan that would open up additional areas to drilling on the United States Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). However, immediately after taking office, the Obama Administration threw up a giant roadblock on the path to new American …
Neither the EPA’s carbon regulations nor Congress’ cap and trade plan have become law, but already American consumers are feeling the pain of the left’s environmental policies in their pocket books. USA Today reports: Clean energy has a dirty secret. It isn’t cheap. Consumers already are starting to feel at least a modest pinch in their electric bills. The impact is expected to grow in the next few years as utilities accelerate their investments to meet state quotas requiring a portion of clean energy in their generation mix.
Earlier this month, The Nation’s Chris Hayes reported on how the federal government’s alternative fuel subsidies are paying paper companies $8 billion a year to add diesel to a paper-production process that never needed it before the subsidy became available. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimbery Strassel picks up the story again today: Back in 2005, Congress passed a highway bill. In its wisdom, it created a subsidy that gave some entities a 50-cents-a-gallon tax credit for blending “alternative” fuels with traditional fossil fuels. The law restricted which businesses could apply …
