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 …
The Nation’s Chris Hayes writes: Two years in Washington have started to make me feel jaded. I’ve come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough. Such is the case with the tale of the paper industry and the alternative-fuel tax credit. Thanks to an obscure tax provision, the United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this …
Republican leaders released their budget alternative yesterday, and it came under much criticism since it failed to include any hard numbers. On the bright side, though, the Republicans’ energy budget proposal doesn’t require much funding. The difference between the budgets is quite simple. Although both parties want to keep energy prices low, they have a different means to an end. President Obama’s budget taxes the nation’s reliable sources of energy, limits access to America’s energy resources, and “invests” in expensive and unproven renewable sources of energy – all to supposedly …
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) sponsored an amendment last week that would have exempted any project funded by the stimulus plan from costly, and mandatory National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) reviews. The amendment would have allowed any project whose NEPA review takes longer than 270 days to be exempt from the review requirement. Worried that one of their most powerful weapons for killing economic growth would be undermined, environmentalists rallied to gut the amendment. The stimulus bill now only requires: (a) Adequate resources within this bill must be devoted to ensuring …
The rest of the world may talk a good game when it comes to ending their use of carbon based energy, but the reality is a completely different story. While the European Union lectures us on global warming, Germany is busy building 27 coal-fired plants by 2020 and Italy plans to increase its reliance on coal from 14% today to 33% in just five years. In all of Europe, 40 new major coal power plants are set to be built in the next five years. The same realities are dictating …
