Latest On The KGI Energy Bill

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Reed Rubinstein

Here are the latest rumors about the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman draft Senate energy bill. 

  • KGL plan to release their bill by the week of Earth Day, which is April 22.
  • The bill will tax energy in multiple ways.  The taxes will be heavy.  To ease the pain somewhat, between 50-60 percent of the revenue taken by the government will be re-circulated back to the taxpayer/consumer.
  • Contrary to earlier reports, there will not be much if any new off-shore drilling, due to Democrat opposition.   "Drill here, drill now" seems dead.
  • There is a major fight over drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus shale.  This issue is still up in the air, but the enviros supposedly have vowed to do "whatever it takes to put drilling on the shelf."
  • One of the key issues – division of energy rights, likely in the form of emission allocations, among different industries – is being deferred until the other sections of the bill are agreed.  However, the KGL bill accepts the proposition that the government should decide much energy consumers, and different sectors of the economy, may properly consume.
  • Right now, the “bipartisan” aspect of the Bill seems confined to increased support for the nuclear industry.

 Of course, the draft bill is not final, much less law.  And these are just rumors. 

 

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Brown Elected, What Does It Mean For Cap And Trade?

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Reed Rubinstein

They're playing hockey in Hades.  Massachusetts has elected a Republican Senator.

The conventional wisdom seems to be Scott Brown's election means cap and trade is all but dead.  Maybe so.  But, Scott Brown and the Republicans are not the reason cap and trade is in extremis.  Cap and trade proponents must admit data quality, or more accurately the lack thereof, is the root of the problem. 

In a Politico blog posting (Politico is a first rate source for DC news) Walter Russell Mead, a respected fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, makes the point well:

While everyone's attention was fixed on Massachusetts, the climate change agenda was busily unraveling....The problem is that the IPCC's prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 turns out to have no factual or scientific basis at all. Zip. The IPCC is withdrawing the prediction...after ignoring attempts by specialists to delete the ridiculous prediction and then vilifying public critics as anti-scientific numbskulls.

Mead's point, which should be well taken, is poor data quality will "heighten skepticism about IPCC recommendations -- and about both the will and the capacity of the climate change establishment to translate raw scientific data into serious policy".  As a result, he predicts "2010 will not be the year that either the US or the world in general come to terms on a serious climate agenda."  Absent a credible data fix, the US may not "come to terms on a serious climate agenda" for 2010 and beyond.

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