Institute for Energy Research

Big Green, Inc: The Heinz Endowments Assault on a Prosperous Pennsylvania

The Heinz Endowments, a grantmaking organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has long been viewed in the region as a community pillar. But while the Heinz Endowments purports to fund needed, worthwhile enhancements to the wellbeing of western Pennsylvania, many of the organization’s grants do just the opposite, working to stoke baseless public fear and paint some of the region’s most vital industries as villains. In the period from 2008 to 2016 the Heinz Endowments contributed over $120 million in environmental grants, as documented by Big Green, Inc., a project of the Institute for Energy Research. While some of the recipients are working toward meaningful environmental progress, such as in local air quality, tens of millions of dollars went to organizations more intent upon stymying economic development than furthering any justifiable conception of environmental quality.

Oil Rig Count Down; Oil Production Up

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. oil production for the first nine months of 2019 averaged over 12 million barrels per day. That level of production is 1.4 million barrels per day higher than the same period last year, despite the oil rig count declining steadily in 2019. EIA sees increasing oil production as the trend for the near future. In EIA’s Short Term Energy Outlook, oil production is expected to end the 2019 year 1.3 million barrels per day higher than last year, and it is expected to be another 1 million barrels a day higher next year ending the 2020 year with oil production at 13.29 million barrels per day.

California’s Aggressive Renewable Mandates Are Not Having the Desired Affect

California has some of the most aggressive mandates for renewable energy production in the country. The state has a 100 percent “clean” energy mandate by 2045, with 60 percent of the state’s electricity mandated to come from renewable energy by 2030. All new houses built in the Golden State must have solar panels on the roof, and several cities (e.g., Berkeley) have banned the use of natural gas in new residential construction. Increasing amounts of wind and solar on the California grid have caused reliability problems, with millions of people forced to endure days without power to alleviate wildfire risk believed to be caused by wind damage to electrical wires and insufficient back-up power when wind and solar are not producing.

Thanksgiving for Freedom and Energy

“More often than not, we tend to overlook our truly spectacular rise from grinding poverty to previously unimaginable abundance. And so, during this Thanksgiving holiday, let us give thanks for accountable government, market economy, and scientific progress that make a king out of each of us.” – Marian Tupy, “Some Perspective on What We Have to Be Thankful For,” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2014.

Climategate’s 10th Anniversary: The Stain Continues

“I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.”—Dr. Michael Mann, Climategate email, May 30, 2008

“In the end, Climategate ended my academic career prematurely…” —Dr. Judith Curry, November 12, 2019

This month marks the ten-year anniversary of Climategate. The episode was more than just “embarrassing and a public relations disaster for science,” as one sympathizer stated at the time. The leaked emails revealed a mainstream intellectual cartel trying to hype climate alarm by methodological tricks and resorting to secrecy and outright bullying (see selected quotations below).

California’s Gasoline Prices Are the Highest in the Nation

According to AAA, California’s gasoline prices are the highest in the United States and are $1.45 more than the average U.S. gasoline price. While California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, wants to blame the oil companies and has asked his attorney general to investigate them for conspiring to keep gasoline prices artificially high, he should be looking at his state’s laws and regulations as the main culprit. According to the state’s Energy Commission, about half of the price difference between California’s gasoline price and the national average gasoline price is due to California’s taxes, its cap-and-trade policy, and its low-carbon fuel standard; and another third is due to higher refiner and retailer margins because of higher regulatory costs and less competition.

Is "Consensus” in Climate Science Good or Bad? It Depends on What Year It Is

One of the recurring themes in my commentary on the climate change debate is how those pushing government intervention keep moving the goalposts (see one, two, and three). In the present post, I'll document this shift in the commentary from the same person—namely, Harvard's History of Science professor Naomi Oreskes.

The Cost of Decommissioning Wind Turbines is Huge

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy estimates conservatively that it will cost $532,000 (in 2019 dollars) to decommission each of its wind turbines—a total cost of $71 million to decommission the 134 turbines in operation at its Noble facility. Decommissioning the Palmer’s Creek Wind facility in Chippewa County, Minnesota, is estimated to cost $7,385,822 for decommissioning the 18 wind turbines operating at that site, for a cost of $410,000 per turbine.

California and New York Having Problems Delivering Energy

Repeatedly this month in California, Pacific Gas & Electric has cut off electricity to more than a million subscribers due to high winds and dry conditions that could cause a fire on its lines. In New York, National Grid has placed a moratorium on new natural gas hook ups because there is insufficient pipeline infrastructure to bring natural gas to homes and businesses. In both these cases, state politicians are mostly to blame, but they refuse to accept responsibility for the failures.

Fossil-Fuel Divestment: A Shell Game

Under the banner STOP FOSSIL FUELS. BUILD 100% RENEWABLES, the group 350.org last month announced “a new fossil free milestone: $11 trillion has been committed to divest from fossil fuels.”

“These numbers are strong indicators that people power is winning,” the Bill McKibben-cofounded group boasted. “We would not have smashed our divestment targets without the thousands of local groups who have pressured their representatives to pull out of fossil fuels.”

PG&E Service Disruptions Shows Flaws With Government Regulation

Although the roughly two million affected residents of Northern California are recovering from the rolling blackouts imposed by utility PG&E, the company has warned that these “fire safety outages” may be periodically required for another decade. Naturally, California Governor Gavin Newsom decried the debacle as yet another example of “greed and neglect.” Yet as IER analyst Jordan McGillis explained in a previous article, the episode actually showcases the dangers of a government-imposed monopoly in electricity provision. In this article, I’ll elaborate on McGillis’ insights and show why the conventional economic rationale for government regulation of electric utilities is fundamentally flawed.

Norway’s Electric Vehicle Market

In the first half of this year, Norway’s electric vehicle sales garnered 55 percent of the new car market—up from 6 percent in 2013—because Norway provides numerous incentives that distort that market. In contrast, the EV sales share of the market in the rest of the world is in the low single digits, despite large subsidies. Consumers tend to shy away from electric vehicles because they are expensive and they have range limitations, slow charging times, and limited resale value. Further, in cold temperatures, such as in Norway, electric vehicle (EV) range can be reduced by up to 40 percent. In Norway’s winters, the range is about half what it is in the summer. The incentives that Norway provides, however, seems to outweigh those negatives. They are:

PG&E Woes: Political Failure, Not Market Failure

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), an investor-owned utility company serving 16,000,000 customers primarily in Northern California, cut the flow of electricity to 800,000 of those customers last week in what it has deemed "public safety power shutoffs." According to PG&E, the shutoffs were a necessary precaution to reduce the risk of wildfires in the region as it experienced high sustained winds, with gusts of over 70 miles per hour, along with dryer than usual conditions. The shutoffs are an acute reminder for Californians of the fundamental importance of reliable energy with some analysts estimating that the multi-day episode might have cost the region's economy over $2 billion.

U.S. Oil Production Booming

U.S. crude oil production has increased by 3.3 million barrels per day since the end of 2016, an increase of almost 40 percent in less than three years due mainly to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. That U.S. oil increase supplied almost the entire increase in global oil demand over that period. Further, the Permian Basin in Texas, where 35 percent of U.S. oil is produced, will be able to increase its oil production by about one million barrels a day when new pipelines begin moving its crude in the next several months. That basin alone could supply enough crude to meet all of next year's global demand growth.

The Bogus "Consensus" Argument on Climate Change

One of the popular rhetorical moves in the climate change debate is for advocates of aggressive government intervention to claim that "97% of scientists" agree with their position, and so therefore any critics must be unscientific "deniers." Now these claims have been dubious from the start; people like David Friedman have demonstrated that the "97% consensus" assertion became a talking point only through a biased procedure that mischaracterized how journal articles were rated, and thereby inflating the estimate.

Despite Large Investment in Renewable Energy, Coal Dominates Worldwide Generation

Despite renewable energy investment more than tripling globally during the current decade compared to the last 10-year period, most of the power delivered to the world's electric grids during the recent decade was from coal. In fact, coal is still the world's largest source of electricity, providing 38% of world electrical generation in 2018, about the same as 1997. The world spent about $2.6 trillion on renewable energy projects during the decade, over three times the amount spent from 2000 to 2009. Solar photovoltaic investments totaled around $1.3 trillion, and onshore and offshore wind investment totaled around $1 trillion. Globally, solar energy capacity increased by 638 gigawatts between 2009 and 2019, while coal-fired capacity increased by 529 gigawatts, wind capacity increased 487 gigawatts, and natural gas capacity increased 436 gigawatts. Last year, $41 billion was invested in coal worldwide.

U.N. Climate Change Summit Does Not Produce Results

This week the U.N. Summit on climate change was held in New York and there is clear pressure for countries to shutter coal-fired power plants and to provide additional country commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, despite there being 15 months before countries are supposed to revise their commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement. Australia and Japan were denied speaking time because of their role in funding coal. Protesters even flew a blimp of Japanese President Shinzo Abe in a bucket of coal outside U.N. headquarters.

IER Files Second RFS Related FOIA Request with the USDA

WASHINGTON DC --The Institute for Energy Research (IER) announced it has filed a second open records request with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to compel the release of certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to the agency's involvement in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) regulatory process. IER maintains that the USDA has no statutory authority or involvement in the RFS, and authority over the program resides with the Environmental Protection Agency with an advisory role for the Department of Energy. Nonetheless, public records and news reports demonstrate USDA officials have in fact sought to influence administration RFS policy. Such efforts on the part of USDA are a matter of grave public concern.

China Is Erasing the Paris Climate Accord

Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy just released the "Guide to Chinese Climate Policy 2019," and it provides yet more support for President Trump's reasoning regarding U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. While dressed in alarmist rhetoric ("July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded"), author David Sandalow tries to tuxedo a muddy pig. "Trends in China's response to climate change have been mixed," Sandalow lamely admits, before getting into the specifics.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: History and Uses

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil. The reserve is maintained by the Department of Energy and is located along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana and Texas in underground salt caverns. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was started in 1975 after oil supplies were interrupted during the 1973–1974 oil embargo to mitigate future supply disruptions, providing a cushion against unexpected price spikes. It has a capacity of 727 million barrels, but as of September 6, 2019, the oil reserves totaled 644.8 million barrels. The maximum withdrawal capability is 4.4 million barrels per day, taking about 150 days to use the entire inventory.