That’s what happened during the 1970s oil crisis. The Middle East-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) weaponized oil by embargoing the United States twice. At that time, America lacked the capacity to make up for the lost oil. In 1978, the average price per gallon was around 60 cents.  By 1981, it reached $1.35.  The economy went into severe recession and millions lost their jobs.

But more recently, major unrest in the Middle East has not affected Americans as strongly as it used to.

On September 14, 2019, Iranian-backed militias attacked the world’s largest oil refinery, in Saudi Arabia. The attack cut the refinery’s capacity in half.

But despite some expert predictions, oil prices barely flinched. Americans saw no price spike at the pump.

Iran escalated the violence. Its proxies assaulted the American embassy in Baghdad just before New Year’s Day. This attack could have sent fuel prices through the roof, hurting our economy. But even after the United States responded by killing the Iranian terrorist general who orchestrated the attacks, fuel prices rose a little and then dropped back to where they were before the hostilities. If you blinked, you missed it.

The likelihood that Iran or any other bad actor can use violence or weaponize oil to hurt the global economy has dramatically receded. Why?

American energy leadership is why. As the chief regulator of oil and gas production in Texas, I am on the front lines of American energy production. And I am seeing a revolution that helps all Americans.

Our modern economy needs energy. From the smart phone in your hand to the lights in your home to the electric cars more Americans drive, we depend on affordable and reliable energy. We have vast proven oil reserves, we have the technology to extract it, and under the Trump administration we have the freedom to produce it and get it to market. Americans produce oil and gas more affordably and reliably than anyone else.

This affects everything for the better, including the environment. When I was building my business, I visited about half the world’s refineries. No one produces energy more cleanly than Americans do. Some point to flaring natural gas as an issue. Natural gas is a by-product of oil production. No one likes flaring, but producers are flaring just one to three percent of the total natural gas produced in Texas.

The solution to flaring is not to slow down oil production, or ban fossil fuels as some suggest, but to speed development of pipelines and other capacity to get natural gas to market. America has actually reduced emissions faster than any other industrialized country, thanks to the market-driven switch to natural gas. We just need to get more of it to market here and around the world.

The United States was once desperately dependent on foreign oil. In 1973 we imported about 35% of our oil from the Middle East. In 2019, the United States became a net oil exporter. Now, we produce 12 million barrels per day (5 million in Texas alone) and import less than 10% of our oil from the Middle East.

We have diversified our other foreign sources. When we were dependent on Middle Eastern oil, American forces had to stand cop on the beat to keep the oil flowing through chokepoints such as the Straits of Hormuz. This made us more likely to get into wars. Now our energy sources are more stable and reliable than ever.

Energy is one cost that no one in our modern economy can avoid. Unlocking America’s energy makes us safer and richer. For the teacher or nurse making $60,000 per year, at current gas prices you’re paying about $2,600 per year for gas if you commute 25 minutes to and from work every day. A 1973-size gas price spike would raise your costs significantly, to around $4,000 per year – just to drive to work. The price of the electricity to power your home would also rise significantly. You’d feel that pinch right in the wallet. I’m working every day to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What do Americans really want from oil and gas producers? Affordable and reliable energy produced as cleanly and safely as possible. How do we get that?

Drill baby drill. Right here in America.

Ryan Sitton is the Texas Railroad Commissioner. 

Beginning January 1^st 2020, all new homes in California under four stories will require rooftop PV (photovoltaic) solar panels to off-set their anticipated energy use. According to the state’s Energy Commission, the solar panels are expected to add approximately $9,500 to the cost of construction. Coupled with increased energy efficiency regulations, it is estimated that homes built under the new standards will use 53% less energy than their predecessors.

The problem with the new solar mandate is that it imposes a sizeable cost on an already unaffordable property market. The median property price in California is now just shy of $600,000, almost double the national median. Priced out of owning their own home, almost 50% of Californians rent their housing. Moreover, the state has the largest homeless population in the country–the vast majority of which do not have access to any type of temporary housing.

The solar panel mandate adds yet another cost to building more housing for both buyers and renters in California. While a $9,500 increase won’t dampen the dreams of the state’s millionaires, it will price-out the poorest in the state who are struggling to make ends meet. According to calculations by the National Association of Home Builders, each marginal $1,000 price increase cuts almost 10,000 Californians out of the homebuying market. The mandate will bar almost 100,000 Californians from buying a home and will put financial pressure on countless renters.

To make matters worse, the solar panel mandate clearly disregards the preferences of homeowners in California. The California Energy Commission is quick to declare that, “the benefits of solar outweigh its costs, such that the new homeowner is saving money from day one in the home.” However, for the overwhelming majority of Californians, the actual return does not merit the investment. 

According to the California Solar Initiative, more than half a million residential properties are connected to the state’s electricity grid through solar net metering programs. With just under 13 million households in the state, these solar-powered homes constitute less than 5% of Californian homes.

When the vast majority of existing homeowners have voted against domestic solar systems with their wallets, why should the owners and renters of new homes be saddled with the cost of energy diversification? If the math were that simple and the benefits that obvious, a mandate wouldn’t be necessary.

Instead of punishing the poor, Californian legislators should work to provide consumers with affordable renewable energy. For example, utility scale PV systems are built over large areas of sunny land to produce electricity at a lower overall cost per watt than residential systems—a fact recognized by the Californian Energy Commission.

The Commission contends, however, that the potential adverse impact of utility scale systems upon “sensitive wildlife habitats” outweighs the cost of residential systems to consumers. In the eyes of Californian regulators, protecting nonspecific wildlife appears more important than addressing the state’s housing crisis.

Energy diversification is an important step towards ensuring reliable and sustainable energy. But imposing onerous mandates that drive up the cost of housing for consumers is not the answer. 

Consumers in California deserve better.

Oliver McPherson-Smith writes for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit educational and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.

FERC’s recent minimum offer price rule (MOPR) decision was about preserving U.S. energy security and restoring competition to PJM Interconnection’s capacity market. That’s because the purpose of a capacity market is to ensure that customers have adequate generating capacity when required. This centers on a reliable and predictable reserve of electricity that becomes essential when demand spikes or a power plant suddenly goes offline. We often see this happen during a winter polar vortex or a summer heat wave.

Our competitive power markets have been compromised by huge out-of-market payments. The problem has been that subsidies for wind and solar power have eroded fair competition in the marketplace. These are intermittent sources of electricity usually only available some 30% of the time, even on good days. For example, wind has had a federal subsidy that pays farm owners a whopping $23 per megawatt-hour. “Subsidizing The Rich Through California's Solar Scheme.” This hides their true costs and creates a never-ending incentive to generate electricity even when it’s not needed – often causing wind and solar generators to get paid to not generate power instead of glutting the grid.

This has added an unpredictability to the market and pushed many baseload power plants offline in favor of less reliable sources that subsidies have made to look cheaper than they actually are. Many baseload coal units, for instance, have thus been forced to retire prematurely. With months of fuel on-site, coal’s on-demand reliability has proven to boost the resiliency of the grid during our most challenging times: 

• “Coal saves the day during polar vortex,” Associated Press, February 2019
• “We could not have served customers without coal,” Andrew Ott, CEO, PJM Interconnection, January 2018

FERC’s decision means that any fuel source competing in the capacity auction must bid in at a minimum price. The goal is to help remove the distorting effects of state subsidies and mandates for renewables. Much of the generating capacity reserve for PJM doesn’t bolster its reliability and resilience. The largest renewable power state just demonstrated the path others must avoid: “Texas’ Impending Reliability Issues With Wind Power.” Indeed, utility executives wrote PJM last year to more properly value baseload power plants:

• “PJM has not taken the proactive steps needed to value resiliency attributes, such as fuel security and fuel diversity, of its generating fleet.”

FERC’s order to help restore a fair competition and resiliency will prove much more valuable than most Americans realize. The U.S. seems to rapidly be heading toward an electricity crisis as more baseload plants come offline. From transport to manufacturing to buildings, the ongoing goal of “100% electrification” could surge U.S. power demand by 60% or more in the coming decades. Thus, increasingly so, U.S. energy security demands that our power markets ensure that the key attributes of reliability and resilience are properly valued to meet such growing needs. Smart people know that renewables need to stand on their own two feet: “Why Bill Gates Thinks It’s Time to End Subsidies for Wind and Solar Power.”

Indeed, as for costs, a major new study from the University of Chicago finds that wind and solar are making electricity prices much more expensive. The team of economists finds that previous studies indicating something different were misleading. That’s because they failed to incorporate three key costs for renewables that too often get ignored: their 1) unreliability, 2) need for large swaths of land, and 3) displacement of cheaper baseload sources like coal. This isn’t a surprise, however, since no state has spent more money incorporating wind and solar than California; yet, the Golden State's power rates are 50% above the national average. 

Jude Clemente is the Editor at RealClearEnergy.

While this utility rate increase may be used to reach an admirable goal, should single mothers or the elderly on fixed incomes be forced to pay increased costs on their heating bills so EV owners have a more convenient way to charge their cars? This is a question Democratic candidates will have to answer to working-class voters across the country. 

For good reasons, many Democratic candidates have made transitioning away from gas-powered vehicles a key priority to addressing climate change. Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren have pledged to require all new passenger vehicles to be zero-emission by 2030, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg set a similar goal with a deadline of 2035. Both Senator Sanders and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang have proposed buyback programs to allow people to trade in fossil fuel based vehicles. 

But if we want to beat Trump - who has rolled back vehicle emission standards and mocked EV use - in 2020, we must be thoughtful about how these policies will affect working-class voters, especially those who are seeing their heating bills rise to pay for EV infrastructure. 

Democrats would be wrong to ignore this issue, as it may be part of the reason that the EV mandate of the Green New Deal polled as the least popular environmental policy, with voters opposing it by a 15-point margin. 

Despite voters’ trepidation with transitioning to EVs, we are seeing the auto industry taking a progressive approach. Many car manufacturers have sped up their production of EVs and are increasing the power of the batteries to appeal to a wider variety of consumers. 

All trends point to the fact that we can expect to see an increase in EV production and usage in the United States, which means we must come up with equitable solutions to create the necessary network of charging stations. 

Some want to make the centerpiece of EV charging at-home charging. While this might work for some in suburban neighborhoods with big garages and easily accessible electric ports, those in inner-city and working-class communities don’t have those same advantages. If we want to transition the most number of people to EVs, the distribution of charging stations will need to be similar to the network of gas stations that successfully fuel our current transportation system. 

Low-income families are also at a disadvantage when state governments give utility companies a free pass to raise their heating bills to build EV charging stations, which is happening in states like California. One thing Democrats must agree on is that we should not build an EV charging network at the expense of low-income families who would otherwise use that money to put food on the table. 

Ironically, California’s goal of ramping up EV charging station production by allowing utilities to raise rates is also hampering progress by disincentivizing private investment that would otherwise rush to corner this market. It is impossible to fairly compete in a market with the government’s thumb on the scale. 

A much more effective approach would be to create incentives for private investment, a solution that is already being promoted by leading Democrats like Senator Carper. Earlier this year, Carper introduced the Clean Corridors Act of 2019, which would secure $300 million in grant funding each year for 10 years to support the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and hydrogen fueling stations along the National Highway System. This bill is also part of the infrastructure package that passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee over the summer.

Encouraging people to trade in their gas guzzlers for EVs will have a positive environmental impact but depends on a reliable EV charging station network. We must not harm already under-served communities in the process of developing this network. Allowing utilities to raise rates on all consumers to create EV infrastructure acts as a regressive tax on low-income families, while also stunting the deployment of charging stations through private investment. Democratic candidates for President should support ongoing private sector efforts to create a network of EV charging stations if they are serious about transitioning to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly transportation system.

Brendan Flanagan is a former staffer for Obama for America.

The Oxford English Dictionary selected “climate crisis” as the term that “reflects the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year.” Striking a similarly dismal note, Dictionary.com’s selection was “existential.”

A better word of the year for 2019? Energy poverty.

While wealthy world leaders take luxurious trips to Madrid for the U.N. Climate Conference, flying across oceans in crisp business suits, one billion human beings are living in abject poverty without access to electricity. Still more lack reliable electricity. 

Environmental protection can and should be a priority—but those clamoring about the supposedly disastrous future effects of a mildly warming climate could better spend their time and attention on the very real, immediate impact of energy poverty.

A life without energy is a life of drudgery. Without the benefits of electricity such as clean water, modern health care, and home heating, communities are mired in sickness, hard physical labor, and limited opportunity.

Average life expectancies are as much as two decades shorter in countries without widespread electricity. While wealthy nations wring their hands and a generation of children is plagued with climate hysteria-induced anxiety, real men, women, and children are dying every day from such simple illnesses as diarrhea and the flu.

Even household chores pose a threat without energy. Nearly 4 million perish annually from preventable lung and heart disease caused by inhaling soot when cooking over an indoor fire. The natural gas or electric stoves we take for granted would literally save lives in developing countries.

And economic freedom is nearly unheard of in these nations, where most live in poor rural villages and women spend much of their day walking arduous journeys to collect water and firewood (or, worse, cow dung).

The easiest way to alleviate poverty around the world is creating access to affordable, reliable energy. With cheap, abundant electricity to cook, heat and light homes, and provide new economic opportunities, the third world could experience the same prosperity and opportunity as the Western world.

Some will argue that, as upsetting as energy poverty may be, we have to do something about climate change. This is wrong for two reasons.

First, despite ubiquitous headlines proclaiming our impending doom, there’s simply no scientific evidence to suggest that climate change will be anything other than mild and manageable. Thanks to scientific advances (ironically fueled by the very same fossil fuels so often vilified in the media), humans are more resilient than ever to our surroundings.

Second, no government program can ultimately have any meaningful effect on climate change. According to data models used by the United Nations, even the global Paris Climate Accord would reduce the planet’s average temperature by at most 0.17°C—if the United States was still participating and every signatory fulfilled its emission reduction pledges for the rest of the century. With the European Union recently admitting it won’t reach its 2030 carbon dioxide targets, the odds are increasingly slim.

Rather than expend massive sums of tax dollars on inefficient, unreliable renewable energy, the best path forward is to promote human health, prosperity, and continued private-sector innovation to address the many challenges we face.

Here’s hoping 2020 will see Western society cast off the heavy burden of climate alarmism and focus instead on eliminating energy poverty—providing light, warmth, and hope to suffering people.

Katie Tahuahua is the communications manager for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s  Life:Powered project.

The problem for all these attorney general is that states have no jurisdiction over climate change.  Whatever one thinks about climate change, the climatic phenomena know no borders. If anything should be done about climate change, it is properly committed to the federal government.

Untroubled by these fundamental facts, current New York Attorney General Letitia James nevertheless charged ExxonMobil with fraud in misleading investors regarding the threat posed to the company by the costs allegedly associated with by climate change. New York State’s notoriously broad and vague Martin Act.

New York’s Martin Act, enacted prior to the 1933 federal Securities Act, empowers the New York Attorney General to prosecute “any device, scheme, or artice to defraud or for obtaining money or property by means of any false pretense, representation, or promise.” This “blue sky” law was enacted in response to concerns over stockbrokers selling shares in shell companies that had no genuine operating business. Unlike other securities legislation, including federal laws, the Martin Act vests sole implementation and enforcement responsibilities with New York’s Attorney General, not with a regulatory agency.

Various New York Attorneys General have used the Martin Act to pressure companies into settlements without trial. If either Schneiderman or James thought that ExxonMobil would settle, they badly miscalculated. Regardless of the financial costs in this one case , ExxonMobil could not settle without encouraging more cases being filed by the other attorneys general who had joined to support Schneiderman’s crusade. 

In the court of (elite) public opinion, ExxonMobil had already been found guilty. For three years prior to trial, the Attorney General’s office claimed that ExxonMobil was clearly engaged in fraud.  The whole point of the “#Exxon Knew” media campaign was to convince the public that the fraud was unquestionable. The fraud claim was that, for decades, Exxon had knowingly and willingly mislead the public and that investors had relied on the allegedly false information. 

Then, at trial, reality set in. After weeks of evidence, the States’ attorney suddenly and without explanation conceded during his closing argument --but only when pressed by the judge—that he had to drop the fraud claims. So, after screaming “fraud” for four years, the Attorney General’s office could produce absolutely no evidence of fraud. 

That left two charges which were much less serious-- but should have been much easier to prove -- under the Martin Act.  The two remaining charges did not require proof of any intentional act by ExxonMobil. Nevertheless, the State was unable to muster even this minimum level of proof.

Judge Ostrager wrote that regardless of ExxonMobil's role with respect to climate change, this was a securities case-- not a climate-change case.  Indeed, the State’s attorney had insisted this was a securities case.  The judge wrote that “the Attorney General failed to prove, a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor.”

The judge continued, saying that “the Attorney General produced no testimony either from any investor who claimed to have been misled by any disclosure, even though the Office of the Attorney General had previously represented it would call such individuals as trial witnesses.”

Of course, environmentalist groups are slamming the decision. They seem to think that because they disagree with a corporation's policies and practices that their corporate opponents are evil and must be branded as criminals. 

These critics include lawyers, at least some seem to think that the purity of their purpose justifies a finding of fraud against ExxonMobil despite the lack of evidence.   

This verdict represents a devastating defeat for New York Attorney General James, as well as for the “#Exxon Knew” campaign. That media campaign may have energized Democratic officials; but in the courtroom, slogans cannot substitute for facts and the law.  

It remains to be seen what effect the New York verdict will have on the Massachusetts case filed against ExxonMobil. The Massachusetts Attorney General is proceeding on a different theory, one focused on consumer protection. For environmental extremists, however, the end-game is the same. So, they are likely to redouble their public-opinion efforts in hopes of encouraging the Massachusetts Attorney General to go forward.  

Nevertheless, trial lawyers in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office are likely taking a hard look at their evidence and the judge assigned to the case.  They undoubtedly appreciate support from the environmental movement, but they surely also want to avoid the extreme embarrassment of a second devastating loss to ExxonMobil.  

Misguided idealism, environmental or otherwise, can become impatient with the basic principles of the rule of law.   When that impatience is teamed with incompetent and/or ruthless litigators, the courts can become a forum for tyranny.  Thankfully, “old fashioned” trial judges still look at whether or not the evidence presented supports the charge filed.

John S. Baker, Jr., Ph.D, is a Professor Emeritus at LSU's Law Center.

For most of the latter half of the 20^th century, the United States was the leading producer of rare earths, mostly from the Mountain Pass mine in California. By the late 1990s, however, the mine was struggling to remain profitable against Chinese competition. In 2002, the mine was finally shut down. It has been opened sporadically since, but it will never again be the leader in global rare earth production.

Meanwhile, China heavily invested in rare earth mining and production. Whether or not Deng Xiaoping actually said, “there is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China,” it is obvious that Chinese industry, with significant assistance from the Chinese government, has quite deliberately become the world’s dominant supplier. By 2010, China was estimated to control 95% of the global rare earth supply, with 100% dominance at certain points in the supply chain.

While Chinese leaders have profited, the people and land surrounding the rare earth mines have suffered. The harsh acids and radioactive byproducts of legacy rare earth mining processes have ripped through the local countryside and population. “It feels like hell on Earth,” said Tim Maughan in 2015. In July, the Los Angeles Times reported that conditions in some areas were so bad, with “gaping pits of contaminated wastewater” in farms and villages, that local villagers were refusing to send their children to school.

Were this to happen in the United States, outrage would soon follow. Congress would demand investigations. Customers of any miner that operated in such a fashion would face public relations challenges and pressure to divest. And government investigators would soon be building cases. But because this environmental disaster is happening so far away, in a country that restricts the free flow of information even as it digs deeper and faster for critical materials, the U.S. government and public have been content to ignore the problem. Cheap Chinese rare earths keep the monetary costs for advanced electronic systems low, even if the nonmonetary costs require us to avert our eyes. It is one of the ironies of the rare earth supply chain that the materials needed for green energy, such as in wind turbines, are currently being acquired by destroying the Chinese countryside.

The U.S. government should show leadership and make a deliberate choice to encourage more responsible rare earth sourcing. There are technologies and mine sites in the United States and other environmentally responsible countries that are worth investigating and developing if they will reduce the damage associated with current methods of rare earth production. Consumers should be willing to pay a slight premium to incentivize this investment. The U.S. military, which spends relative pennies on rare earth materials per year, should certainly be interested in solutions that not only reduce environmental damage but also reduce Chinese leverage on U.S. national security.

In the last two decades, we have become uncomfortably aware of the ways that Western nations have exported the harms associated with raw materials production, in arenas ranging from diamonds to consumer electronics. We have also seen a renewed appetite for the United States and other countries to move towards more sustainable economies and environmental policies, such as the recent climate protests and the voyage of Greta Thunberg. A true green revolution will force us to address the externalities of foreign extractive industries in order to build an economy that sustains opportunity for life and growth for the maximum number of people. In 1969, the nation took action to clean up runaway industrial pollution; 50 years later, the call is no less urgent.

Jeff Green is president of J.A. Green & Company. He founded and currently serves on the Strategic Materials Advisory Council, and previously served as staff director to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. Ryan Caldwell is vice president at J.A. Green & Company.

#TimeForAction was the slogan at this year’s Madrid climate conference that ended Sunday. #TimeForTalk would be more accurate. The talking was endless: more than 70,000 hours were spent failing to define a “market instrument,” something that was meant to have been decided at last year’s conference in Katowice, Poland. Even though the Madrid conference ran over into the weekend, making it the longest ever, the issue will be kicked into next year’s talks, in Glasgow, Scotland.

“I am disappointed,” United Nations secretary general António Guterres tweeted. He should be. Next year, countries are to submit their second set of five-year, nationally determined climate plans under the Paris Agreement. The Madrid conference was to have engendered a spirit of enhanced climate ambition, a kind of competition of climate virtuousness. All it could manage was a statement expressing “serious concern” about the widening gap between the participating parties’ collective efforts and the ambitious emissions trajectory required to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.

Talk doesn’t cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The UN Environment Programme describes the last ten years as a lost decade, in terms of curbing global emissions. “There has been no real change in the global emissions pathway in the last decade,” UNEP says. Global emissions have risen at an average of 1.5% a year over the last ten years, pausing in 2016 but resuming the upward trend in 2017. Emissions have now reached a new record, with no sign yet of a peak. The underlying driver is the strong economic growth of non-OECD economies, which have grown at more than 4.5% a year, compared with only 2% a year for OECD members.

“The summary findings are bleak,” UNEP says in its tenth anniversary emissions-gap report. Just to put the world on track to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, emissions would need to be 55% lower in 2030 than in 2018. “Unprecedented efforts are required to transform societies, economies, infrastructure and governance institutions,” one of the report’s authors said at a conference side event. “It’s frustrating,” said another. “The gap is growing.” To a third, drastic cuts in emissions require new values, new norms, and new lifestyles, all implying “a huge transformation of the whole of humanity.”

Asked what probability they’d ascribe to meeting the 1.5-degree target, one of the emissions-gap authors said that he preferred not to pose the question. If he answered it, people would conclude that the goal is impossible, and give up. Speaking two years before the Paris climate conference, Yvo de Boer, former executive secretary of the UN climate convention, was more candid. “The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy,” he said.

No climate conference is complete without Al Gore talking. Perhaps because he’s feeling some competitive pressure from Time’s Person of the Year, teenager Greta Thunberg, who arrived at the conference center with six armed UN security guards and nine additional security personnel, Gore’s performance was more histrionic than usual. He presented his standard fare about unprecedented wildfires, the North Pole melting in midwinter, the disappearing Greenland icecap causing Venice to flood, and so forth. Then Gore added a new climate catastrophe—Brexit. One million climate refugees had streamed into Europe, destabilizing its politics and leading to what he termed “this completely idiotic Brexit proposal.”

“We have the solutions,” Gore boomed. “They are cheaper than fossil fuels.” Wind and solar are crossing the line of grid parity, he insisted—there would be no stopping them. Eighty-eight percent of new generating capacity in Europe was renewable, he claimed, not mentioning that countries using the highest proportion of renewable energy also have the highest energy costs. Electric vehicles were superior to the internal-combustion engine, he said, calling for worldwide bans on future sales of petrol-driven cars. That’s an old Gore theme: nearly three decades ago, in Earth in the Balance, Gore described the internal-combustion engine as a deadlier threat to America than any military foe. Somehow, America has survived it, even with the SUV share of auto sales soaring from 27% to 48% in just nine years. The trend toward clean energy is unstoppable, Gore claimed, but we still need new policies to make it so. A contradiction? For sure.

Here Gore’s talk signals a major political shift. All movements need a figure against which to direct their ire. At previous climate conferences, especially since Donald Trump’s election, the United States served this function. At the last two climate conferences, protestors interrupted the presentations of the U.S. delegation. This year is different. The U.S. has been virtually invisible, and so has the anti-Americanism. Instead of protesting against a nonexistent American presence, youth activists stormed the conference main stage, shouting “we are unstoppable.”

In his remarks, Gore mentioned Trump only once, and then in neutral terms. Though Trump wants to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a new president can rejoin, with 30 days’ notice. But it didn’t matter who was in the White House anyway, Gore said: the trend toward a green economy would continue. Was Gore conceding the probability of Trump’s reelection? It sounded that way. Gore directed his vitriol instead at oil companies and fossil-fuel polluters. Like any bully, Gore, as the leading figure of the climate clerisy, understands that you don’t take on someone stronger than yourself and win. He tried and failed to win over the president; oil companies present a softer target.

Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has gone out of its way to endorse the goals of the Paris Agreement and achieving “net zero” by 2070—though that’s two decades too late for Gore. Whatever the nuance in Shell’s net carbon-footprint ambition, it won’t change an oil company from being an oil company, and it won’t protect an oil company from being attacked for net-zero targets that, globally, no responsible person believes are achievable. By contrast, the absence of anti-Americanism at Madrid vindicates the president’s decision to quit the Paris Agreement. Supping at the climate table comes with a cost. Donald Trump has decided that America doesn’t need to pay it—and the Madrid climate conference shows that he was right.

Rupert Darwall is a Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.

Saving the planet takes money, and lots of it. Money is both the theme and the subtext of the latest round of UN climate talks being held here—a vast river of cash flows through the UN climate process. Formally, the meeting is about nailing down one of the more obscure provisions of the Paris Agreement: Article 6, which provides for market-based instruments so that countries can trade their way out of their decarbonization commitments. Billions of cross-border dollars and transaction fees hang on the outcome.

With the negotiations concerning mind-paralyzing definitions of interest only to the most intrepid climate geeks, business and finance leaders could wind up taking center stage. When they first started coming to climate conferences, it was to observe and advise. Now it’s to show-and-tell their green virtue. “Momentum is there,” declared Paul Polman, the former Unilever CEO. “Climate change is the biggest business opportunity of all time.” We’re close to several policy tipping points, he suggested.

The EU is about to approve a massive Green New Deal. Michael Bloomberg’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TFCD) encourages companies to make voluntary climate-related risk disclosures. Draft EU regulations, meantime, could pave the way for mandatory climate disclosures that would force investment managers to justify their investments against climate and environmental benchmarks. Businesses are transitioning to “net zero,” Polman claims—meaning zero carbon emissions. They’re so far advanced that at this point, it’s only governments holding them back.

Peeling away the hype reveals a very different picture. Companies promising to cut their carbon emissions rely on offsetting—that is, paying for their consumption of hydrocarbon energy by supporting projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, such as renewable energy. If companies were genuine in their commitment to tackle climate change, though, they would develop zero-carbon baselines for their own activities.

A growing number of companies boast about the proportion of wind and solar in their energy consumption. These claims rely on an entirely legal accounting fraud that says that renewable electricity can be stored; the physical reality is that electricity is consumed the instant that it’s generated. In peddling the falsehood that business and households can depend on anything close to 100% intermittent renewable energy, companies are misleading the public.

Rather than demonstrating a genuine – and painful – commitment to radical decarbonization, business leaders’ public professions of climate awareness reflect a confluence of interest between, on the one hand, corporate public-affairs departments steeped in doctrines of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and, on the other, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It’s a collusive process. The more environmental reporting requirements, the greater the importance of CSR in corporate hierarchies, the more work there is for external environmental consultants—and the greater the leverage NGOs wield over corporations.

Then there’s the psychology of herding, whereby CEOs are fearful of being hung out to dry if they don’t sign the latest statement pledging their company to save the world from climate breakdown. All this might remind readers of two groups in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: the Moochers, comprising, in this example, the craven CEOs and their in-house CSR crowd; and the Looters, the environmental NGOs. Their ultimate victim is capitalism, the only economic system ever to have produced durable, transformative economic growth.

Madrid also marks the debut of finance ministers at UN climate talks, with the formation of a coalition of finance ministers for climate action. Under their Santiago Action Plan, over 50 finance ministers, including most from the EU, pledged to incorporate climate-change considerations into economic policy and seek “analytical expertise” to put their economies on the path of “inclusive economics, social, and wider restructuring.”

The first rule of economic policymaking is that any government intervention in the economy involves trade-offs. In the case of decarbonization policies that drive up energy costs, “net zero” means zero growth. The en masse capitulation of finance ministries before the altar of climate change sends a negative signal about future economic growth. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN climate-change convention, has already sent out invitations to finance ministers to attend next year’s talks. Once on the climate bandwagon, it’s almost impossible to get off.

Then there are those desperate to get on the climate bandwagon and never get off. Anyone who has attended a UN climate conference will have noticed that some of the best-dressed participants are from Africa’s poorest nations, some with chunky Rolexes on their wrists. The UN makes sure that they suffer no hardship from their climate-change-fighting efforts. The Daily Subsistence Allowance, once handed out in envelopes with $100 bills, is now disbursed in its plastic equivalent of Swiss value cards. NGOs, whose role at climate conferences is to act as the spontaneous expression of civil society, are also eligible. Unsurprisingly, youth NGOs want to get in on the DSA act, too.

The incentive this creates is to make the UN what its critics always accuse it of being: a talking shop. According to one estimate, participants in the Article 6 discussions have already spent 70,000 hours failing to define what a “market instrument” is. Why decide, when another comfortable meeting in another expensive city beckons?

When it comes to Article 6, rich nations want tight rules to ensure that their money won’t be used to fund phony emissions cuts. Environment ministries in poorer nations naturally see Article 6 as a stream of funding that will flow through them. In principle, though, it’s hard to see how an emissions market can work as intended, when developed nations with hard caps on their emissions can pay to outsource their cuts to nations with no caps and no rigorous inventory of greenhouse gases.

Back in the U.S., some 80 business leaders have signed a statement urging the U.S. to remain in the Paris Agreement, with its commitment to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Anyone who has looked at the numbers and what they entail in terms of global emissions cuts knows that this is next to impossible. It’s conceivable that global greenhouse-gas emissions will plateau, but steep cuts to “zero” aren’t going to happen. But America must have a seat at the table, comes the response. Perhaps, then, to show that they have some skin in the game, these business leaders should endure thousands of hours of meetings trying to decide what a market instrument is.

Rupert Darwall is a Senior Fellow at the RealClear Foundation.

Alex Epstein, the youthful pro-fossil-fuel campaigner and author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, disagrees. What Guterres sees as humanity’s war on nature, Epstein regards as our successful effort to protect ourselves from raw, brutal nature—from famine, disease, natural disasters, and shortened lifespans, an effort that has, in the modern age, provided human beings with a hitherto undreamt-of quality of life. And it is energy—overwhelmingly from coal, oil, and natural gas, powering our machines and technologies—that has given rise to this unprecedented human flourishing.

Epstein’s human-centered optimism sets him apart from both sides of the climate and energy debate. As he points out in a recent talk at the University of Texas at Austin, if there is a climate crisis, it’s not showing up in the numbers that matter most. Climate-related deaths are way down from earlier periods in history. Several years during the 1930s, for example, saw more than 3 million climate-related deaths—equivalent to 10 million if adjusted for today’s population. By contrast, 2014 saw only 30,000 climate-related deaths, and 2018 just 5,625.

A few years ago, when Senator Barbara Boxer angrily questioned what Epstein was doing at a hearing of the Senate environment and public works committee, Epstein responded: “To teach you how to think more clearly.” Clear thinking is vital, given current American public opinion on climate and energy. A November Pew Center survey finds 67% of respondents saying that the federal government is not doing enough to reduce the effects of global warming. Similarly, an AP-NORC Center survey conducted last year found 71% of Americans saying climate change is a reality. Nearly half say that the science on climate change is more convincing than five years earlier.

And yet, most are unwilling to make sacrifices remotely commensurate with the costs of decarbonizing America’s hydrocarbon-fueled economy. Fifty-seven percent of respondents were willing to pay $1 a month, but 68% would balk at paying as much as $10 a month, or $120 a year, to forestall this supposedly looming catastrophe.

These results suggest that, for a large portion of Americans, belief in the dangers of man-made climate change could be tokenistic, a product of one-sided media coverage that cultivates and encourages a socially acceptable view of the issue. Another possible interpretation is that many Americans believe that the costs of climate change have nothing to do with their own personal choices—they will somehow be insulated from the higher taxes and energy prices that would follow from the aggressive environmental policies that they claim to support.

If Americans believe that draconian efforts to fight climate change will impose no serious costs, they should ask Germans how that effort is going. When Germany embarked on its Energy Transition, the environment minister, former Communist Jürgen Trittin, claimed that its monthly cost would amount to no more than a scoop of ice cream. Now German households face the highest electricity prices in the world, and Trittin’s Christian Democrat successor reckons that the country’s green energy revolution could cost one trillion euros ($1.11tn). This is the path that climate activists would take America down.

The case for energy realism could be lost even before it’s made, though. According to Pew, 77% of Americans believe that alternative energy should be prioritized over fossil fuels. And for many, wind and solar energy appear to be “free,” given their heavy public subsidies.

This is where Epstein’s work is so crucial. He has produced an excellent four-minute explainer on the false promise of wind and solar energy and why they can never replace fossil fuels. His views may prove shocking to younger Americans, particularly the college-educated, who are increasingly exposed to only one side of the debate—even on the Internet, where Google returns search results that skew in one direction. Search for “fracking,” for example—the technology of American energy independence—and out comes “What is fracking and why is it bad?” followed by a BBC News story, “What is fracking and why is it controversial?” And these are followed by hit jobs from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

Epstein engages with the idealism of students and climate activists, and he lays out a compelling challenge: if we want more people to enjoy long, healthy, opportunity-filled lives, the world needs more fossil fuels, not less. This is especially true for those living in the developing world. Even today, more than 1 billion people live without electricity—634 million of them in Africa. They lack adequate light and proper refrigeration, essential for food hygiene; they must cook using wood and animal dung, with the attendant dangers to life and health of fire and indoor air pollution. Africa is energy-starved: excluding South Africa, approximately 1.1 billion people on the continent consume on average a pitiful 26½ lbs of coal per year, less than one-twentieth the per capita amount used in India’s power stations. An empowered Africa would burn more coal and emit more carbon dioxide.

Energy and climate, Epstein reminds us, are complex problems; solutions can never be cost-free. In his realistic and practical approach, and his rejection of utopian schemes, he echoes the warnings of Friedrich Hayek about man’s fatal striving to control society, which the Austrian economist described in his 1974 Nobel Prize address, The Pretence of Knowledge. “If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order,” Hayek cautioned, “he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.” These words resonate today as a warning against those claiming certitude about the earth’s climate—and demanding control of America’s energy policy.

Rupert Darwall is a Senior Fellow of the RealClearFoundation.

Yet this revolution is at risk of stalling. Despite a 200% increase in US oil production and a 40% jump in natural gas output since 2010, construction of the pipelines needed to move products to consumers has lagged. While new projects are coming online at a record rate, opposition to key pipelines threatens to leave the U.S. energy market fragmented. For consumers in New York, Massachusetts, and other states that continue to block new pipeline construction, the result is higher energy prices, less reliable power grids, and reduced cost-competitiveness for local industries relative to other states.

Opponents of pipeline projects like the Williams pipeline in New York and others elsewhere (Keystone XL, Dakota Access, Access Northeast, etc) are often too quick to dismiss the economic, social, and environmental benefits of pipelines and the opportunity costs of not building them. Earlier this year, the Empire State used the Clean Water Act to shut down a nearly $1 billion natural gas pipeline that would have connected the state’s power plants with gas-rich fields in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and reduced the average price of electricity in New York City which currently stands at  21.0 cents per kWh, 54 percent higher than the national average (13.6 cents per kWh).

This is an clear abuse of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act which allows a state to block the construction of a pipeline by refusing to grant the project a water quality permit. I used to oversee my state’s water quality permitting program, and I am a fierce defender of state’s rights. But I’m also a fierce defender of standards that are objective, and question the use of the Clean Water Act when it is invoked in an arbitrary manner that does nothing to protect the environment. Fortunately the Trump Administration has proposed a rule change will streamline the regulatory process and effectively limit a state’s ability to block projects at the last minute.

When it comes to the costs and benefits of pipelines, it is important to think dynamically and consider the trade-offs necessary to advance the national interest. Investing in modern energy infrastructure enables the US to provide long-term, low cost, reliable energy to consumers, which in turn makes domestic industries like manufacturing and agriculture more cost-competitive relative to foreign rivals.

Take, for example, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which transports crude oil from fields on the North Slope to tankers in Valdez. Revenues from the oil flowing through the pipeline support local governments and indigenous communities, and make up roughly 80 percent of the state of Alaska’s operating budget. That money goes to pay for airports, roads, hospitals, police, schools, and much more.

Pipelines also increase US energy exports, lowering the trade deficit and allowing the US to be less reliant on imports from unstable regions in the world. This is undeniably a boon for America and our allies. As the Energy Crisis of 1973 demonstrated, an America reliant on energy imports is a weak America. Those who advocate for a ban on all oil and gas leases on public lands and any new pipelines would see us return to a reliance on energy imports from countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran and others that oppose US interests and values.

In my grandparents’ day, a quiet revolution took place in the American southwest. A partnership between the federal government and industry built two pipelines from Texas to refineries in the Midwest and the East Coast. Dubbed “Big Inch” and “Little Big Inch,” the two pipelines allowed the US to transport oil, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and heating oil from where it was produced to where it was needed most. Today, historians say the two pipelines “aided almost beyond estimation” to the Allied Victory in World War Two.

Looking forward, our nation’s future is bright. But in order to take full advantage of our energy potential, we must prioritize investment in our pipeline network to safely and efficiently deliver the fuels that Americans rely on every day.

Mead Treadwell is former Lt. Governor of Alaska, and a seasoned investor in both conventional and alternative energy. 

Instead, the October 23 hearing before a House Oversight subcommittee, intended to explore the burdens from the effects of climate change on the economically disadvantaged and minority communities, focused elsewhere. Much of the session pushed the accusation that ExxonMobil encouraged public skepticism about climate change and played down its own scientists’ predictions that fossil fuels use would cause warming temperatures. Over the last four years, the company has debunked those claims with thousands of documents but partisans and activists are undeterred. 

The star witness was Naomi Oreskes, one of the energy industry’s most tenacious antagonists. Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard, earned a doctorate in mining geology from Stanford. These credentials aside, she is more activist than scientist. Peers have discredited more than one of her analyses.

In a 2017 paper she co-authored with Geoffrey Supran, “Assessing ExxonMobil's Climate Change Communications (1977–2014),” she accused ExxonMobil of shelving science for a disinformation campaign. Some saw the paper as flawed in its methodology. Professor Kimberly Neuendorf, a research scientist and expert in content analysis whose work was cited in the paper, later analyzed the methodology and conclusions and found so many flaws that she pronounced the content analysis, “..unreliable, invalid, biased, not generalizable, and not replicable.”

Research from the National Climate Assessment and the World Energy Outlook make clear the validity of climate change.  But Oreskes sought to prove a scientific consensus on climate change by reviewing abstracts in scientific journals for the magazine Science in 2004. But other academics could not find many of the abstracts she cited, and the piece had to be corrected. 

This is a sign of sloppiness, dishonesty, bias, or all three.   In 2010, she published Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.  She was criticized this time for bias in trusting some experts while discounting others and for being “less a scholarly work than a passionate attack.”  

Climate change is a real phenomenon with human agency. We need solutions that are technologically-driven, market-based and considerate of the social costs of alternatives.  Unfortunately, the public debate on this subject has been dominated by environmental extremists, anti-oil crusaders, and industry lobbyists.  The media has mostly ignored scientists.  Last fall, WNYC’s program On the Media reported that in the numerous segments on climate policy on the Sunday news-talk shows, it had been three years since any featured a climate scientist.  

The time has come for Congress to refrain from giving climate activists the stage for recriminations against the oil and natural gas industry. Instead lawmakers from both parties should convene an honest discussion of forward-looking solutions with all stakeholders.

ExxonMobil and other companies have invested billions of dollars to make energy production cleaner along with making major investments in clean energy. Policymakers should be looking at ways to complement these efforts. For example, the National Science Foundation has the potential to use its Engineering Research Centers and associated awards to advance this effort. 

Enlarging budget allocations for support of scientific and technological research are needed now.  

The consequences of policies adopted to address climate change could be as far-reaching and disruptive as the phenomenon itself so we need to get this right. Time is of the essence. Accusations against industry and calls for recrimination based on flawed studies and political biases must now take a back seat to solutions based on science, engineering, and economics.    

Dr. Larry Edward Penley, a former university president, currently serves on the Arizona Board of Regents.  

It's important to note that there is no such thing as a “zero emission vehicle” because every car needs energy to be produced. In fact, EVs come with a host of high impact costs on the climate.  Lithium and nickel for instance – materials used to create EV batteries – are currently destroying certain parts of the world to fuel this artificial demand.

In Chile, for example, mining companies need half a million gallons of water for every ton of lithium mined. This has displaced many local farmers in the region as they are forced to find new areas to grow their crops and herd their flocks. This has caused people like Chilean biologist, Cristina Dorador, to be worried that the mining has caused irreversible damage to her country’s land. 

Similar environmental concerns were raised when in 2017, the Philippines closed 17 nickel mines which were being used to create EV batteries. Unsurprisingly, EVs produce double to triple the carbon footprint of a conventional gasoline car.

And while EVs make up the difference after production and have a lower impact on the climate, according to some state level estimates, it’s still more environmentally friendly to drive a hybrid. As the environmental research group Climate Central reports – because states differ on how they generate their energy – in 13 states it’s still more environmentally friendly to drive a hybrid than an EV.

But even when EVs have a lower carbon footprint than their counterparts, they won’t even make a dent in reducing global temperatures. The Manhattan Institute reports that since gasoline cars are already very efficient, “the projected reduction in CO2 emissions [from EVs]… will have no measurable impact on climate and, hence, no economic value.”

It only gets worse: research shows that EV subsidies by in large attract environmentally concerned consumers.

The National Bureau of Economic Research found that “the majority of the credits went to households that would have purchased an EV without any tax incentive.” This suggests that people looking to buy “green” usually do so regardless of price. The report also notes that those who used the subsidies would have bought a hybrid or gas efficient car instead.

As politicians attempt to persuade the public that continuing to subsidize EVs are worth it, they will face an uphill battle, since EVs do little to change the climate. With California “likely to exceed $100 billion” to subsidize this industry, Americans should wonder if this money could’ve been used to support green initiatives or at least have stayed in the taxpayer’s pocket.

Clearly there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done before any climate progress is made, but one thing’s for sure: it’s only a matter of time before Americans are sick and tired of subsidizing EVs.

Janson Q. Prieb is a policy analyst at the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit educational and research organization.

Rather than implement sanctions that will have unintended consequences, including negative impacts on our own businesses, we should use the strength of our own industry to strike at Russia’s economy. In particular, we can and should use the power of our own hydrocarbon industries to exert our influence.

Russia’s economy is already weaker than most Americans probably expect. The International Monetary Fund estimates that Russia will have the world’s eleventh largest GDP this year, at $1.6 trillion. For comparison, our GDP, the largest in the world, is 13 times bigger even though our population is only a little more than twice the size of theirs. In short, our economy dwarfs the Russian economy. We can exert the power of that economy without sanctions.

In particular, Russia is reliant on its oil and gas industry to maintain its economy. According to the Federal Customs Service, in 2018, nearly 64% of Russia’s export revenue came from fossil fuels, including oil and gas. Russia’s Finance Ministry reported that in 2018, about 40% of Russia’s federal budget came from oil and gas revenues. Sales from Gazprom, the Russian natural gas company that supplies 37% of the European gas market, make up about 5% of Russia’s $1.6 trillion GDP.

Meanwhile, the United States is flush with cheap natural gas, thanks to the fracking revolution. We produce natural gas from fields like the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, and it is an easily produced byproduct of much of our record-breaking oil production. There is so much natural gas being produced in the U.S., and it is so cheap, that it is often burned at the source instead of transported for sale.

At the same time, Russia produces natural gas all the way up in perhaps the world’s most inhospitable environment, the Arctic. Now we have the ability to export natural gas in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), so that it can be used in Europe and elsewhere. If we increase the permitting and expedite construction of natural gas transportation infrastructure and liquefaction facilities, and if our government facilitates sales and contracts with foreign utilities, we can increase the share of the natural gas market controlled by the U.S. We will take that share from Russia. In fact, Russia is already concerned about the growing LNG industry in the United States. In a webcast in February 2019, Gazprom noted the threat of American LNG exports to Europe, which increased fivefold last winter.

If, on the other hand, we institute sanctions, we will hurt some of our businesses. In this globalized economy, American enterprises have been working with Russians, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union almost 30 years ago. This situation is not like Iran, with whom our companies had long ago ended relationships. Harsh sanctions on Russia would hit American employers too.

If the goal is to punish and weaken Russia, the best solution is to support our own economic and industrial strengths. Promote our own natural gas export industry, adding money and jobs to the U.S. economy. European countries don’t want to be beholden to Russian natural gas for fuel and electricity. Both Poland and Ukraine, for example, want to buy more LNG from the United States, but the lack of infrastructure in the US and in these countries is hindering this expansion. We need to expedite our ability to supply these countries with American natural gas and help negotiate deals for American companies to become a regular fixture in the European natural gas market.

Every cargo of LNG that we ship to Europe cuts into Russia’s revenue. Through the power of our own economy and our own businesses, we can hurt Russia’s economy and send the precise and unmistakable signal to Russia and any other country that dares to involve themselves in our elections.

Ellen R. Wald, Ph.D. is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and the president of Transversal Consulting. 

Now, as California endures escalating wildfires and prolonged blackouts, the state must take a page out of the Katrina playbook and utilize this pivotal moment to change its approach to infrastructure investment. Namely, the state’s electrical grid, which is the source of many of these fires.

According to a 2014 Technical Report for the Dept of Energy, climate change will increase disruptions of infrastructure services in sensitive areas already strained by ageing infrastructure, resulting in “cascading…system failures.” In California the wildfires are charring both the earth and the energy grid. 

California’s utilities, like PG&E, are thus finding themselves at the forefront of the climate crisis; they must balance the need for large investment in infrastructure and maintenance upgrades -- to contend with growing climatic uncertainty -- at a time of wavering political support for rate hikes.

Absent rate hikes for electricity, it is unrealistic to assume that PG&E, or any utility, will be able to absorb the brunt of responsibility associated with major infrastructure upgrades. Instead, the degree of risk and development in sensitive areas must be spread between sectors, including utilities, government, homeowners/citizens, businesses and insurance.

New Orleans has endured a myriad of man-made and natural disasters, and we suffer from our fair share of infrastructure challenges (including pot holes that can pass for asteroid craters), but we also realize that solving for infrastructure requires unique partnerships and investment. 

The threat of consistent utility rate increases has become a fact of life for those of us who make our home below sea level, but with rate hikes comes increased scrutiny of how these funds are applied to solve for changing climatic conditions. To help mitigate these challenges, the City of New Orleans created the nation’s first disaster resiliency plan to try and tackle issues of climate change in the face of decaying infrastructure and growing equity disparities. 

Rather than hold utilities solely responsible for major improvements, New Orleans focuses on creative partnership solutions to help fund and build resilience-oriented initiatives. One can certainly argue that this approach is slow and cumbersome (perhaps easier to simply sue a utility), but a resilience mind-set coupled with innovative partnerships must become the new normal amid the uncertainties of climate change. 

In California, PG&E, like many major utilities, has little choice but to increase rates to attract the investment needed to offset accelerating costs. However, rather than opposing rate increases, citizens and businesses alike should set aside the vitriol and instead adopt a resilience mindset by encouraging the utilization of a public-private approach to solve for pressing issues, such as: raising funds for preventative actions like clearing vegetation and research initiatives to solve for the archaic action of simply turning off power during high wind occurrences. 

California must also consider more Public Private Partnerships (P3s), which take many forms but the structure creates a win-win solution between government, utilities, investors and citizens. Innovative governance is also a component of P3s. These governance structures help give rise to multi-sectoral collaboration, creating a platform by which citizens can help inform and prioritize complex community needs, driving higher value results.

P3s are typically project specific focusing on unique financing and procurement approaches that can be utilized to build a priority initiative that otherwise would not happen – like toll roads, water or energy systems and bridges. In New Orleans, unique partnerships have helped rebuild schools, hospitals, roads and other critical components of the city destroyed by Katrina. 

California has many successful P3 projects and Sacramento’s recent passage of AB1054, creating a $21B fund to help offset future wild fire claims funded by ratepayers and shareholder profits alike, may yet encourage more cross-sectoral engagement.

Due to the wildfires and blackouts, I understand Californians are angry at PG&E – and deservedly so. But they can’t be more angry than New Orleanians were at the various local, state, and federal agencies for the failures exposed by Katrina. But here, we realized that our only way to rebuild, was to find ways to partner with the very agencies and organizations we loathed. 

So, rather than demonize utilities, California should instead focus reform efforts on changing the way in which we approach and support investment in our nation’s infrastructure. If this collaborative mindset can work in New Orleans, it can work in California, too. 

Caitlin Cain, is an economic development consultant and the former CEO of the World Trade Center of New Orleans; she served as the Director of Economic Development for the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission immediately during and after Hurricane Katrina.

Fortunately, the vast majority of American voters represent a third camp—the camp that actually wants to get something done. Some 80% of voters now say it is important for a national climate policy to be bipartisan, according to a recent poll from Luntz Global. 

This yearning for bipartisanship--which holds across all categories of voters--shouldn’t come as a surprise. With the rollback of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and other climate regulations by the Trump Administration, the American public has witnessed how fragile climate policy can be when it’s only supported by one party. The clear lesson: any durable solution must have buy-in across the political spectrum. 

On a more fundamental level, though, voters may intuitively believe that on climate, both parties have good (and bad) ideas. Go too far in one direction, and the environment suffers; too far in the other, and the economy falters. Voters want their leaders to work together to find middle ground.

With strong majorities of Americans now accepting that climate change is real and fueled by human activity, a window for a bipartisan compromise is opening. A younger generation seems to be converging on the issue: Some 58% of Republicans under 40 have grown more concerned about climate risks over the past year—the same proportion as voters overall.

As public opinion has shifted, an odd-bedfellow coalition of large companies and leading environmental organizations has been working together these past two years to outline a national climate policy. Convened by the Climate Leadership Council, these stakeholders represent a wide range of industries and perspectives. They don’t agree on everything. But they share the belief that any solution should be grounded in common sense—and emerge from common ground. In other words, it must be bipartisan. 

The Climate Leadership Council’s plan is based on the concept of carbon dividends: charging companies for their carbon emissions and returning all the revenue to the American people. A gradually rising and economy-wide fee would start at $40 a ton of carbon emissions. All proceeds would be distributed to households in equal-sized quarterly checks, with a family of four receiving about $2,000 a year. The plan also calls for removing carbon regulations that are no longer necessary upon enactment of a steadily rising carbon fee. 

Why would this plan attract broad bipartisan support? For starters, it would work. A carbon fee starting at $40 per ton and increasing each year at 5% above inflation would cut U.S. emissions in half by 2035, according to modeling by Resources for the Future. To guarantee the plan’s environmental ambition, a safeguard mechanism would increase the fee rate faster if emissions targets aren’t met.

Second, this solution makes the majority of Americans financially better off from solving climate change. Under the plan, 70% of households would receive more in dividends than they pay in higher energy costs. In contrast to government policies that pick winners and losers and ask Americans to foot the bill, the carbon dividends approach empowers people to decide for themselves how to shrink their carbon footprint. 

Third, the Climate Leadership Council’s solution stimulates innovation and economic growth. It would trade an effective carbon fee for regulatory simplification. Replacing on-and-off-again carbon regulations with a steadily rising carbon fee would give business owners the predictability they need to invest for a clean energy future. With greater policy certainty, businesses will be able to drive down their emissions faster.  

Lastly, our plan would level the playing field for American companies and even advantage those with cleaner manufacturing methods than their overseas competitors. A system of border carbon adjustments would apply the fee on the carbon content of imported goods and rebate the fee for exports. This would put the United States in the driver’s seat in international negotiations and encourage leading emitter nations, like China and India, to follow suit with carbon fees of their own. 

Don’t believe the hype. There is middle ground on climate policy, and it’s where the vast majority of voters sit. The carbon dividends solution proves it’s possible to create a climate solution where all sides win. Let’s make it the basis for a much-needed bipartisan climate breakthrough.

Greg Bertelsen is Executive Vice President of the Climate Leadership Council. 

The United States used to be the world’s biggest importer of oil. Now, for the first time since 1949, the U.S. is a net exporter of petroleum thanks to fracking technology. America’s new role in global energy markets has already blunted others using energy as a geopolitical weapon.

So, what would happen if America’s next president were to make good on a promise to ban fracking? We know the answer.

Enthusiasms for alternatives aside, solar and wind combined supply less than 2 percent of world energy, while 54 percent still comes from oil and natural gas. Many analysts have pointed to the domestic jobs and revenues that will be lost were America to shut down fracking. But that’s the least of it. Far more significant: removing that quantity of fuel from world markets would trigger the biggest energy price spike in history, and a global recession.

We know that because history has witnessed the effect of similar amounts of oil suddenly taken from markets for political reasons. During the infamous 1973 Arab oil embargo, a share of oil trade comparable to what a frack-ban would cause, was taken off the market by the Saudis. That episode drove world oil prices up over 350% and triggered a global recession. Again in 1979, a similar loss to energy markets happened when Iran’s Mullahs revolted and that nation’s exports collapsed. That event caused a 200% global price spike and triggered another recession.

It bears noting that an American frack-ban would in our time constitute a kind of double ‘whammy’ as it would also take off global markets a Saudi Arabia’s worth of oil in the form of liquefied natural gas. The latter is the fastest growing source of global energy trade. And according to the International Energy Agency, America is expected to supply the majority of new energy traded on global markets.

Many assume talk of a ban is mere posturing during a contentious election season. But that proposal is repeatedly front and center.

While VP Biden and many of the other presidential aspirants merely promise to “phase-out all fossil fuels,” Senators Warren, Sanders and Harris and four other candidates have all called for an outright frack ban. Apparently they read the polls showing 58% of democratic primary voters would support a ban.

Some skeptics caution against over-reacting, regardless of electioneering, claiming a ban couldn’t really be put into effect because of practical limits on presidential authority. That’s naive.

Executive orders have impact. Even more, a president’s authority over the Administrative branch can engender creative interpretations of the labyrinth of rules, and the issuance of aggressive “notices” from myriad agencies. A fusillade of such actions can slow-walk or outright stop all manner of industrial activities up and down the supply chain, from permitting to moving materials, to building pipelines and ports. Similar friction can be generated in capital markets that have, thus far, enthusiastically funded fracking.

Frack-banners have honed shut-down tactics at the state level. Consider the highly choreographed protests in 2017 over the Dakota Access pipeline, a project that simply paralleled an already existing pipe. Another bellwether; New York State’s elastic use of groundwater regulations to effectively ban a hundred-mile gas pipeline, to the detriment of New Yorkers, despite 4,000 miles of similar pipes in that state and 300,000 miles more nationally.

Lest we forget, if the Democratic Party also wins both houses of Congress, frack-banning lawmakers could just pass a law. It wouldn’t be the first time. Back in 1972 and 1982, Congress banned oil production on over 90% of America’s offshore domains. And that happened despite fears back then of Middle East oil hegemony.

Meanwhile, on-shore hydraulic fracturing of oil- and gas-bearing shale has eliminated the need for over $1 trillion of energy imports during the past decade; and by lowering prices, saved U.S. consumers over $2 trillion. America’s production resurgence also lowered global prices, thereby transferring trillions of dollars from producers, like Russia and OPEC, into consumers’ pockets.

America’s emergence as a third major source of oil and gas on world markets should be considered in the context of a geopolitical reality: 75% of the global economy is found in five regions: North America, Europe, China, Japan and India. All, except North America, are major net energy importers. Incalculable, if subterranean, geopolitical consequences would follow from America exiting the export market.

It is magical thinking to believe that shale production could be replaced quickly by wind and solar – at any price, and regardless of climate change motivations. To put this in perspective: since 2007, American fracking technology has added 500 percent more energy to markets than have all of the planet’s wind and solar farms combined.

Thus the wild card actually on the table this political season is whether America might literally pull the rug out from under the world’s economy. Consumers here and abroad might take seriously a phrase that’s become popular in our political lexicon: elections have consequences.

Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute and author of the recently released report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise In Magical Thinking.”

In the United States, we have an abundance of affordable and reliable energy. But some of us take having access to energy for granted. We expect to plug in and charge our mobile devices, flip a light switch and click on the television. And without fail, it all works. It’s not until our power—and our way of life—is interrupted that most of us think about energy and where it comes from.

California’s recent blackout revealed that having reliable electricity is an economic privilege, and interviews from across the state suggest those less affluent continue to have more losses and were disproportionately forced off the grid. 

As it is, Californians already pay among the highest rates in the U.S. for their power, and unfortunately these costs are projected to rise even more. These increases often have a higher burden on low-income households that already struggle to keep up with rising cost, leading many down the path to energy poverty. The issue plagues not only California residents, but many more across the country including in Pennsylvania, where utility rates for customers are much higher than neighboring states. In Georgia a study finds energy consumption among the highest in America, and in New Mexico a new state law will increase cost to consumers, with the most negative impacts felt by lower income families who spend a larger share of their monthly income on energy.

The irony is that each state listed has an abundance of natural resources that can be accessed. But lawmakers, caving to environmentalist and special interest groups that don’t speak for the poor, continue to put forth expensive policy ideas like the Green New Deal that promote false hope and unrealistic outcomes for those who already grapple each month to make ends meet. 

I recently had an opportunity to speak with several residents of Richmond, Virginia, who face these challenges. And it breaks my heart to see a single mother who must decide on whether to feed her children or pay the electric bill. That’s a choice no American citizens should have to make.

Today we use more energy than ever before, and to keep up with the growing demand, we need an approach that makes better use of what we have, especially if it can lower costs, create jobs and increase funding to critical services we rely on like roads, emergency management, and education. 

A recent Shale Crescent USA study shows end users have saved $1.1 trillion over the past 10 years due to increased natural gas production that has reduced the price of natural gas in the United States. Meanwhile California, rich with its own natural resources, increased its crude oil imports from foreign countries from 5% in 1992 to 57% in 2018. This is a glaring example of hypocrisy, and here’s why. Booming shale production helped the U.S. overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s top oil exporter for the first time ever this year. How can our natural resources be worthy enough to supply other countries, but not good enough for us here at home?

We need market-oriented energy policy that will allow America to keep exploring and developing our resources safely, and to follow the example of environmental stewardship set by areas like Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The port serves as a major oil and gas hub on the Gulf Coast with some of the largest boat and marine companies in the world operating from there. It’s also a commercial and fishing Mecca that continues to amaze scientists and researchers from around the world.

During the California blackout, many residents were not able to cook and relied on flashlights and oil-burning lamps for lighting. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo urged residents to be “safe and not to drive in blacked-out areas.” We live in the 21^st Century in the richest country in the world, and nobody here should be without electricity. Affordable energy makes us better and more resilient.

And the truth is, nature doesn’t give us what we need to survive—we must create it through energy development. Fossil fuels have allowed us to create a life that Americans have grown to appreciate, thanks to innovations from pharmaceuticals to agriculture to mobile devices. We are better off now than ever before, and politicians shouldn’t deny our comfort and prosperity to the least fortunate among us.

Derrick Hollie is president of Reaching America and host of Reaching America on Demand podcast. The organization addresses complex social issues impacting African-American communities.

Regardless of one’s views of the wisdom, practicality or effectiveness of such an effort – all dynamics worthy of robust debate – it’s one thing to call for a WWII-scale mobilization but a far different task to understand the breadth of that historic mobilization and the engines that propelled it.

Glaringly absent, at least so far, from the Green New Deal conversation is any mention of the supply chains needed to support this massive industrial effort. And make no mistake, a massive industrial effort is precisely what would be necessary. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, grid-scale lithium-ion batteries and a new electricity grid are machines and commodities that require immense manufacturing capacity and a vast variety and quantity of raw material.

If these energy technologies are to be the ships, tanks and planes of this modern mobilization, consider what the American home front achieved during the war years. Author Victor Davis Hanson, writing on mobilization during WWII, observed that “American war production proved astonishing. At the huge Willow Run plant in Michigan, the Greatest Generation turned out a B-24 heavy bomber every hour. A single shipyard could mass-produce an ocean-going Liberty merchant ship from scratch in a week.”

At scale, this meant American industry provided almost two-thirds of all the Allied military equipment produced during the war. American factories produced 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks and two million army trucks. In just a four-year period, America’s industrial production, already the world's largest, doubled. No other country, ally or enemy, came close to equaling this effort.

America became a factory. Notably, U.S. resource self-sufficiency drove the engine of production. While oil, natural gas and coal proved essential to the effort, U.S. hardrock mines provided the critical minerals and metals needed for the dizzying array of materials required by the machines of war. America’s vast natural resources and our robust mining industries became the foundation upon which the mobilization could happen.

Today, the U.S. hardrock mining industry – absolutely essential to any green energy mobilization – is a shadow of the behemoth it once was. America’s vast mineral wealth still exists but hardrock mining has been the victim of adversarial policy that has pushed mining investment and production elsewhere. While complete self-sufficiency in this era of global interconnectedness is unnecessary, U.S. mineral import reliance is spiraling out of control, doubling over the past two decades.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. is now 100 percent import reliant for 18 essential minerals and 50 percent or more import reliant for another 30. Our strategic competitor China controls the production and processing of an alarming number. And in turn, China controls the manufacturing of technologies – be they solar panels or lithium-ion batteries – that depend on them. Of the 70 major lithium-ion battery factories now in operation or under development around the world, 46 are located or planned in China; just five are planned for the U.S.

If the U.S. does not get its industrial policy in order, our potential American Green New Deal could well become China’s Green New Deal. It would be a stimulus not for the American industrial heartland and American workers but rather for the citizens of Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

The World Bank projects that demand for the key minerals needed for green technologies could jump 1,000% or more under scenarios with aggressive action to accelerate green energy deployment. A Green New Deal is such a scenario on steroids. That kind of overnight growth in demand won’t be easily met by the world’s mines. It often takes 10 years to bring a mine into production. In the U.S., thanks to a duplicative and cumbersome permitting process, it often takes 10 years just to gain the permits required to open a new mine. That must change – or our economy and national security will be left in the dust

If the U.S. is to shift to a war footing to build the weapons of the climate fight, we need an industrial policy that builds from the ground up. A mines-to-megawatts effort must be at the forefront of any mobilization. Right now, it’s disturbingly not even on the radar.

John Adams, U.S. Army Brigadier General (Retired), is President of Guardian Six Consulting and a former Deputy U.S. Military Representative to NATO’s Military Committee. He is a national security advisor and writer on national security and defense issues, and was the lead author for the 2013 study on the U.S. defense industrial base, Remaking American Security.

Renewable portfolio standards, which began as state policies intended to give nascent resources a jumpstart, have become an epidemic. Ever-more ambitious, these mandates have become decisive elements in the marketplace. It’s time to address this market manipulation head on.

The regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) have the perfect vehicle to do just that. The pending PJM Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR) – which would scrub subsidized sources of power from PJM’s capacity market – is the right lever to pull to restore fairness to the marketplace. Failure to act would mean the fuel-secure foundation of the grid slips away.

Essential coal plants are being pushed into early retirement by a gamed marketplace incapable of properly valuing their contribution to grid reliability and resilience. While utilities, the U.S. Department of Energy and even regulators have grown increasingly concerned about the loss of this baseload capacity, the warning signs of a reliability tipping point have yet to be met with a decisive course correction. That must change.

A lack of urgency for action to date can largely be chalked up to flawed analysis of the challenge. Far too much study of the loss of baseload capacity, and its implications, has looked backwards when we have already stepped into new territory with no precedent to draw upon. What analysts have failed to understand is that we don’t have a capacity problem but rather a rapidly mounting energy security problem with a market construct incapable of addressing it. Never has the grid and the reliable delivery of power relied so heavily on just-in-time fuel delivery and the whims of mother nature.

The threats to the reliable delivery of fuel and power are more complex and challenging to address than ever before. No miracle of modern society, no corner of industry works without the constant, on-demand delivery of electricity. This moment calls for action, not hand wringing, blind faith or reluctance to pump the breaks. Electric power grid Jenga is just as dangerous as it sounds.

Once these essential baseload power plants are gone, there’s no bringing them back. This crisis is one of our own making but it’s a crisis we have the means to address before the optionality, fuel security and balance of our current fuel mix is lost for good.

Separate action is needed to reshape markets to better value fuel-secure sources of power, but the PJM MOPR could go a long way in immediately alleviating much of the pressure on at-risk baseload power plants in the nation’s largest wholesale electricity market.

FERC is well aware of the disruption caused by state energy mandates and out-of-market payments in wholesale markets. Now is the moment to quarantine this epidemic before it gets far worse.

The urgency for action is not because we’ve already experienced rolling blackouts during a polar vortex or cyber-attack, but because we simply cannot afford to let that happen. We need a robust, balanced and resilient grid. We must have electricity markets that can deliver it. FERC should act now to restore market integrity and stop the loss of essential, fuel-secure baseload capacity.

Rich Nolan is the president and CEO of the National Mining Association.

At a local electric utility in Ohio, the controller gets a routine notice that power from outside generators will be cut back in 10 minutes. No problem. This happens every day at this time. Power companies share the responsibility of generating electricity on the grid. So, according to company policy, the controller activates a generator within his own system. As he pushes the control switches, nothing happens. The utility has been hacked. Minutes later a blackout occurs. The community is in total darkness. No heat. No lights. No Internet.  Uncle Joe’s dialysis machine shuts off. Aunt Jane’s respirator stops.

Think this is fiction?  Think again.  In 2015, a hacker group the authorities call “Sandworm” caused a blackout in Ukraine that left more than 250,000 people in darkness for 6 hours. In Afghanistan, the hacker is the Taliban. But when the electric power goes out in Ohio, who’s the hacker?  Foreign powers, criminals, pranksters?

Almost two centuries ago, the Earth, itself, was hacked. On September 1^st 1859, a wave of gas – or what scientists call a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from a solar storm – shot off the Sun’s surface and hit the earth. All of the electrical circuits in the world went down.

Destructive CMEs aren’t common, but they do happen. According to NASA, “on March 13, 1989 the entire Province of Quebec, Canada, suffered an electric power blackout…. caused by a solar storm.” NASA says that the because of that solar storm, the “northern lights” could be seen as far south at Florida and Cuba.

This isn’t fiction. It’s not just our military adversaries that we have to worry about. So, how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect our power?

Fortunately, there is electronic equipment that can protect power systems from hacking and from CMEs too. The military can, and does, install and deploy this equipment to protect our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

Places like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles – all of the big population centers that are served by major electric utilities  - can protect their systems too. They have literally millions of customers on whom they can lay off the cost. But what about our system in Ohio? Maybe a few thousand customers. Far too few to lay off the major cost of grid protection. How are they and the hundreds of other small electric power systems going to pay?  How – since we are all part of the same grid and therefore interdependent – are WE going to pay for grid protection for all?

There is an answer, and it’s a relatively simple one.

Take a look at your phone bill. At the end of the bill, in the “fine print” where all the taxes and fees are hidden, you will find a small entry. It is called the “Universal Service Fund Charge.” It is a charge authorized by Congress in 1997 that your phone company collects from you and pays into the Universal Service Fund (USF), managed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The Fund was created to promote universal access to telecommunications services and later expanded to include broadband services. According to Verizon: “This fund supports telecommunications and information services in schools, public libraries, and rural health-care facilities. The fund also subsidizes local service to high-cost areas and low-income customers.”

The fact that few people even know about the USF Charge, or, much less, have never objected to it, is testimony to its effectiveness as a fund raising strategy.

The success of the USF Charge is due to three factors. It is very broad-based. It is small. And, it is painless.

What we need to protect our electric power grid is a small, painless fee much like the USF Charge. But instead of the charge showing up on your phone bill, it would show up on your electricity bill.

How could this happen? Would Congress and the President need to authorize such a fee or charge? Most certainly, yes. But, since it is so similar to the USF Charge, they could simply amend the USF legislation, or they could pass an entirely new Act.

Among utility executives and political leaders across the country, there is a growing recognition that the nation’s power grid must be protected. As they mobilize the legal and administrative resources to do so, they must also create an effective finance mechanism to pay for it - something the country desperately needs.

Michael Curley is a lawyer and a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He writes books about environmental & energy law and finance and has taught at the Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and the Vermont Law School.

An abundance of natural resources and a favorable regulatory environment have propelled the rise of the U.S. as the leading global energy producer. But federal regulators are taking aim at the vitality of the country’s freight railroads to negotiate their own prices, which provide a flexible option for energy producers in lieu of pipelines. Rather than helping the economy, federal regulators at the Surface Transportation Board (STB) are considering regulations that would allow them to set railroad prices. Those regulations, if implemented, would harm U.S. businesses, consumers and threaten the country’s energy independence. 

When pipelines are politically infeasible or too expensive for nascent energy projects, producers frequently turn to freight railroads. Although rail transportation is more expensive per barrel than pipelines, it is still a widely viable option and is undeniably safe due to marked improvements the past four years. 

Despite the important role that freight rail often plays in the American energy industry, the STB wants to claim a greater role in setting the price of railroad contracts. Using an opaque system, the STB has proposed new rules that would enable bureaucrats to distort the market and make certain routes loss-inducing for private companies.

While the proposed regulations might appear a boon for some rail customers, forcing private railroads to endure losses is not a recipe for long-term viability. Indeed, it is ironic that the chemical sector – the most vocal supporter of rail re-regulation – is pushing for rules that would ultimately hinder the movement of their products, that is if increased rate regulation in the rail sector takes hold. This is because such a dynamic would distort a well-functioning market and unfairly pick winners and losers.

When railroads refuse smaller shipments or contracts under $4 million, many energy producers will lose their option of last resort. Without pipelines or railroads, American energy independence would increasingly look more like a pipe dream.

Putting aside the detriment that these regulations would cause to the railroad and energy industries, the proposed rules would also harm consumers. Increased competition and stripping away onerous price regulations within the railroad industry since 1980 has provided American consumers with a benefit to the tune of $10 billion a year. Re-imposing these regulations would undo these consumer benefits.

Moreover, America’s private railroads invest $25 billion each year in infrastructure and support over 1 million jobs across the country. Hauling freight along privately-build railroad lines also keeps goods and wares off publicly funded highways and roads. 

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time that the freight railroads have been used as a political boogeyman. While they have long been a target of bureaucratic meddling, several studies have found that the industry is both competitive and fairly priced. Efforts by the STB to impose rate caps or generally impose greater influence in the private market will make rail less competitive, which will divert freight to roads. This will take away from revenue needed to invest in safety technology and infrastructure and will, in general, work counter to the policy agenda of both Democrats and Republicans.

As the United States inches closer to becoming completely energy self-reliant, it is imperative that energy producers and communities across the country have the necessary flexibility to bring energy to the market. Simply put, regulating the price of private freight rail would be a step backwards for American businesses, consumers, and the national interest.

Oliver McPherson-Smith writes for the American Consumer Institute, a non-profit educational and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.

Democrats struggle when we let ourselves be defined by coastal progressives, who too often forget about those people struggling with the impacts of globalization and the widening education and cultural gaps between urban and rural Americans. 

Which is why it is critical that Democrats endorse policies which put people back to work – even in sectors like oil and gas. If Democrats just support progressive ideals, without really considering the impacts on people’s lives, we are going to continue to struggle on the national stage. In reality, the key to winning over politically moderate voters is demonstrating to them you sincerely care about their wellbeing. 

This is why I am supportive of a new proposal from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to update how it implements a law that currently forces electric utilities to buy renewable power at inflated costs, and then pass those added charges onto their customers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet. 

Please understand, I am not against renewable energy and support government programs that promote energy independence and clean power. For instance, I have long been in favor of using biofuels that support American farmers, create cleaner burning fuels, and don’t raise the cost of a gallon of gasoline. Likewise, I would be supportive of federal energy policies that required electric utilities to use more clean energy, as long as those policies did not result in customers having to overpay for that electricity.  

But what FERC is looking at, called Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), is a law that mandates utilities in certain states to buy renewable energy from companies at artificially high rates. The result is that these clean energy providers charge the utilities above market rates. 

Since utilities automatically pass the cost of acquiring energy onto its customers in the form of higher electricity bills, mandates to pay above market rates push unnecessary costs onto consumers. Additionally, at times, PURPA mandates that utilities buy energy they don’t need. How does that make sense?

Another flaw of PURPA is that it locks utilities into contracts as long as 20 years. This prevents utilities – and hence their customers – from benefitting from advances in renewable technology and falling prices that come with innovations in science and transmission. When renewables cost less to produce, FERC must ensure the cost savings are passed onto utilities and ratepayers. 

Some people remain supportive of PURPA because they believe it forces the utilities to buy and sell wind and solar energy. And many other people are being misled by California-based developers and other businesses that are profiting handsomely off of PURPA to believe that without the 40-year-old policies, the utilities would forgo using renewables and just keep selling dirty power with no regard for the environment. If that were the case, I would not be for modernizing PURPA.

But the reality is, in places where PURPA is not imposed – states with deregulated energy markets that are designed to increase competition between energy providers – utilities are still using record amounts of energy from natural gas, wind, and solar. 

On the flip side, consider the state of North Carolina, where due to PURPA it is estimated that ratepayers there will pay more than $1 billion dollars in above market energy prices over the next decade. 

I hope Democrats won’t oppose PURPA reform, because doing so will just open us up to criticisms that we support higher electric bills. That is pretty unpopular, and no way to win elections in the politically moderate congressional districts we need to keep the House of Representatives and take back the White House in 2020. 

Worse, opposing PURPA reform won’t even ensure utilities use more clean energy. It would just perpetuate the false narrative that Democrats don’t care about average Americans, whose electrics bills are one of the biggest costs they face each month. We all should be in favor of policies that keep energy prices low, especially if it helps us avoid creating an issue that would just help to reelect Donald Trump. 

Ronnie Shows represented Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District from 1999 to 2003.

The idea that we could again become reliant on foreign energy resources, and allow turmoil in the Persian Gulf to influence global prices, should remind us that reducing oil imports is a matter of national security. Currently, Americans are protected from sudden supply disruptions thanks to the boom in U.S. shale production, which wouldn’t be possible without having had access to resource-rich areas for exploration and development. It is concerning, however, that there’s a clear disconnect between global market realities and attempts in the House of Representatives to curb domestic energy production.

As worldwide demand for U.S. oil and natural gas continues to grow, Congress is actively undermining American energy leadership. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that 108 billion barrels of oil and 390 trillion cubic feet of natural gas remain undiscovered in the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf and Alaskan coastal regions. Notably, the most promising areas for new exploration, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, are far off the U.S. coastline, where energy activities would not be visible or audible to coastal communities.

Today, there’s a growing demand for America’s energy resources, particularly from China.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2019 International Energy Outlook, China’s natural gas consumption is expected to increase nearly 190% between 2018-2050, and consumption of natural gas in India is forecast to increase more than 250% during this same time period. We would be remiss not to capitalize on our offshore resources for geopolitical and domestic development purposes.

Revenue from leasing contributes to our infrastructure modernization efforts, including upgrades to highways, port facilities, bridges and high-speed rail. Additionally, a portion of the revenue from offshore oil and natural gas development provides almost all the funding for preservation of public lands and waters under the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Developing our offshore natural resources is undoubtedly in our nation’s best interest. Our friends are doing it, as are our adversaries. Our Congress wants to metaphorically tie America’s arms behind its back while dozens of other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and Mexico, are actively pursuing oil and natural gas development in their adjacent coastal waters. In fact, worldwide natural gas output from offshore sources has risen by 50% since 2000.

Admittedly there have been accidents and mistakes made in the development history of extracting oil and gas, both on and off shore. But just as in other sectors—airplanes, trains, satellites, mining come to mind—the answer is not to shut it down.

The answer is to do it better and safer. With state-of-the-art technologies and standards, and the ongoing application of new equipment across the lifecycle of offshore projects, energy producers have enhanced worker safety and environmental sustainability during the last ten years. Similarly, regulatory frameworks and public-private cooperation have made huge strides in best practices.

It is just not the American way to stack arms and neglect interests so vital to our country’s future. We would be freezing in the dark had that been the attitude of our forbearers. Our custom is to show resolve and to learn from mistakes, do things better and make progress, not to impose draconian bans on activities deemed necessary to our future energy and national security. Our House of Representatives, with bi-partisan support, wants to put 84 percent of the coastal waters of the continental U.S. off limits to any future development, and to eliminate even seismic testing, which would at lease locate and quantify reservoirs.

This defies common sense and most Americans who are possessed with good common sense should be heard in opposition.

Sec. Jim Nicholson is National Co-Chair at Explore Offshore.

This fear-mongering falls apart under scrutiny. The proposed reform isn't a "rollback" of vital environmental safeguards, as Sen. Schumer and his allies on the Hill would have us believe. It simply streamlines existing rules, making it easier for oil and gas firms to protect the environment while boosting energy production.  

Methane is a colorless, odorless gas commonly found in underground energy reserves. If leaked into the atmosphere, it can trap heat and contribute to climate change. That's why both federal and state governments already regulate methane emissions. 

The EPA's draft rule modifies the 2016 New Source Performance Standards, which regulate emissions at natural gas plants, well sites, and transportation stations. 

The proposal streamlines federal rules with existing state regulations and cuts redundant requirements. For example, firms would no longer be required to directly regulate methane -- since NSPS restrictions on harmful gases called "volatile organic compounds" are designed to simultaneously tackle methane emissions.   

By easing pointless, redundant compliance burdens, the proposal would make it easier for energy firms to continue reducing methane emissions. 

Consider that between 1990 and 2017, domestic natural gas production increased by more than 50 percent. During that same period, methane emissions from natural gas operations actually decreased by 14 percent.  

Similarly, production spiked 100 percent in Texas' Permian basin between 2011 and 2017 and 130 percent in its Eagle Ford basin. At the same time, methane emissions dropped 40 and 70 percent, respectively.  

These extraordinary achievements weren't the result of bureaucracy or red tape. They stemmed from the private sector's efforts to make energy operations cleaner and safer.

Take the Environmental Partnership, a group of 65 energy firms committed to reducing methane emissions by leveraging the latest technology. During its first year, the partnership inspected 56 million parts on over 78,000 oil and gas sites. It also pioneered the use of optical gas imaging camera, which detect methane leaks using thermal imaging. Just last year, the partnership tapped researchers at Colorado State University to test new ways of deploying this technology.  

"Through its grant and promotional efforts, The Environmental Partnership has helped enhance our research into methane-sensing technologies and fostered important ties between researchers and producers," said Dan Zimmerle, a senior research associate at the university. 

Energy firms clearly take environmental responsibility seriously. They also have a financial incentive to reduce methane emissions. Methane is the main component of natural gas, the very product these energy firms try to harvest. Every cubic foot of methane that escapes into the atmosphere is a cubic foot that can't be sold for profit.

The frantic response to the new emissions proposal is nothing if not predictable. After all, the green movement has a stake in treating every new Trump administration environmental policy as an imminent threat to the future of our planet. 

But in the case of the EPA's commonsense methane proposal, the activists have overplayed their hand.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is a senior fellow on energy and the environment at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center.  

Energy analysts forecast that wind turbines in Texas will generate about 87,000 megawatt-hours of electricity next year, eclipsing the anticipated output from coal.  Coal power is falling in Texas and nationally, while wind power is on a rapid upward climb.  Wind power already supplies 20% of the Lone Star state’s power and it’s expected to reach 24% in 2020, second only to natural gas, while coal plants continue to close.

If you think those trends don’t come with a downside, think again.  The economy in Texas and nationally demands full-time electricity.  Wind only generates part-time electricity.  In West Texas this summer, on some hot and humid days it was so still there wasn’t enough of a breeze to stir a leaf.  Hundreds of wind turbines stopped spinning.  When the Texas grid needed wind power the most, it was nowhere to be found. The Texas electric power grid came perilously close to collapsing.  

Electricity prices spiked from their normal range of $20 to $30 per megawatt-hour to $9,000 not once but twice. The state teetered on the edge of rolling blackouts and no air conditioning for millions of families during triple digit temperatures. Operators of the Texas grid issued alert after alert asking consumers to turn off devices and conserve power. 

Texas is unlikely to be the only state that comes perilously close to electricity shortages.  Federal and state subsidies have made wind and solar power so cheap that they are displacing essential baseload sources of power that are capable of running when needed. Nationally, electricity production from coal continues to decline, falling by 15% in 2019 and another 9% projected in 2020. The very power plants that have long underpinned grid reliability are being pushed aside for sources of power that jeopardize it. 

All of this is ominous not only for Texas but also other parts of the country.  The rapid shift toward wind power is an opportunity for a reality check in the debate over the deployment of renewables, which benefit from federal tax credits and generous state mandates. 

According to the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, wind and solar power will have received $36.5 billion in federal tax credits between 2016 and 2020.  It’s an imposing number but it doesn’t even touch the subsidies provided for solar and wind at the state level.State renewable portfolio standards that mandate ever-increasing amounts of wind and solar power have been just as disruptive to electricity markets and perhaps even more costly.

It brings into sharp focus the most urgent challenge: How will the United States scale back the use of fossil fuels, yet maintain an adequate energy supply?  Are renewables ready to fill the gap alone?  Can wind and solar power be advanced fast enough and of sufficient scale, given that energy consumption is expected to grow over the next 30 years.  For all the investment in wind and solar, despite all of the billions in subsidies, their limitations remain immense.  The United States and the rest of the world will continue to rely on traditional sources of power for decades as populations grow, economies expand and living standards rise.

The current path forward that ignores the need for a balanced mix of energy sources is a road to nowhere.

Instead of indifference, we need to regain our balance and encourage investment in advanced energy technology of all kinds – coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and renewables, along with improvements in energy efficiency – if we hope to avoid future havoc in electricity markets and ensure the availability of reliable and affordable power.

Matthew Kandrach is President of CASE, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free-market oriented consumer advocacy organization.

Some US government officials are pressuring American businesses to pull out of Venezuela in the noble effort to oust the murderous and illegitimate regime of “President” Nicolas Maduro. But in the case of US energy companies, we should think twice. The reason is simple: China is ready with plentiful cash and expertise to move in as our petroleum companies move out. Russia and Cuba are also ready to pounce. Do we really want Beijing, Moscow and Havana to get their hands on Venezuela’s oil resources? Once we leave, we’ll be in a very difficult position to get back in.

As Ken Blackwell, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, recently said, “If American energy companies are forced to cease operations and forfeit billions in equipment and other assets…the Russians [and the Chinese] will simply move in to take control – and bolster Maduro.”

Most Americans don’t realize how significant Venezuela is to America’s energy production, nor do most of us appreciate our long-established history with this now-troubled country. The partnership between the United States and Venezuela’s critical energy industry is vital to protecting America’s energy security.

Venezuela controls oil reserves containing more than 300 billion barrels, the largest oil fields in the world. American energy companies have worked in partnership with the country for decades, helping to build and maintain Venezuela’s energy industry.

A good portion of Venezuela’s production is regularly exported to the United States. Oil production, however, has significantly dropped over the past several years because of the country’s economic and social collapse. Still, the oil reserves of Venezuela represent the country’s best chance for recovery and renewed prosperity – if the United States maintains its presence there.

President Donald Trump recently granted temporary waivers allowing American energy companies to continue operations in Venezuela. This temporary waiver should be extended for the foreseeable future so America’s presence in Venezuela remains strong positions us to help a new democratic government enact free-market reforms.

Allowing hostile foreign countries the chance to establish more of a foothold in Venezuela and to tap 300-plus billion barrels of oil places America’s energy security at high risk. To prevent competing nations from moving in and taking control of Venezuela’s energy industry, it’s imperative President Trump let American energy companies continue day-to-day operations indefinitely.

America has a relationship with Venezuela dating back to the 1920s. Key American industries, like energy, should remain in place to act as a stabilizing force with a new government, and to help restore a region devastated by decades of failed socialist governance and brutal dictators.

Venezuela’s socialist government has descended into complete chaos. Legitimate businesses and industrial operations are disappearing as violent drug cartels, communist paramilitary groups and other criminal factions now control large swaths of the country.

If America pulls out, we would likely watch the country further deteriorate and see millions of people succumb to the criminal forces and corrupt government officials who have absolutely no regard for human rights.

After years of price controls and socialist mismanagement, citizens struggle to buy basic food items. Seventy-five percent of residents say they don’t receive water regularly; many hospitals lack basic supplies – disinfectants, medicine and ultrasound machines. The murder rate has spiked to 15 times the global average.

As expatriate Daniel DiMartino says, “The average person is malnourished, and the poorest are forced to choose between walking thousands of miles to Columbia or staying in their home country and starving.” Millions of citizens have been forced to flee.

The bottom line couldn’t be starker: Removing America’s presence in the country would offer hostile nations control of a vast global energy asset as well as give unfriendly nations a decisive strategic advantage over the United States. If America leaves Venezuela, we imperil our national security and, in the vacuum, a far more volatile global energy landscape emerges.

 Steve Forbes is chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and is host of the new podcast “Steve Forbes: What’s Ahead.”

As if Hollywood and Silicon Valley don’t dictate enough of what you see, hear and do, consider how the fringe sensibilities of California regulators also determine what you drive. The growing dispute over air-pollution standards between the Trump administration, and a handful of automakers plus the State of California, underscores the fact that California remains in the driver's seat for determining how all Americans must live in response to its environmental alarmism.

Four automotive manufacturers recently decided to bow to California’s unyielding demands for technologically unattainable higher thresholds for fuel economy and emissions even though the Trump administration has lowered federal expectations.  In what at first appears to be either a case of corporate Stockholm syndrome or an attempt to claim the environmental moral high ground, the companies—Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen—are rejecting the lowered federal threshold federal standard in favor of the much more stringent California standards.

So while American car buyers clearly have indicated with their wallets that they overwhelmingly continue to favor gasoline-powered vehicles, and just as clearly have disdained all-electric vehicles that remain more expensive despite massive federal tax incentives, California’s demand for higher future targets actually represents a confiscation of consumers’ rights to make those decisions.

Automakers have been canning the thought of continuing to manufacture gas-powered sedans. The manufacturers are pinioned between consumer demand for larger, higher-horsepower sports cars, spacious SUVs and pickup trucks, and regulators who demand that they produce all-electric models at a frenetic pace. Despite the government’s attempt to define the vehicles that Americans want to buy, the demand for larger combustion-engine vehicles has never been stronger. As the pressures mount on consumers to buy electric vehicles, blame California.

So how is it that California has the four automakers willing to say “uncle” to the more-stringent fuel-economy standards? The four did not break ranks with the other manufacturers just to buy themselves some regulatory certainty, as has been intimated; the lower federal emission and fuel economy standards proposed by President Trump would give them that.

Instead, the four renegade companies are dumping industry unity to protect their own massive investments in playing the complex regulatory game better than their competitors. It is a classic example of form becoming more important than substance.  Somewhere along the way, it no longer was simply about building the best vehicles they could, and what consumers want to buy, but rather earning a score on a regulator’s scorecard.

So far, other automakers haven’t gone along with their four rivals’ unprecedented move of buckling under to the iron-fisted power of the climate-change coterie in California. But the industry’s fractured approach to regulatory compliance must get resolved. The industry must soon coalesce around either the relaxed Trump administration rules or the draconian California for all standard.

Right on cue, attorneys general in 22 other states already have followed the Pied Piper’s tune and also have sued to stop the Trump administration from revoking the authority of California to set emissions standards for cars and trucks sold in their states as well.

They might as well all just break out a tune that the rock group The Dead Kennedys released in 1978, clearly seeing even then the dark impulses of California’s repressive apparatus that is now trying to maintain its grip on the rest of America, too.

“I will be Fuhrer one day,” the lyrics say in the voice of then-California Gov. Jerry Brown. “I will command all of you. Your kids will meditate in school. Your kids will meditate in school. California Uber Alles.”

Robert Norton is general counsel of Hillsdale College and a former top-level legal executive of automakers and major automotive suppliers. 

Of course, most environmental groups don’t oppose sustainable forestry. Unfortunately, however, this is the absurd path being taken today by a small group of anti-forestry activist groups. They are aiming their fire at a critical tool to reduce carbon emissions and are spending millions to advance policies that would benefit the coal industry and shrink forests, our greatest carbon sink.

One of the technologies they’re attacking is wood biomass, which today is changing the energy landscape in the United Kingdom, European Union and Asia.

Wood biomass is a low-carbon, renewable energy source that comes from one of America’s most plentiful and stable resources – our working forests. It’s made from the byproducts of the timber industry, such as lower-value trees and parts of trees including tops and limbs that have no other market. 

Experts with the University of Illinois have found that wood biomass produces between 74 and 85 percent fewer carbon emissions than coal. In fact, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost scientific body on climate science, has consistently recognized wood biomass as a necessary component of any strategy to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, a number longtime opponents of logging and the forest products industry, including the Asheville, North Carolina-based Dogwood Alliance, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Environmental Integrity Project, and the Portland, Oregon-based Center for Sustainable Economy have launched a coordinated, well-funded attack to try and put wood biomass out of business.

The practical impact of these activists’ efforts is that private landowners will no longer see market incentive to keep their forests maintained, and could instead convert to more carbon-intensive uses like agriculture, or bulldoze for development, leaving forest land permanently destroyed. 

Today, countries like the U.K. are actively replacing millions of tons of coal with biomass in existing power plants. In June 2018, for instance, less than 1 percent of electricity in the U.K. came from coal, thanks in large part to the replacement of coal with biomass. There are now entire weeks when the U.K. no longer uses coal for power.  If these activists had their wish, all of that coal being replaced would still be burned and all of those carbon savings would be lost.

America’s forests today are growing, not shrinking, and this is happening not in spite of wood biomass, but because of it. Private landowners are key to protecting America’s forests, because as the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes, more than half of America’s forests are privately owned. Landowners face many choices about what to do with their land.

Should they clear it for development? Should they have a farm, grow corn or raise cattle? Or should they get paid to plant trees? In terms of combating the climate crisis, planting trees is the best thing landowners could do. Wood biomass, along with other sustainable forest products, create the incentives for landowners to sustainably manage and grow their forests. 

In fact, the IPCC’s major 2019 report on climate change and land specifically highlighted that a “sustainable forest management strategy” aimed at producing “energy from the forest” will “generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit” for combating climate change. 

 So let’s be clear: When so-called environmental groups attack wood biomass, they’re putting their own ideological opposition to forestry above the international scientific consensus, as represented by the IPCC. They’re doing everything they’ve spent decades condemning their opponents for – rejecting sound science, pushing policies that reduce access to renewable technologies, and worsening climate change. We can’t let that happen. 

Brian Rogers is spokesman for Future Forests + Jobs, an initiative sponsored by the wood energy industry. He previously served as Communications Director for U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ).

Higher-ethanol fuels can cause engine damage for vehicles that aren’t designed for it, and most vehicles aren’t. Nearly 70 percent of vehicles on the road today were not designed to run on fuel with 15 percent ethanol volume, known as E15. Using it can void warranties and require costly repairs. Plus, it’s less energy dense than ethanol-free gasoline, requiring more frequent fill-ups. That’s why the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which mandates yearly ethanol quotas, is so bad for consumers.

But regulators have options to protect consumers. And, until now, the Trump administration has largely done a good job exercising them.

Although the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) yearly biofuel requirements have mandated increased ethanol volumes, the agency has stopped short of raising levels high enough to bring about problems associated with E15. It’s a sensible approach not only because most vehicles aren’t ready for E15 but also because most of our gas station infrastructure isn’t either.

But producers of corn-based ethanol are pushing back – calling on regulators to force more ethanol into the fuel supply whether consumers want it or not.

The latest target of the corn lobby’s ire is the Trump administration’s decision to exempt small refineries suffering hardship from obligations to comply with the costly mandate. Under the RFS, refiners must either blend biofuels like ethanol into gasoline or purchase credits – known as Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) – to demonstrate compliance. Removing these exemptions could put upward pressure on RIN prices – potentially increasing costs for small and large refiners alike and diverting resources away from investments in upgrades or maintenance projects that employ a largely unionized workforce.

But now the White House is signaling it may backtrack on a policy that is good for drivers, construction workers, refiners and gas stations – the vast majority of which are independently owned small businesses. All because the ethanol industry is dissatisfied. The ethanol industry says the administration’s current approach decreases ethanol demand. It is simply not true.

Statistics from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) show ethanol consumption has remained steady since the first waivers went into effect in 2016. That tracks with research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, which recently published research showing “there is little if any evidence that the blend rate for ethanol has been reduced by [Small Refinery Exemptions].”

Even though there’s no evidence the waivers are hurting ethanol consumption, President Trump seems poised to comply with the ethanol lobby’s demands. Media reports indicate the administration plans to mandate an additional 500 million gallons of corn-based ethanol in 2020 while keeping the small refinery exemptions in place.

These additional volumes would be a mistake. Last year alone, refiners imported hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel to meet these mandates, displacing U.S.-produced gasoline and diesel. Artificially increasing the mandates yet again will do nothing more than increase costs on U.S. manufacturing while increasing incentives for more imports.

It also represents a departure from the balanced approach the administration seeks on ethanol policy. There’s no good way to implement a policy as flawed and outdated as the RFS – which was designed to cut energy imports during a decade of energy scarcity, and never revised to reflect our new position as the world’s leading oil and natural gas producer, and major energy exporter. But at least the status quo is the classic DC middle ground, where none of the energy or corn industry stakeholders are entirely happy, but at least consumers are largely unscathed. That may no longer be the case in 2020.

For Washington scorekeepers, the ethanol conversation is all about politics. Pundits have little doubt the decision is designed to satisfy politically significant corn states. With union support the highest in 50 years, let’s hope the White House changes course and puts consumers and the thousands hardworking Americans employed by refineries at the center of ethanol policy.

Mike Sommers is president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. Sean McGarvey is president of North America’s Building Trades Unions. Chet Thompson is president and CEO of the American Fuels and Petrochemicals Manufacturers.

This week the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on legislation that would permanently ban any future offshore oil and natural gas activity in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Outer Continental Shelf of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  If successful, these measures could strongly affect future oil and natural gas production at a time when technology and government cooperation have dramatically improved every aspect of the industry.  

The Gulf of Mexico remains a prime resource for oil and gas, currently providing 16 percent of all domestic oil production.  Local revenue sharing from these activities provides major economic benefits to neighboring states, particularly Louisiana.  Permanently restricting activity in the Eastern Gulf will take both oil and revenues off the table, and will not deter future offshore development activities further to the south, by Mexico. 

Banning all future activities many miles offshore in the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would preclude even the most careful exploration using sophisticated technology. It is difficult for most Americans to believe that ninety four percent of our offshore federal acreage is today off limits to oil and gas exploration and development. Yet our neighbors are already aggressively pursuing and benefitting from the Gulf.

These proposed restrictions are taking place at a time when offshore exploration and production is expanding around the globe. Nearly 30 percent of global crude oil output now comes from offshore production.  Natural gas output from offshore has risen by 50 percent since the year 2000.  China and Russia are exploring in the Arctic.  Saudi Arabia and Norway remain highly active.  Mexico is rapidly expanding its own activities in the Gulf, including a recent lease for exploration by China.  Brazil has become a global leader in deepwater production.  

These early votes in the House are about more than offshore exploration.  They comprise the opening salvoes of the 2020 election process.  From presidential candidates to those running for Congress, the national leadership of the Democratic Party has signaled that its top political issue in 2020 will be climate change, including proposals for a dramatic restructuring of America’s energy policies, practices and infrastructure.

The Democratic majority in the House and most of that Party’s presidential candidates are simply not interested in stopping future offshore oil exploration and extraction.  Their clear objective is to eliminate all fossil fuels, as soon as possible.  We are seeing proposals to spend trillions of dollars toward the elimination of all fossil fuels within the next decade, to be replaced through vaguely worded policies designed to bring about unbounded amounts of alternate energy that, frankly, do not yet exist. 

As one example, candidate Kamala Harris recently released her “10 Trillion Dollar Climate Change Plan,” which at bottom would “require the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions roughly 50 percent by 2030 and reach net zero global emissions by 2050.” Terming the United States “the largest single greenhouse gas emitter in history,” she offers “a bold target to exceed the Paris Agreement climate goals and achieve a clean economy by 2045, investing $10 trillion in public and private funding to meet the initial 10-year mobilization.  By 2030 we will run on 100 percent carbon neutral electricity, all new buses, heavy duty vehicles, and vehicle fleets will be zero emission.  All new buildings will be carbon-neutral.”

Let’s talk about today.  The issue of climate change is indeed global, and other countries must be encouraged to do their part.  Here in the United States, CO2 emissions are at their lowest levels in a generation, thanks to the increased use of natural gas and cleaner fuels, evidence that energy and climate progress can coexist. A recent report by Air Visual indicated that 47 of the 50 most polluted cities in the world are in either India or China.  Fortune Magazine notes that China is theworld’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, and by far the world’s heaviest user of coal.  Politicians who want to bring about responsible global behaviors in such areas should be advertising the dramatic technological, safety and environmental improvements the U.S. has made.  We are a role model for countries such as China to follow.

In the actual world of energy production the reality is that while an “all-of-the-above” energy approach – including renewables – is important, natural gas and oil are going to be essential for at least the next few decades.  Oil and natural gas currently supply 67 percent of the energy used in our nation, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration is projecting consumption to grow over the next 30 years. The U.S. continues to import oil daily, as we are only utilizing a very small amount of our vast potential offshore energy resources.

Government projections show that even under optimistic scenarios for renewables, natural gas and oil will supply about 60 percent of U.S. energy needs in 2040.  And in a global marketplace, where economies are expanding, and living standards are increasing, the demand for gas and oil in developing countries is growing.  Current projections are that global demand for oil consumption will grow by over 10% by 2040, and demand for natural gas will increase by over 40 percent. Natural gas is projected to increase by 43%.

As our country shifts toward clean energy, it is important that we do so in a manner that does not impact our economic and national security.  We are now the world’s leading refiner and producer of oil and natural gas.  This not only provides good jobs and strong growth in our communities but also guarantees that our economy is safer from foreign manipulation and our national security is less likely to be intimidated by potential adversaries. 

Americans should think hard about whether such draconian restrictions are needed, and what our economic and national security costs might be if we fail to take advantage of energy resources that are under our own jurisdiction.  We benefit every day from the strength of our energy sector, buttressing the health of our economy and national security in a world of frequent turmoil. 

All Americans should be concerned with political leaders who are willing to take a known and valuable energy resource off the table when we can work cooperatively and safely to ensure our future energy needs are met and our national security is not at risk. Why should we tie our own hands behind our back?

Jim Webb is Former Secretary of the Navy and former Democratic Virginia Senator. Jim Nicholson is Former Secretary of Veterans Affairs and Former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. They are National Chairs of Explore Offshore.

We’re warned in ever more strident terms that we must act now or in 12 years (or 10 years or 18 months) there will be devastating consequences. That’s the message of the G-7 as it met in Biarritz, France, and it’s the message of every Democratic presidential hopeful who will meet in Houston for a debate in September.

One of those candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, unveiled his answer to the looming disaster last month. His version of the Green New Deal will cost 16.3 trillion dollars. 

Under his plan, the government would control energy production and distribution, relying solely on wind, solar and other ‘renewable’ energy sources. (Imagine having to call the federal government because your power is out, only to hear a message that your expected hold time is over an hour long).

It calls for subsidizing consumers’ switch to electric vehicles, and it even calls for replacing every diesel school bus in America with an electric bus. 

Sanders’ deal is enormous in scope, but like all others, it fails to address a very real and urgent problem—energy poverty.

Energy poverty occurs when low-income families and individuals can’t afford basic heating and electric needs due to high energy prices. And while energy poverty has no color, it disproportionately impacts minority, low-income and rural communities the most. 

In a report done by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy and the Energy Efficiency for All coalition found that low-income households devote up to three times as much income to energy costs as do other, higher income households. Expensive energy costs are a burden to people who already struggle to make ends meet each month.

We should all be good stewards of the environment and do our best to protect it. But we also need a sensible approach to our energy needs and that will come from fossil fuels, specifically natural gas, which is the future in U.S. and global electricity production. 

Regardless of what the supposed climate change experts claim, the reality is that since 1970 America has reduced the six key harmful pollutants by 73% while still growing our GDP by 262%, population by 59%, miles traveled by 189% and energy use by 44%. Those are great numbers by any standard, and in 2017, Americans spent $300 billion less on energy than ten years before, meaning they have more to invest in their families, kids’ education, communities and favorite charities.

But for America to continue this economic growth, we must continue to pursue energy independence, allowing us more stability and power in trade negotiations as we rely less on hostile and unstable nations. Through our leadership in energy production and environmental protection, the United States is in a position to help lift billions in developing nations out of poverty and sickness by exporting our natural resources—along with pollution control technology.

Right now, the United States produces more oil and natural gas and holds more recoverable coal than any other nation, and we are continually increasing our reserves thanks to scientific advancements. There is no reason anyone should be without affordable energy.

We don’t have to accept less. We’ve experienced economic freedom and a better quality of life because of our abundance of affordable, reliable energy resources. And with that abundance, we can promote human health, combat energy poverty and improve the quality of life for all people regardless of where they live.

Derrick Hollie is president of Reaching America and host of Reaching America on Demand podcast. The organization addresses complex social issues impacting African-American communities.

The move would decrease demand for corn and therefore enraged corn farmers. Now, President Trump is reportedly looking at rescinding some of the exemptions, or making other concessions, to appease the corn lobby. 

That'd be a mistake. Blending corn-based ethanol into our gasoline no longer improves national security, and environmentalists increasingly agree it’s not environmentally friendly. 

Besides, President Trump already took steps to placate the corn lobby last May.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 phased out ethanol subsidies but established a Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires refiners to blend a specific amount of ethanol into gasoline and diesel fuel.  A 2007 law increased the amount of ethanol that must be blended in each year.  

While about 98 percent of gasoline sold in the United States includes some ethanol, most of it is capped at about 10 percent, or E10. But the ethanol industry wants that blend level bumped to 15 percent. 

Gas containing 15 percent ethanol has been available to consumers since about 2005, but the EPA traditionally banned it during summer months because of concerns it increases smog levels.  

In addition to harming air quality, E15 can harm older car engines and boat motors.   

Nevertheless, on May 31, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced that the agency "would remove the key regulatory barrier" keeping E15 from being sold year-round. 

The ethanol industry cheered. Growth Energy, a leading ethanol lobbyist, expects the EPA's recent E15 ruling to increase ethanol demand by more than a billion gallons over the next five years. 

But the elation didn't last long. The EPA recently announced it would grant 31 out of 40 ethanol-blending exemption requests from small refineries.   

Small refineries -- which produce less than 75,000 barrels of oil a day -- typically don't blend ethanol into gasoline themselves. Instead, they buy a type of credit, referred to as renewable identification numbers, from large refineries that do.  

The RIN market has become opaque and lucrative, with hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands. The waivers the EPA just granted allow these small refiners to forego purchasing the credits. 

Given that the vast majority of ethanol is made from corn, farmers were livid. As Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley put it, "They screwed us . . . when they issued 31 waivers."  Sen. Grassley claims there were only 10 waivers granted during Obama's eight years in office. 

But the EPA did the right thing. 

Ethanol once offered the United States a way to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. But today, America leads the world in oil and natural gas production. We've already beat out competitors like Russia and Saudi Arabia.  And just last year, the United States became a net exporter of oil for the first time in 75 years.  

In other words, the need for a gasoline substitute has largely vanished.

But that’s not all. Ethanol has become the epitome of the Washington "swamp," with various interest groups vying for political influence and concessions.

Some level of ethanol would likely still be blended into gasoline even without the Renewable Fuel Standard mandate because it raises octane levels. But that’s something consumers and manufacturers, not politicians, should decide. 

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews. 

The remaining Democratic contenders agree on a lot. They accept the consensus of scientists that emissions from human activities are warming the planet. They also acknowledge that we are already witnessing the ability of climate change to disrupt life as we have known it, with the future likelihood that things are going to get a lot worse.

With the more generous time allowed in a forum, the candidates will have an opportunity to tell us what they plan to do about the problem in more than short sound bites.

The single most important goal for dealing with climate change is scaling up affordable alternatives to fossil fuels at a pace of technological change unprecedented in human history.

In a time when pessimism is well justified by the slow pace of the world’s governments (and particularly the current U.S. government) in tackling climate change, the ongoing development of cost-effective solar and wind power provides hope for doing much better in the coming decades. A big dent in the climate problem can come from accelerating the penetration of these renewable resources, combined with the rapid electrification of the transportation sector.

To elevate the political discussion about optimal climate strategies, all candidates and voters who believe climate is a priority should read Gregory Nemet’s How Solar Energy Became Cheap. This new book can be a bit ponderous. But the research is thorough, and its wide-ranging connecting of the dots helps provide clear answers to the title question.

First, Nemet demonstrates that the progress made in making photovoltaic (solar) cells competitive in energy markets has depended on international sharing of knowledge and supply chains. At various times, the United States, Japan, Germany, Australia, and China have made valuable contributions to making solar energy cheap, but none has done so in a sustained way over a long period of time. Fortunately, learning migrated across international borders. The collective result of these piece-meal efforts has been the (albeit unnecessarily slow) development of a technology that can provide substantial amounts of carbon-free energy at prices we can afford.

Second, the University of Wisconsin professor shows the important roles of both governments and private corporations. Government can take a longer view than business. It can fund (in the early days with the help of the old Bell Labs) basic research that doesn’t have quick paybacks; it can provide incentives or requirements to get new technologies into markets; and it can accelerate the learning curve essential to technological progress. Companies, big and small, can then run with the ball, competing to find additional ways to increase efficiency and reduce the costs of once exotic suppliers of energy like wind and solar.

If Nemet is right (and I think he is), we should be wary of candidates who base their campaigns on bashing international trade and big corporations. Slowing climate change requires the world’s nations to progress somewhat in tandem, and international trade contributes to that.

Candidates should also note that many major corporations have, at times, displayed more responsible behavior on climate than has the U.S. government. Witness the recent move by Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW to defy Washington on mileage efficiency standards. Some of this may be “green washing,” and we certainly need aggressive government regulation and tax policy. But, if we are going to achieve results on climate, many major corporations will have to (and can be) be allies, not foes.

Climate activists are right to raise issues of equity as we search for the best ways to slow global warming. Taxes or regulations that raise energy prices have a regressive effect that penalizes people with low incomes, so this unintended consequence should be offset by per capita rebates.

On the whole, good climate policy will have positive impacts on those with low incomes. Around the world, the poor have less ability to adapt to rising sea levels, arid soils, and other impacts of a changing climate. In this country, dirty energy production is often located where poor neighbors have limited ability to resist.

Thus, protecting the atmosphere by moving to a clean energy future does not need to be paired with a socialist agenda to provide benefits across all income levels.

The scheduling of the climate forums suggests a seriousness about the issue that was not evident in 2016, when the televised debates did not provide much opportunity to have an enlightened discussion about the climate options available. During the primaries, television networks raised the climate issue but focused on aspects that were most likely to provoke a fight rather than those that would have the greatest impact on the actual accumulation of greenhouse gases.

In the fall of 2016, debate moderators (with the exception of Chris Wallace at Fox News) did not see climate policy as a significant differentiator between the major party nominees. Nor did some climate activists who made the Green Party’s Jill Stein their top choice. For television, Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s crude comments to Billy Bush seemed to have greater consequence for the planet than climate change. Perhaps this year we will see substantial improvements in the quality of the dialogue.

Voters in this cycle can watch town halls, visit candidate web sites, study the climate plans, and ask whether candidates: 

·      Identify policies and technologies that have already achieved some success (e.g. mileage efficiency standards and state-level renewable portfolio standards) and suggest ways to make them work better and faster. Recognizing that we are not starting from scratch would help them implement major parts of their programs right away (without an autocratic use of emergency powers that are legally suspect).

• Recognize that carbon dioxide is a global pollutant that remains in the atmosphere for over a century and requires more than reviving old tactics that have worked for other environmental challenges.
• Avoid the trap of demanding that climate policy solve all of our nation’s ills.
• Understand that solutions must be in international and that this requires a lot more than just rejoining the Paris climate agreement.

The candidates tonight should lay out the steps of how they can achieve their ambitious goals. They need to show us that they understand the science, the needed technologies and the politics of the climate challenge.

Jay Hakes is the author of A Declaration of Energy Independence and is currently working on a book about the history of the climate debate in America.

This article explains why I believe fatalism is the only rational approach.

In the great climate change debate, one fact is crystal clear. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, or CO2, have climbed at increasing rates since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the trends show no signs of moderating. We’ve all seen hockey stick graphs and read strident warnings from NGOs, research scientists and politicians predicting catastrophic AGW in the front half of this century. We’ve also seen equally strident rebuttals from skeptics who insist that the computer models are flawed and temperature data has been massaged to a point that any apparent correlation is meaningless.

Frankly, I don’t care whether computer models are flawed or the temperature data is accurate because debating those issues diverts attention from more fundamental questions:

1. What is the root cause of increasing global CO₂ emissions?
2. Is there a meaningful chance that energy substitution schemes involving electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines could arrest emissions trends in a matter of decades?
3. How many of us are willing to become latter-day ascetics, sacrifice our high-quality energy-rich lifestyle, and embrace a simpler life of low-carbon energy poverty?

While alarmists tend to blame CO2 emissions on the industrialized west, big oil and evil coal companies, the simple reality is global population quadrupled in the last hundred years, and that mass of humanity is generating more CO2 than our planet’s natural systems can process.

My first graph summarizes population and carbon emissions growth from 1800 through 2014. The population estimates come from Our World in Data, an open-access portal curated at Oxford. The CO2 emissions estimates come from the CAIT Climate Data Explorer. In the graph, both vertical scales use 1800 values as the baseline and 2014 values as the upper limit.

Global population and CO2 emissions have been increasing in tandem.

CAIT Climate Data Explorer

The visual fit is strikingly obvious, but the 0.9942 Coefficient of Correlation is irrefutable proof that population growth has been the main driver of CO2 emissions for as long as humans have understood that abundant energy drives sustained gains in health, wealth and quality of life.

Let’s focus on the graph for a minute. There was a sharp uptick in emissions between 1886 and 1916 when oil emerged as a cost-effective fuel for heat and transportation. There was a more pronounced uptick from 1945 to 1978 as the world got peaceful and industrialization in North America, Europe, and Japan soared. Emissions growth moderated from 1979 through 1999 as oil price shocks made conservation economically compelling. Since 2000, emissions have grown at a blistering pace as China and other less-developed countries transitioned from agrarian to industrial economies.

While few dare to speak the truth above a whisper, carbon emissions aren’t climbing because of human activity in industrialized economies. They’re climbing because billions of people in less-developed countries are increasing their use of hydrocarbons as they claw their way out of poverty. My second graph offers a visual summary of CO2 emissions growth in G-8 Countries, China, India, and the Rest of the World since the Kyoto Protocols were adopted in 1997.

Emissions continue to rise for CO2, despite Western pledges of reductions.

WRI

The following table highlights selected data from the spreadsheet I used to create the graph.

Emissions have been rising in the still developing world.

WRI

While the G-8 Countries reduced their collective CO2 footprint by 2%, China, India, and the Rest of the World grew emissions at rates of 227%, 162% and 44%, respectively. Even if the G-8 Countries had eliminated their CO2 emissions, global CO2 emissions would have climbed.

The unpleasant but self-evident reality is that industrialized countries can’t unilaterally take any effective steps to offset emissions growth in less-developed countries. No matter what the plan is, it will be too little and too late. An equally obvious reality is that reducing hydrocarbon use in industrialized economies will increase supplies in less-developed countries where a rational human being who has a choice between freezing in the dark or increasing his carbon footprint will pick his comfort over some meddlesome foreigner’s AGW theories.

The common thread in all CO₂ emissions reduction schemes is manufacturing machines that replace superior energy resources with inferior resources. Since alternatives are always more costly, the promoter’s playbook never changes – demonize the superior energy resource with half-truths and pseudo-science to justify higher costs. All-time favorites include:

• Protecting the planet’s oil resources from imminent and catastrophic depletion;
• Protecting consumers from greedy oil companies, oligarchs and foreign despots;
• Protecting the planet’s atmosphere by reducing CO₂ emissions in wealthy countries;
• Promoting energy independence through natural resource diversity; and
• Rationalizing the massive front-end natural resource costs with the magic incantation, “recycling,” which is far easier to say than it is to do.

The vision of electric cars propelled by free power from the wind and sun is beyond alluring. It’s a classic free lunch fairy tale, and those never end well. While politicians, ideologues, stock promoters, and other dreamers promise utopia, their solutions are snake-oil; devoid of technical and economic merit because they cannot be implemented at a relevant scale in a meaningful timeframe.

Last year the human population of our planet consumed 11.7 billion tonnes of hydrocarbons, 1.8 billion tonnes of steel and 107 million tonnes of non-ferrous metals. For critical technology metals like rare earths, cobalt, and lithium, annual production rates of less than 200,000 tonnes were the rule. There are no massive stockpiles of unused metals, and it’s absurd to suggest that humanity can find enough slop in 1.9 billion tonnes of annual metal production to make a dent in 11.7 billion tonnes of annual hydrocarbon consumption.

It’s also absurd to suggest that we can mine our way out of the dilemma. Humanity has been mining useful metals for centuries, and readily accessible high-grade mineral deposits are fully-depleted. At present, it takes a decade and hundreds of millions in capital spending to complete a major mine expansion. It can take up to 40 years and billions in capital spending to develop a greenfield mine. While the oil industry has a long history of development in godforsaken places like the Arctic Circle and deep water, mining is almost always conducted on dry land, meaning that some 70% of potentially mineable resources may be beyond our reach.

I believe the notion that individuals in wealthy countries can change anything by putting an electric car in their garage and solar panels on their roof is a colossal fraud. Buyers can make themselves feel virtuous, but their senseless symbolism can’t make a difference on a planetary scale. It’s like trying to fight a hurricane with Depends.

In a world where 1 billion people want to continue consuming at current rates, and 6.7 billion want to increase their consumption, supplies of all natural-resources are constrained. We pay the most attention to oil because most of us buy minimally processed petroleum products several times a month, but the great challenge of our age will be overcoming persistent global shortages of water, food, energy and every commodity you can imagine.

Humanity is long past the point where we can find and develop enough new natural resources to solve the supply problem. Whether we like it or not, humanity’s only remaining option is to eliminate waste in all its pernicious forms; beginning with wasteful renewables.

If the dire warnings of AGW alarmists are correct, a topic where I scrupulously avoid expressing an opinion, then humanity is in for a tough time, and Mother Nature will do as she’s always done when populations in a particular species grow beyond sustainable limits. She will ruthlessly cull the human herd until balance is restored. While most will find the cull distinctly unpleasant and none of us will have an exemption, humanity will either evolve and adapt or it will face extinction, just like every other apex species in the history of the planet.

Do you ever wonder how AGW alarmists can rail against humanity’s catastrophic impact on nature while cowering in terror over nature’s defense mechanisms?

John Petersen is an Attorney based in Houston, Texas. His email is jlp@ipo-law.com. 

In January 2005, NOAA began recording temperatures at its newly built U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). USCRN includes 114 pristinely maintained temperature stations spaced relatively uniformly across the lower 48 states. NOAA selected locations that were far away from urban and land-development impacts that might artificially taint temperature readings.

Prior to the USCRN going online, alarmists and skeptics sparred over the accuracy of reported temperature data. With most preexisting temperature stations located in or near urban settings that are subject to false temperature signals and create their own microclimates that change over time, government officials performed many often-controversial adjustments to the raw temperature data. Skeptics of an asserted climate crisis pointed out that most of the reported warming in the United States was non-existent in the raw temperature data, but was added to the record by government officials. 

The USCRN has eliminated the need to rely on, and adjust the data from, outdated temperature stations. Strikingly, as shown in the graph below, USCRN temperature stations show no warming since 2005 when the network went online. If anything, U.S. temperatures are now slightly cooler than they were 14 years ago.

Temperature readings from 2005 (far left) to the present (far right) show absolutely no warming.

NOAA USCRN; Watts

Climate activists frequently visit or mention particular regions, states, or places in the United States and claim warming impacts are evident, accelerating, and unmistakable. Yet how can that be when there has been no warming in the United States since at least 2005?

Unfortunately, when politicians and climate activists claim they can see the impacts of climate change in a particular place, the media rarely question them on it and tend to accept the claims at face value. But the objective temperature data show no recent warming has occurred. 

There is also good reason to believe U.S. temperatures have not warmed at all since the 1930s. Raw temperature readings at the preexisting stations indicate temperatures are the same now as 80 years ago. All of the asserted U.S. warming since 1930 is the product of the controversial adjustments made to the raw data. Skeptics point out that as the American population has grown, so has the artificial warming signal generated by growing cities, more asphalt, more automobiles, and more machinery.

If anything, the raw temperature readings should be adjusted downward today relative to past temperatures (or past temperatures adjusted upward in comparison to present temperatures) rather than the other way around. If raw temperature readings are the same today as they were 80 years ago, when there were fewer artificial factors spuriously raising temperature readings, then U.S. temperatures today may actually be cooler than they were in the early 20th century.

The lack of warming in the United States during the past 14 years is not too different from satellite-measured global trends. Globally, satellite instruments report temperatures have risen merely 0.15 degrees Celsius since 2005, which is less than half the pace predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models. 

Climate crisis advocates attempt to dismiss the minor satellite-measured warming by utilizing ground temperature stations around the globe, which tend to have even more corrupting biases and problems than the old U.S. stations. Of course, they adjust those readings, as well. Perhaps the time has come for American officials to direct some of the billions of dollars spent each year on climate-research and climate-change programs to building and maintaining a global Climate Reference Network.

Either way, it is becoming increasingly difficult for American politicians and climate activists to say they can see the effects of warming temperatures in the United States. For at least the past 14 years, there have been no such warming temperatures.

James Taylor (JTaylor@heartland.org) is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Indeed, natural gas this year will supply nearly 40% of U.S. power, about double what it provided before the shale revolution. Gas is also the backup fuel to compensate for the natural intermittency of wind and solar power: gas is needed for when "the wind is blowing" and "the sun isn’t shining." The U.S. is now reducing its CO2 emissions faster than any country on Earth: "Thanks to Natural Gas, US CO2 Emissions Lowest Since 1985."

Looking forward, a rapidly expanding U.S. natural gas export business (via LNG) will offer more affordable, more flexible, more reliable, and cleaner natural gas to a too slowly developing world that requires all the modern energy that it can get. Today, some 85% of the world’s population lives in still developing nations, only dreaming of the access to energy and high living standards that we Americans have enjoyed for many decades. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA), energy advisor to the 36 OECD member countries (i.e., the world’s richest economies), touts gas as playing a foundational role in reaching global climate goals. The developing cities want more natural gas to reduce their local pollutants and clear hazy skies that an immense urbanization process has been worsening. 

Really starting in February 2016, U.S. LNG exports have surpassed Malaysia this year, and we are now the world’s third largest LNG supplier. At over 6 Bcf/d, we are supplying 12-14% of the world’s LNG, a stunning achievement in such a short amount of time. With a handful of more export terminals set to soon come online, and literally dozens more being considered, IEA expects us to surpass Qatar and Australia to become the largest LNG exporter by 2024. 

The U.S. has been leading recent LNG capacity additions and is set to become the largest seller by 2024.

IEA

And of course other nations want our gas: “Why U.S. Natural Gas Prices Will Remain Low.” Low prices are especially essential for the still developing nations and their citizens who simply cannot afford more expensive energy. The U.S. shale revolution and accompanying LNG exports have pulled prices down to where gas markets find equilibrium around the world. IEA notes how this has first been happening indirectly, “as gas originally developed for the U.S. market sought alternative consumers,” and “now directly via U.S. gas exports.”

In addition, critically, “the growth of destination-flexible, hub-priced LNG exports from the U.S. is providing a catalyst for a more liquid global gas market.” We are adding the flexibility, transparency, and predictability that the overly rigid global LNG market has long been lacking. For LNG pricing, we are helping to increase more gas-on-gas competition and spot market sales, while lowering the precarious reliance on oil-indexation and long-term contracts. 

Thanks to U.S. shale and LNG, gas is becoming lower cost and more practical in even the most coal entrenched systems: China and India.

IEA

Further, the U.S. shale industry also continues to improve its own environmental performance, cutting emissions in production and transport. Since 1990, the industry has spent nearly $300 billion in these great achievements: “Improving the Natural Gas and Oil Industry’s Environmental Performance.” For natural gas, leaked methane is obviously lost product, so the incentive to stop it is very high.

Thus, our policymakers should be supporting more gas development here, the infrastructure required, and also even more exports abroad. LNG has long enjoyed bi-partisan support. This is especially true since our competitors are unfairly and relentlessly backed by their governments that leverage them as extensions of national policy. We must continue to help others get unfettered access to affordable, reliable, and cleaner gas. 

Just think about our importance for a country and a world that is increasingly turning to natural gas. Amazingly, Appalachia (OH, WV, PA) and West Texas’ Permian basin have accounted for over 70% of the world’s new gas supply since 2012. In other words, without the U.S., a gas hungry world would need to turn to Vladimir Putin and his emerging Gas Exporting Countries Forum that have a grand strategy to dominate. 

We must stop them from controlling the globalizing gas market like OPEC long did for oil, only until the U.S. shale oil boom since 2008 loosened its grip: "How the US shale revolution changed the face of geopolitics."

Jude Clemente is the Editor at RealClearEnergy.

Executive Order 13868 protects our nation’s energy pipelines. “Protect from what?” you may ask. Not from age or wear and tear. Protect from protesters.

Pipeline are target of eco-left protesters. From the Keystone XL pipeline in North Dakota to the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana, eco warriors have protested, sued, blocked, even chained themselves to dozens of pipelines across the nation.

Pipeline protesters have a history, and seemingly enjoyment of, extreme tactics. In Louisiana the destruction of property and violence became so severe the Governor signed a law to protect the workers and the state’s critical infrastructure. In the case of Keystone, protestors left behind 48 million pounds of garbage and several newborn puppies in their wake.

Remember, these protesters love the earth. Right?

Pipelines are the safest and least expensive means to deliver energy around the nation. We have over 2 million miles of oil pipelines alone crisscrossing America. Every pipeline means fewer trucks or trains or tankers. Pipelines are “green” if going green is the goal of protesters.

President Trump signaled early on that he was pro-energy, and that means pro-pipeline. In his first week in office he reversed President Obama’s decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline. This new executive order strengthens Trump’s energy legacy.

This is America and people do have a right to protest. They have a right to wave signs (normally printed with petrochemicals) and take buses (powered by petrochemicals) to set up camps (almost all camping equipment is made from petrochemicals) to protest petrochemical pipelines, irony be damned.

But they do not have a right to violate private property, destroy equipment, threaten and intimidate energy workers, and sabotage pipelines which power our nation. In the past eco-terrorist groups have caused tens of millions of dollars in damage torching private and commercial property (with petrochemicals) for not being green enough. As a society we cannot tolerate these type tactics as merely “protests.” Violent tactics cannot become mainstream.

Furthermore, we have desperate need for an improved energy infrastructure. And the First Amendment does not afford protesters the right to hamper our national growth. Blocking pipelines, blocking energy, only harms people, communities, and our economy.

Look at New York. The Governor, Andrew Cuomo, guided by green philosophies and not science, blocked a proposed 124-mile pipeline to Pennsylvania, which would have carried cheap natural gas to his constituents while creating thousands of jobs.

Green protesters celebrate this as a “win.” But the people lose. They pay for in utilities and miss out on better paying jobs. Don’t their right to a better life merit at least as much attention as the right of protesters?

Cuomo’s monumentally dumb decision has real consequences. Natural gas shortages are quickly becoming the norm. The Wall Street Journal reported utility companies are denying new applications for natural gas connections. New York has even been caught importing natural gas from Russia (of all places) just to meet demand.

You read that right: New York taxpayers are funding America’s adversary because their “green” Governor stopped a pipeline thus keeping the cost of gas high, while preventing an economic boom in his own state with new job creation. Russian tankers traversing the ocean is better than a pipeline to Pennsylvania. Is this what it means to be “green?”

Then green is the new dumb.

Cuomo doesn’t realize it is not an either – or choice. As President Trump said at a recent White House event we can have both a clean environment and a booming economy. Pipelines are key to that: providing jobs, having a small carbon footprint, keeping our economy and our nation running.

Without bold action by the President, New York’s predicament would worsen and potentially be replicated in other states. Protecting pipeline construction makes America stronger.

We cannot allow peoples’ misguided beliefs, desire to “protest,”or political stupidity to cripple our nation. With little fanfare a great decision by this administration has gone into effect, and we are all better off because of it.

Even Governor Cuomo and the eco-warrior protesters are better off, even if they are too blinded by green ideology to see it.

Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF

While there’s no doubt that renewable energy is politically popular, there’s also no doubt that wind energy projects – both onshore and offshore – are facing increasing opposition and that, in turn, could cause the all-renewable goals to be missed.

To be sure, the US wind industry is growing. Overall capacity tripled over the past decade and an estimated 13,000 megawatts will be added this year. But recent news out of Oregon, Massachusetts, North Dakota, and Germany shows that regulators, local governments, and environmental groups are slowing or derailing wind projects. Furthermore, the industry is also facing the expiration of the federal production tax credit, the lucrative subsidy that has driven much of its growth.

History shows that when the tax credits dry up, new wind-energy installations plummet. In May, the Energy Information Administration underscored this point, explaining that in 2012, (just before the PTC was temporarily phased out) the “high level of annual capacity additions…was driven by developers scheduling project completion in time to qualify for the PTC. Similarly, the increase in annual capacity additions for wind scheduled for 2019 is largely being driven by the legislated phaseout of the PTC extension for wind.”

The industry is also facing regulatory uncertainty. Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was delaying approval for Vineyard Wind, a proposed $2.8 billion, 800-megawatt offshore wind project that aims to put dozens of turbines in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard. The delay will allow federal agencies to do a “robust cumulative analysis” of the environmental impact of offshore wind projects.

The federal delay on Vineyard Wind came about three weeks after the conservation commission in Edgartown, Massachusetts voted 5 to 1 to deny a permit that would have allowed the wind project’s high-voltage transmission cables to pass through the Muskeget Channel. The commission said the project’s owners did not submit “sufficient information to protect against long-term and short-term adverse effects on the resource area,” which they said “is critical for the protection of marine fisheries, land containing shellfish, storm damage prevention, flood control, and protection of wildlife habitat.”

Wildlife concerns were a factor in an August 1 ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court which will halt the construction of the proposed 194-megawatt Summit Ridge wind project near the Deschutes River. The court invalidated a set of rules that were adopted in 2017 by the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council that limited public participation in the siting of new energy projects. The ruling is a win for nine environmental groups who were opposed to the wind project, which according to a spokesman for Oregon Wild, “threatened bald eagles, golden eagles and several other important bird and bat species.”

In June, the North Dakota Public Service Commission unanimously rejected a 200-megawatt wind project in Burke County due to concerns about wildlife. According to the Grand Forks Herald, in 2016, officials from the North Dakota Game and Fish Department said that NextEra Energy, the developer of the proposed project, “could not have picked a worse spot.” In March, the US Fish and Wildlife Service recommended against the project due to the number of bald and golden eagles in the region, which also has a “high concentration of significant, relatively rare, high quality breeding waterfowl habitat.”

In February, Apex Clean Energy withdrew its application to build 108 megawatts of wind capacity on New York’s Galloo Island, a small island off the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. The project was withdrawn after Clifford Schneider, a retired biologist who worked at the New York Department of Environmental Conservation for 34 years, discovered that Apex knew that bald eagles had been nesting on Galloo Island but didn’t disclose that information in a timely manner to state regulators.

Nor are the concerns only about wildlife. In May, in Indiana, Tippecanoe County commissioners voted 3-0 for a zoning ordinance that prohibits wind turbines taller than 140 feet. According to the local newspaper, the commissioners decided the “county couldn’t afford to hamstring other kinds of development with long-term leases tying up tens of thousands of acres.”

Perhaps the most remarkable example of the opposition to wind energy can be seen in Germany, a country that has long been touted by renewable-energy advocates as a model to be copied. Last year, climate activist Bill McKibben declared that “Germany has shown the path forward.”

But last month, the German newspaper Die Welt, reported that new wind installations in Germany during the first six months of 2019 “collapsed” falling to the lowest level since 2000, the year the country introduced the Renewable Energy Act. Just 231 megawatts of new wind capacity were installed during the first half of the year, which according to the German Wind Energy Association, “corresponds to a decline of 82 percent” when compared to the same period in 2018.

Die Welt reports that the main cause of the slowdown is “the legal resistance of wildlife and forest conservationists fighting new wind farms.” More than 70 percent of the legal objections are based “on species conservation, especially the threat to endangered bird and bat species.” In addition, some 17 percent of the legal objections to new wind projects are due to concerns about the noise generated by the turbines. In all, some 11,000 megawatts of new wind energy capacity in Germany is being held up due to fights over permits.

The punchline here is obvious: if Germany is, in fact, showing the way forward on renewable energy, the US wind industry should be ready for headwinds.

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His sixth book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations, will be published in 2020 by PublicAffairs. 

The world is a complicated place.

Most people don’t associate the devastation of the Venezuela by communist leader Nicolas Maduro with China, yet Venezuelan oil lies at the heart of China’s interests and as a result, they have been propping up the murderous South American leader.

Shockingly, Venezuela has the largest known reserves of oil in the world, and in 1950 had the fourth largest Gross Domestic Product in the world and second highest GDP per capita. Venezuela’s economy was six times the size of China, and as late as 1982, they were still the largest GDP in South America. However, by 2017 Venezuela’s per capita GDP had shrunk back to levels last seen at the turn of the century, and they continue to shrink in spite of its impressive oil reserves.

In a couple of decades, the country has receded from relative affluence to scenes of desperate people eating their pets to stay alive, as Maduro’s repressive communist regime continues to destroy all capital investment in the country. With their eye on both Venezuela’s oil riches and the ability to project short-and medium range missile threats to the United States from the Caribbean country, China and Russia have been sending billions of dollars to prop up the Maduro madness.

Into this mix, earlier this year, the national legislature of Venezuela declared that Juan Guaidó was the legitimate President of Venezuela and that Maduro was a usurper and the country has had street protests supporting Guaidó. The United States has recognized Guaidó along with sixty other countries, while China and Russia recognize their puppet Maduro in the hopes of getting their hands on the Venezuelan oil reserves.

Now that President Trump has wisely imposed additional economic sanctions on Venezuela which pressures the Chinese and Russians to end their financing of the Maduro terror machine, the country hangs in the balance.  

While the sanctions impact the Venezuelan oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, American companies which have been working in Venezuela since the 1920s developing the original fields, have a sanctions waiver in place until October. These U.S. based oil companies have used their expertise and capital to keep the flagging Venezuelan oil production alive and are essential to offsetting any move by Maduro to turn over his countries oil wealth to the Chinese in exchange for capital to keep his repressive regime in power.

And while the temptation might exist in some quarters to let these waivers for U.S. oil interests to expire, the net effect would be to hand over a turnkey oil operation to the Chinese which would cement Maduro’s hold on power. This is why the United States should indefinitely extend these waivers so that there is certainty in this unstable region, allowing the hoped for Guaidó government to hit the ground running when they gain control over the levers of power without having to uproot entrenched Chinese interests.

The world is a complicated place, but one lesson that America does not need to have to re-learn is that cutting off our own noses to spite our face is never a good policy. Keeping China and Russia from having a strategic and economic foothold in what is the most oil rich nation in the world which lies less than 3,000 miles from our Gulf Coast is what ultimately matters for our national and economic security, and extending the waivers for U.S. oil companies to operate in Venezuela serves that greater interest. President Trump has wisely issued the waivers, and now he should create regional certainty in this one area by extending them indefinitely.

Rick Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government.

Putting so many eggs in the basket of unproven, large-scale offshore wind runs the risk of high electricity costs to consumers and disruptions in grid reliability, resulting in blackouts that lead to economic and public safety trauma. 

The United States today has one – yes one – offshore wind facility which provides 30 megawatts of power, enough electricity for about 25,000 homes. 

Yet, Governor Murphy has set a goal for New Jersey to have 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind by 2030, more than 110 times America’s current offshore wind power. Not to be outdone, Governor Cuomo has set New York’s goal at 9,000 megawatts by 2035, more than 300 times the current U.S. total. 

California, which received 34 percent of its 2018 electricity from renewables, has placed minimal emphasis on offshore wind and has no projects near approval. Environmentally conscious Europe has been similarly unenthusiastic. 

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that at the of 2017, worldwide there was 16,312 megawatts of operational offshore wind power. For perspective, that is less power than New Jersey needs on a hot summer day.

Figures from the International Energy Agency show offshore wind accounted for 0.16 percent of the world’s electricity usage at the end of 2017. It was a mere four percent of the overall category of wind power. 

Yet the Governors want more than 30 percent of their states’ electricity to come from offshore wind in just over a decade. 

Consumers and taxpayers are the guinea pigs. Transmission upgrades to accommodate so much new power will be enormous. In fact, with much of the electric grid built before 1980, there are fewer economies of scale that will be realized by installing new offshore lines than by refurbishing sections of the existing grid that would accommodate new land-based facilities. 

In addition, utilities need to increase spending so that the electric grid is better protected against potential cyberattacks from China, Russia and other adversaries. Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified about these threats in January. 

New Jersey’s subsidies for an initial 1,100 megawatt offshore project are $1.6 billion, accordingly to the state’s Office of Clean Energy. In New York, the Empire Center for Public Policy estimates two recently signed projects for 1,700 megawatts will need  annual subsidies of $528 million.  

The increased, above market costs for offshore wind should be clear and transparent to consumers in both states. Nationwide, the U.S. Department of Energy found 20 percent of Americans reduce food or medicine to pay their electric bills. New York and New Jersey’s electricity costs already exceed the national average by more than 32 percent. 

Wind power is also less available when it is needed most, in the summer. The costs for back-up peak power are typically quite high. 

Both Governors should remember the lessons from Cape Wind, a proposed 454 megawatt facility off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Unveiled in 2001, the project faced a bevy of community and legal issues and was terminated in 2015. 

New York and New Jersey need clean energy contingency plans. They cannot rely on offshore wind. For starters, they should keep non-emitting nuclear power plants operating for as long as possible. These currently account for more than 30 percent of each state’s electricity. Both states should be open minded about new nuclear power generation technologies for smaller reactors, which may be available within a decade.

By taking these steps, the states can have cleaner power without the cost and reliability problems from a rash transition that aims to make offshore wind power the cornerstone of their electricity supplies.  

Paul Steidler is a Senior Fellow with the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank based in Arlington, Virginia.

Nearly all 50 states have implemented renewable portfolio standards (RPS) in recent years, or adopting voluntary goals aimed at reducing their air emissions and carbon footprints by incorporating cleaner energy sources. Anyone who understands the changing landscape of energy technology knows this a positive step toward protecting our environment.  

Nevertheless, extreme activist groups don’t think that’s enough and have been pushing elected officials to shift their cities and states to 100 percent renewable energy sources without giving any thought to the higher costs this may bring. 

For example, the mayor of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and an official from the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska reportedly signed an electric supply contract that will provide 100 percent renewable energy to all Glenwood Springs residents. 

Does this mean that Glenwood Springs clear-cut its trees and erected solar and wind farms in a valley of the Rocky Mountains? No. In fact, outside of a few home solar panels, there are no solar or wind installations in Glenwood, which is why we need to have a better understanding of where we get our energy and how we use it. 

That starts with understanding what electric supply contracts are and how they work.

Most of the 100 percent renewable pledges you read about happen through power purchase agreements. A PPA, in the shorthand of the energy business, is a contract in which a municipality or company agrees to buy energy at predetermined rates and volumes from the generator. In the case of a PPA involving renewable energy, the buyer gets renewable energy credits that are then used – in theory – to offset emissions from their actual power consumption. 

In reality, though, the PPA does not guarantee that the electricity consumed by receiving community is really carbon-free.

There’s one big reason what that happens – carbon-free energy like solar and wind isn’t always available, because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun isn’t always shining. There are plenty of occasions in which the energy that is actually delivered comes from sources that aren’t carbon-free.  

There is no doubt that during periods of low demand, known as off-peak hours, solar and wind energy is capable of contributing power to the grid. The challenge, however, comes during the high-demand peak hours when these sources are inherently less effective or outright unavailable, and have to be supplemented by another clean source like natural gas or nuclear power to ensure consumers have uninterrupted electricity. 

A recent study from Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy suggests “to guarantee 100 percent emissions reductions from renewable energy, power consumption must be matched with renewable generation on an hourly basis.” 

Let’s translate that into non-energy speak. That means that customers must either reduce their demand to meet only what wind and solar can provide at any given hour of any given day, or generation has to come from sources that aren’t carbon-free. 

The Stanford study went on to find that for a state like California, a hypothetical consumer with one megawatt of constant demand would really need to secure more than three times that amount of energy to truly be 100 percent renewable.

Great strides are being made in battery storage technology, which could help make solar and wind more reliable sources in the future by storing the energy until it is needed. But unfortunately, the technology is largely in its infancy and is prohibitively expensive for the scale of usage that is required to serve our energy needs. 

That is why we need energy delivery infrastructure like pipelines now and in the future, to provide the energy supply needed to smooth out demand bottlenecks and complement the transition to greater renewable energy use toward which many states are moving. 

The ambitions of cities like Glenwood Springs to reduce their carbon footprint is laudable. But the reality is they rely on critical energy infrastructure like pipelines that allow for the transmission of clean, reliable and affordable energy that heats homes, keeps the lights on in schools and hospitals and provides power for everyday life.

Pairing reliable and clean energy sources like natural gas and nuclear with expanded renewable resources is an example of how to build our energy future in a responsible way that benefits all consumers – families, small businesses and industry – and our environment. 

States including New Jersey must encourage a smart balance of traditional and renewable energy infrastructure expansion as they hope to reach their clean energy goals and ensure residents have reliable and affordable energy.

David Holt is President of the Consumer Energy Alliance. 

The announcement is just the latest indication that President Trump's 25 percent tariff on steel imports may have unintended consequences. 

When the president announced the tariff in March 2018, he predicted the taxes on foreign steel imports—taxes that Americans, not foreigners, must pay—would "help our domestic steel industry to revive idled facilities, open closed mills, preserve necessary skills by hiring new steel workers, and maintain or increase production."  

The tariff failed for two main reasons. First, they raised production costs for thousands of companies ranging from auto manufacturers to oil and gas firms. Many companies scaled back their expansion plans and therefore had less need for steel products, whether foreign or domestic.

Second, the trade war has cooled the global economy, depriving U.S. steel plants of export opportunities.

To be sure, the tariff did give the U.S. steel industry an initial boost. United States Steel Corp. reopened two blast furnaces. And many domestic plants began raising prices. Thanks to the tariff, they could charge more and still be less expensive than foreign manufacturers. 

Preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the number of people working in iron and steel mills grew from 82,087 in April of 2018, just after the steel tariff implementation, to 84,913 last December. That's an increase of about 2,800 jobs. And U.S. steel manufacturer stock prices initially surged. 

But those initial job and share price gains proved fleeting. U.S. Steel's stock hit a record $45.39 in early March of last year. Today it's $15.00—about a 70 percent drop. 

And the firm is not alone. 

Nucor Corp.'s stock dropped from its peak of nearly $70.00 a share in January of last year to $55.50 today. And Steel Dynamics Corp. has declined from its peak of $50.74 in early June of last year to $31.00 today. 

These firms' share prices are plummeting even as most stock indices are hitting record highs. Why? Steel prices are falling. The price of hot-rolled steel has declined 35 percent since reaching a near-decade high last summer, according to S&P Global Platts. 

Steel manufacturers' fortunes are tied to the health of a number of other industries. Steel companies can't succeed if those industries are struggling—and many of them are.

Consider agriculture. China responded to President Trump's steel tariff by imposing its own tariffs, including many on agricultural products. Sales of soybeans and many other products have tanked since the implementation of tariffs. And decreased sales means prices have also tanked—so much so that the president has twice announced that he is making federal tax dollars available to farmers who have been hardest hit.  

Agricultural firms use steel in everything from barns to combines. When farmers suffer, so do steel manufacturers.

Likewise, the energy industry is a major buyer of steel. Energy firms use steel for drilling rigs, pipelines, refineries and tankers that carry liquefied natural gas to other countries. Almost every aspect of energy production requires steel. 

The automotive industry is also facing economic headwinds. After bottoming out in early 2009, due to the recession, auto sales rose steadily until early 2016. Since then they have remained flat, which is odd given the relatively strong economy.

President Trump has complained, correctly, that other countries imposed higher tariffs on the United States than the United States did on them. And he was the first to aggressively call out China for its tech transfer and intellectual property indiscretions.  

But it isn't clear that pulling the steel tariff trigger so quickly—and so often—was the best and wisest way to address these foreign policy challenges. We are well over a year into the trade war and it's not clear that an end—especially a desirable end—is in sight.

President Trump presumably wants to help the steel industry prosper. To do that, his administration needs to find an acceptable tariff exit strategy as quickly as possible. 

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews

The United States is the global energy production leader, yet 23 million Americans across the Northeast face energy reliability and affordability challenges. These issues are not from a lack of natural gas production – instead, from the politically motivated, irrational decisions of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to prevent energy infrastructure from being built.   

More closely aligned with radical environmental activists than the needs of hard-working families and energy consumers across the region, Gov. Cuomo has effectively cut off the Northeast from accessing clean, abundant and affordable natural gas. And with the signing of the radical New York Green New Deal, the Northeast is in for further electricity reliability and affordability challenges. 

This energy blockade prevents families, small businesses, and manufacturers in seven states from enjoying the economic and clean air benefits of the American shale revolution. 

Make no mistake, energy pipelines – overwhelmingly built by the region’s skilled and highly trained building trades union members – are the safest method of transporting energy that’s closely regulated and monitored by a host of federal and state agencies. “Americans are more likely to get struck by lightning than to be killed in a pipeline accident,” the Manhattan Institute concluded in a recent study. 

Consumers across the northeast are already feeling the sting of Gov. Cuomo’s disastrous policies. Natural gas supply constraints are one of the primary drivers of the New England region having the highest average electricity costs in the continental United States, according to federal data.  

Families living in public housing in New York City, said Danny Barber, head of the Citywide Council of Presidents of New York City Housing Authority tenants’ association, struggle with access to heat and hot water, especially during winter months. That’s why Barber backs projects like the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement that “will broaden NYCHA’s access to cleaner, more efficient and reliable fuel sources…and increase access for low income communities to a cleaner fuel source.” 

In nearby Pennsylvania, consumers are realizing average energy savings upwards of $1,100 - $2,200 annually per household as clean, abundant natural gas is used to heat homes, cook food and generate a growing share of the region’s electricity. 

As consumers enjoy the energy savings, Pennsylvania’s environment is improving too, with the Commonwealth’s top environmental regulator, Patrick McDonnell, recently telling lawmakers that “we were already well on our way” to achieving the Obama-era Clean Power Plan targets “and have actually since met those proposed goals primarily because of the shift toward cleaner natural gas.”

Blocking pipelines and enacting unrealistic policies that cannot be achieved does not reduce the fundamental need for affordable access to energy. Earlier this year, for example, Westchester County was “in a panic,” multiple news outlets reported, as natural gas supply constraints threatened to grind development in the affluent New York City suburb of Westchester to a halt, as consumers, small businesses, hospitals and schools couldn’t access the energy they demanded. 

Rather than leverage abundant natural gas from Pennsylvania to meet consumer demand and help achieve climate goals, limited pipeline capacity has caused the northeast to import Russian natural gas during recent brutal winters to meet the spike in demand. 

Importantly – and a point often missing from the debate about unrealistic Green New Deal-style policies – all energy forms have attributes and costs. Wind and solar energy still require power lines to be developed, significant land footprints for generation, and battery storage that’s not technologically feasible. Wind turbines, according to federal government data, cause upwards of 500,000 bird deaths annually, with eagles, falcons, and hawks having some of the highest annual death rates. As wind energy capacity increases, bird deaths could top 1.4 million per year. Those same wind turbines are efficient at killing bats as well, which are some of the most environmentally friendly creatures that we have. 

Of course, we all need around-the-clock electricity access, even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Modern, efficient combined cycle natural gas power plants provide that clean, reliable power that can be ramped up in a matter of minutes to support highly intermittent renewable sources. It is a fact, there is no better partner for renewables than natural gas.

Pennsylvania’s abundant natural gas resources can be a solution to achieving climate goals while providing a boost to New York and New England families and small businesses, many who are struggling to make ends meet. It’s up to Governor Cuomo and leaders in Albany to decide if they want to put people, or politics, first.

David Spigelmyer is president of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Marcellus Shale Coalition. Learn more at MarcellusCoalition.org

His critics were quick reject this gloss but the Secretary was hardly worried. Why? No matter how much the environmental left or the national security right might criticize him, he can silence them by dangling before them what they both want — a government program for their preferred solutions. Thus, the bipartisan saw officials most often retreat to — an “all-of-the-above energy” strategy that offers handouts to energy options no matter how uneconomical.

A hit since America’s first energy crisis in 1971, this strategy is getting pricey. Early on, the US took up energy price deregulation and efficiency measures that remedied true market failures. Then, state and federal governments turned to subsidies, mandates and crash “commercialization” funding of virtually every kind of energy type.

Never mind oil and gas supplies have increased so America now exports both. Supports for biofuels and clean coal continue as if we might soon run out. Renewables’ costs have plummeted. Yet, government subsidies and mandates continue now mostly to pump up profits. As for nuclear and ethanol, they too enjoy government backing even though no private investor would touch them with a barge pole.

Our government, we are told, must override these market signals. Our national security and global survival demand it. Yet, recent studies show our nation’s electrical system is hardly running out of reliable electrical power, much less oil or gas. As for global warming, balancing alarmist claims against reckless dismissiveness calls for comparing costs more, not less.

Certainly, if we are serious about lowering green house gas emissions, we would want to do so as quickly and cheaply as possible. A decade ago, The McKinsey Green House Gas Cost Abatement Curve focused on this point and ranked measures to reduce emissions in terms of cost. It spotlighted clean options that would actually make their adopters money — e.g., increasing efficiencies, replacing old coal with new gas plants, etc. Unfortunately, great deal less attention was paid to the other end of the curve, where McKinsey placed, in order of increased expense, options that would not turn a profit.

Current supporters of carbon-free fuels (mostly nuclear and renewables) now push national and environmental security arguments that are nearly impossible to quantify. What’s worse, the solutions they advocate require moving far into the most costly portion of the McKinsey curve and having the public pick up the tab. What McKinsey’s analysis makes clear is that choosing options from the high cost portion of the curve — as governmental mandates, subsidies and commercialization programs have done — is far more expensive and time consuming than focusing on the least costly ones first.

Unfortunately, the loudest national security and environmental energy voices all but ignore this insisting the dire risks of inaction make comparing costs and risks irrelevant. Yet, it is impossible to eliminate all climate or security risks and any major intervention can bring risks of its own.

Nuclear power produces relatively little carbon emissions and affords substantial supplies of base-load electrical production. Yet, the costs of new plants now under construction in the US are off the charts. Off-site liabilities near Fukushima, meanwhile, are running far north of $200 billion. What might another nuclear accident cost? What might the costs of decommissioning reactors and storing their spent fuel be? What might be required to defend friends’ planned power reactors in the Middle East and Asia if they are struck militarily?

Finally, there are the opportunity costs of being inattentive to potentially sounder alternatives. New processes, for example, are being developed privately that promise to tap plentiful natural gas to produce cheap electricity with zero atmospheric emissions. Meanwhile, private firms are investing in grid battery concepts that may make any base-load generators less competitive.

To get a fix on how real these and other promising developments might be, we need to listen to market signals more, not less. Toward this end, it would be useful to:

• hold off on any new energy commercialization subsidies, bailouts or mandates and back away from any “national security” imperatives that cannot be quantified.

• encourage The McKinsey Company and its competitors to release their latest economic ranking models to help clarify what steps might reduce undesirable emissions quickest most cheaply.

• get our government and schools to do much more to quantify what energy subsides cost.

• consider alternative institutions and arrangements to incentivize private energy research and development and commercial adoption and conduct historical research of past errors and current failures to deepen our judgement about likely future energy project costs and risks.

To get the ball rolling, Mr. Perry might even take the first step by funding such efforts. That would save money.

David Montgomery serves on the advisory board of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), was a senior Vice President of National Economic Research Associates and served as assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office. Henry Sokolski is executive director of NPEC and editor of Pure Risk: Federal Clean Energy Loan Guarantees (2012).

The new rule is legal and sensible, adjectives that do not describe the Clean Power Plan.  Many people might have forgotten that the Clean Power Plan was so bad that 27 states opposed it, and the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the rule (the stay is still in effect). The Clean Power Plan would have been expensive and would have given EPA too much control over each state’s electricity supply.

The reaction from opponents of the ACE rule has been predictable.  Among other things, they say the new rule will not reduce carbon dioxide emissions as much as the old rule.  That might seem like an important point, but it deliberately fails to tell the full story.

According to EPA’s analysis, the Clean Power Plan would have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 50 million tons in 2025, and the ACE rule will achieve reductions of as much as 30 million tons.  However, it’s really not much of a difference at all.  Global anthropogenic GHG emissions total about 49 billion metric tons, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Therefore, the two rules would reduce global GHG emissions by either 0.10 percent (Clean Power Plan) or  0.06 percent (ACE rule).  The difference between these two is indistinguishable from a climate change standpoint.   

In addition, the rest of the world continues to use coal to support economic growth.  Last year, coal demand in China was six times greater than U.S. coal demand, according to the International Energy Agency. Even “green” Europe used more coal than the U.S.  As a result, from 2017 to 2018, worldwide GHG emissions increased by 560 million tons, an amount ten times greater than the reductions that would have been achieved under the Clean Power Plan. 

Our point is that arguing about the insignificant differences between the new rule and the old rule are not going to lead to a workable solution to climate change.  Neither are campaigns to eliminate the U.S. coal fleet.

Michelle Bloodworth serves as the president and CEO of America's Power. 

And yet, gasoline cars have turned out to be a surprising bright spot in the auto industry’s universe of late.  Evidence of that came in a recent analysis of vehicle sales in 2018.  In the U.S., combustion vehicles accounted for 97.02% of total vehicle sales of 17.3 million.  Although sales of electric vehicles (EVs) reached 361,307, an increase of 80% over 2017, EVs accounted for only 2.08% of all cars sold in this country last year – and that’s even with a tax credit of up to $7,500 for EVs.

Producing EVs with a smaller carbon footprint than gasoline cars is the easy part.  Getting people to buy them is the hard part.  Despite 10 years of tax-credit subsidies, EVs aren’t exactly achieving the sort of pace needed to replace gasoline cars anytime soon.  John Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, predicts that at mid-century, 60% of light-duty vehicles will still have combustion engines.

The reason? Using batteries as the primary source of a vehicle’s power supply remains far too expensive, especially for middle- and lower-income Americans.

Yet a coalition of automakers, environmental organizations and electric vehicle suppliers has launched a campaign to save the tax credit.  But extending the tax credit would be a mistake.  It would be bad news for taxpayers, shackling our economy with huge, growth-killing costs.  Ending the tax credit, on the other hand,would save taxpayers about $20 billion over the next decade, according to the Manhattan Institute.

Because of battery limitations, most EVs are small to medium-sized sedans.  But consumers want bigger cars.  As recently as 2014, sedans accounted for a majority of personal vehicle sales.  Today, with consumers buying more SUVs and pickups, sedans account for far fewer auto sales.  Relatively inexpensive gasoline, along with the perceived safety of larger and heavier vehicles, is helping spur the move to larger vehicles that are likely to remain well ahead of EVs for the foreseeable future.

As a consequence, there are signs that EVs will move from their present 2% share in the U.S. to claim no more than 9% by 2025.  Globally, EVs currently constitute a minuscule share (less than one-half of one percent) of a global car fleet of approximately 1.2 billion.  By 2040, EVs are expected to represent about 8% of a global car fleet of 2 billion.

Because of their small numbers now and in the near future, the impact of EVs on reducing carbon emissions will be minimal, and the trend is expected to continue.  Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, says that even 100-fold growth in EVs wouldn’t displace more than 5% of global oil demand in 2040.Mills says lower growth in gasoline demand would be offset by growing air travel and increased need for oil and gas in producing manufactured goods.

There is news that EV advocates simply do not want to believe: despite the huge investment, EVs, even though robustly subsidized, remain stubbornly noncompetitive and contribute only marginally to carbon mitigation. The gasoline car will continue to power the lion’s share of American vehicles for the near future.  Improvements in conventional vehicles and the fuels that run them, will do more to improve our economy and environmental well-being.

Gerard Scimeca is Vice President of CASE, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free-market oriented consumer advocacy organization.

The Council is considering foolhardy plan to turn Riker’s Island into a solar farm. Proponents, like Alexandria "12-years left" Ocasio-Cortez, say covering 100 acres of Rikers with solar panels allows for the closing of all fossil fuel “peaker plants” (those facilities which come online during highest demand on the electric grid) built in the past 25 years. Because solar good. Fossil fuels bad. This idea isn’t just wrong; it’s dangerous.

As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once said “it’s better to be morally right than factually correct”. That must be comforting, because when it comes to energy, the facts are usually against her.

I asked Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller News Foundation's investigative energy and environmental reporter to run the numbers.  According to Bastasch, the New York City peaker plants can generate up to 9,600 megawatts of electricity when demand spikes.

A 100-acre Rikers Island solar farm will generate 90 megawatts, according to city documents.  How’s the math so far?  It doesn’t seem that 9,600 is the same as 90, regardless of how good you feel.   

Morally right, however.

To be fair, the proposal also calls for 300 megawatts of energy storage capacity.  But Bastasch pointed out that, during the heatwave of 2011, New York City demand topped 11,500 megawatts. Those 300 megawatts would barely even make a dent in peak demand.

Whether it’s polar vortex or heatwaves, neither of which are uncommon in New York City, the residents are dependent on electricity for survival. Heaters. Air conditioners. Water pumped up multiple stories heating and cooling, appliances storing and cooking food. What would happen if all this were offline because of a crashed electric grid? Who will suffer in a blackout? The poor, sick, hospitalized, those in run-down government housing. Green billionaires who support such ideas will be just fine.

New York City estimates that plans to redevelop Riker's Island and build the solar farm cost anywhere from $15 - $22 billion.  Though it's not clear what an 100-acre solar array alone would cost, the total price tag should give city residents pause.

This asks the inconvenient question: how much land would be needed to power New York City with solar panels? Let’s use an example: the solar panels at Topaz Farm in Southern California generated 1.2 million megawatts per year. Impressive number for sure, except New York’s subway system used 1.8 million megawatts each year. Compounding this problem: California gets much more sun than New York, and Topaz Farm is 4,000 acres.

So where does New York get 4,000 acres of land to almost power its subway? As a born and raised Queens kid I can tell you that’s going to be hard. Forest Park is only 165 acres, and we’d have to chop down all the trees. I’m sure some environmental groups would protest that.

We could look at Central Park and its 800 acres, but again, goodbye trees and goodbye reservoir. And let’s face it, Queens: the city would bulldoze your homes before the Upper East Side gives up their views.

What about multiple sources of green power? Let’s add some windmills.

More math and land problems: a 2 megawatts onshore windmill need 1.5 acres of land. We could cover Rikers with 266 windmills and generate 533 megawatt of electricity- more than the proposed solar farm, but still, nothing compared to the 10,000 megawatts regularly needed. Maybe the fine folks along Long Island’s shores from Montauk to West Hampton, those with proud liberal values and progressive sensibilities, would give up their waterfront views.

No more joking.

I am not opposed to renewable energy. The technology offers great promise. But that does not mean we have that technology now nor in the immediate future. And New York needs electricity now. The city’s electric grid is too critical to the economic and personal survival of millions of people for a City Council to tinker with it for political reasons. The council doesn’t have to like fossil fuels. It should, however, like math.

Daniel Turner is the executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF