The Biden Administration Ever More Delusional On Energy

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  • Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy.

  • Despite hundreds of government actions and initiative in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkable stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production.

  • The percentage of what is called “primary energy” (that is, energy for everything, not just electricity) coming from fossil fuels has remained nearly unchanged. EIA data here for 2022 (latest I can find) show about 79% of U.S. primary energy from fossil fuels, barely changed since Biden took office, and indeed very stable for decades.

  • Perhaps this situation of stable energy production and consumption results because it reflects what markets and consumers want and need to satisfy their demand for energy. So do you think that the hyperactive regulators might just relax and let the consumers have what they want?

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The FTC Takes Its Turn To Feel The Regulator's Exhilaration

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  • It’s hard to imagine any job more excruciatingly dull than that of the Washington regulator.

  • You beaver away for months on end generating 300 or 500 page documents justifying the latest the latest agency finaglings, all of which text needs to be cleared with scores of co-participants via endless meetings and by repeated circulation of marked-up drafts that draw hundreds of inconsistent edits from self-important functionaries. Ugh!

  • But then, into this miasma of infinite boredom, from time to time, there intrudes a frisson of great excitement. This happens when the agency decides to seize control and transform a large swath of the economy by its own edict.

  • The latest agency to make its grab for the excitement of the limelight is the FTC.

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Tracking The Demise Of The U.S. Green Energy Transition

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Tracking The Demise Of The U.S. Green Energy Transition

  • We’re coming up on three and a half years into the Biden presidency — a presidency which from the outset promised an “all of government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to “green” energy. And the regulatory onslaught has indeed come forth.

  • But how about the actual transition in energy use? Not so much.

  • Let’s have a round-up of some recent data points.

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Another Candidate For The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time?

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  • I have written a long series of posts, now 32 in number, titled “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.” Go to this link if you want to read some or all of those posts.

  • The fraud in question in those posts is the intentional alteration of pre-existing temperature (or, in one case, sea level) records to create a narrative of dangerous climate change that, without the alterations, lacks support in the raw data. In the most recent post in this series, number 32, I remarked, “No other scientific fraud in world history comes close to this one in scope or significance.”

  • The climate-data-alteration fraud is hugely significant because the altered data provide the fundamental support for the ongoing multi-trillion-dollar effort of the Left to transform the world energy system, and ultimately the entire world economy. As the least expensive and most reliable forms of energy production get restricted, billions of people stand to see their lives impoverished to the extent of tens of thousands of dollars per year each. Is it remotely possible for any other fraud to come anywhere close to this one in significance?

  • As unlikely as it may seem, now along comes a second plausible candidate for the title.

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The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council Has Petitioned The Supreme Court For Certiorari

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  • It’s the question that I know has been on the tips of the tongues of all Manhattan Contrarian readers: Will the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, after getting booted ignominiously out of the D.C. Circuit on grounds of standing, now continue its fight to overturn EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding by petitioning the Supreme Court for Certiorari?

  • The answer is YES. Our Petition for a Writ of Certiorari was filed on Wednesday, October 18, and is now available on the Supreme Court’s website.

  • Not that other strategies did not occur to us.

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Comments On The Insanity Of EPA's New Power Plant Rule

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  • On May 23, EPA put out its long-expected proposed Rule designed to eliminate, or nearly so, all so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions from the electricity-generation sector of the economy.  The proposal came with the very long title: “New Source Performance Standards for GHG Emissions from New and Reconstructed EGUs; Emission Guidelines for GHG Emissions from Existing EGUs; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.”  The full document is 672 pages long.   

  • Various not-very-far-off deadlines are set, ranging from as early as 2030 for some changes to coal plants, to at the latest 2038 for the last changes to natural gas plants. 

  • But how exactly is this emissions elimination thing to be accomplished?  Today a substantial majority of U.S. electricity (about 60%) comes from one or the other of those fuels; and it is inherent in the burning of hydrocarbons that you get CO2 as a product.  In all those 672 pages, EPA has only two ideas for how to eliminate the carbon emissions from combustion power plants: carbon capture and storage (CCS), and “green” hydrogen.  Either you must implement one of those two ideas to meet EPA’s standards by the deadline, or you must close your power plant. 

  • But here’s the problem: both of those ideas are, frankly, absurd. 

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