The battle lines already are drawn over the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement Wednesday that it’s seeking to reduce the nation’s levels of ground-level ozone, the main component of smog.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to review air-quality standards every five years. Under President George W. Bush, the agency set the ozone threshold at 75 parts per billion in 2008.
The EPA now wants to lower the bar to between 65 ppb and 70 ppb, the level that the agency’s advisory board of independent scientists and physicians has recommended. However, EPA will review comments on a lower benchmark of 60 ppb during its commentary period.
Ozone is created when sunlight hits emissions coming from vehicles, electricity-generating plants and factories. The EPA said ozone at the current accepted levels “can pose serious threats to public health, harm the respiratory system, cause or aggravate asthma and other lung diseases, and is linked to premature death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes.”
The NRDC said medical evidence shows that the revised limit, even at the lower end of 65 ppb, is harmful to health. ”So we urge EPA to set the standard at 60 ppb.”
(Click on the image at right to check the national Air Quality Index.)
That stance will put the EPA on a collision course with the manufacturing sector and Republican elected officials, who will control both the Senate and House in January. Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who will take over as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that the lower threshold “will lower our nation’s economic competitiveness and stifle job creation for decades.”
National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO Jay Timmons said the new ozone regulation “threatens to be the most expensive ever imposed on industry in America and could jeopardize recent progress in manufacturing by placing massive new costs on manufacturers and closing off counties and states to new business …”
The Associated Press notes that the EPA initially proposed a range of 60 to 70 ppb in January 2010. Had that gone into effect, it would have come with an estimated price tag of between $19 billion and $90 billion and would have doubled the number of U.S. counties in violation.
In 2011, President Obama, in advance of his 2012 re-election campaign, “reneged on a plan by then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to lower the permissible level to be more protective of public health,” The AP wrote.
“Seldom do presidents get an opportunity to right a wrong,” Bill Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies told AP. “Obama has walked the walk on air.”
Current EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, in a post on CNNMoney.com, put the health argument front and center. But she also said cutting emissions would help the economy, not hinder it:
“Missing work, feeling ill, or caring for a sick child costs us time, money, and personal hardship. When family health issues hurt us financially, that drags down the whole economy. … Special-interest critics will try to convince you that pollution standards chase away local jobs and businesses, but, in fact, healthy communities attract new businesses, new investment, and new jobs.”
Economist predicts ‘barbarity’ and ‘looting’ in Venezuela
/in What's The Buzz, World /by Fuel Freedom StaffThe oil price slide has hit some countries much harder than others, and cracks already are beginning to appear in Venezuela’s socioeconomic system.
As NBC News reports, shortages of basic products, like toilet paper, toothpaste and medical supplies, have worsened as the price of oil has plummeted. The South American country, which is an OPEC member nation, pleaded with the cartel to reduce output to stabilize prices, but OPEC last week announced it would maintain production levels.
Venezuela, the world’s 12th-largest oil producer, needs oil to be about $200 a barrel to balance its budget, one analyst says. There have been sporadic protests over the shortages, and experts say that if the economy continues to falter and President Nicolas Maduro’s government has to raise taxes or eliminate gas subsidies for citizens, there could be unrest similar to the “Caracas disaster” of 1989, when falling prices brought on riots in which hundreds of people were killed.
The NBC story goes on:
Real Clear Politics: The Future of Cars: Batteries Included?
/in Environment /by Fuel Freedom StaffElon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla, has done what GM couldn’t when, 20 years ago, EV1 was introduced as the first (failed) mainstream, all-electric car. Tesla has moved electric vehicles (EVs) from cult to elite status. Seductively designed and impressively engineered, the nearly $100,000 Tesla is a must-own for one-percenters.
Could Tesla, in particular, with its to-be-released cheaper plug-in sedan, along with the other dozen major EV manufacturers, be the portent of an automotive revolution that finally displaces the vilified internal combustion engine? Or has Musk created—no small feat—a modern Maserati? (The latter celebrates its centennial on December 1, 2014.) At present, the wisdom of the stock market gives Tesla a value approaching that of GM, which produces as many cars in a week as Tesla does in a year.
Read more at: Real Clear Politics
Hofmeister interviewed on NBC’s ‘Meet The Press’
/in FFF in the News, Media, World staff /by Fuel Freedom StaffJohn Hofmeister, a Fuel Freedom board advisor and the former president of Shell Oil Co., appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Nov. 23 to discuss the falling price of oil.
Watch a clip here:
Watch the entire “MTP” program here (Hofmeister comes on about the 35:20 mark), and read the transcript here.
Hofmeister, appearing along with author Daniel Yergin, was asked by host Chuck Todd whether lower-priced oil amounted to an extra sanction against Russia and Iran, which already are burdened by sanctions — Russia for its actions in Ukraine and Iran for its pursuit of a nuclear program.
Hofmeister replied:
As we know, at that meeting, OPEC decided not to cut production quotas, effectively ensuring that oil prices would not stabilize in the near future.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, now believes that oil will settle at about $60, down from about $110 over the summer.
Hofmeister said that, despite the worldwide surplus of oil, the U.S. should keep pumping, in anticipation of demand coming back:
Hofmeister, author of the book Why We Hate the Oil Companies, has much more to say about oil in the Fuel Freedom-produced documentary PUMP. The film is now available for pre-order on iTunes. Visit PumpTheMovie.com to watch a trailer and learn more.
Oil makes biggest one-day price jump in 2 years
/in Economy, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom StaffHave we seen the bottom of the great oil-price plunge of 2014?
Experts say not yet. But oil prices rose sharply Monday, making their biggest jump in two years: Nymex crude-oil futures rose 4.78 percent, to $69.31 a barrel. And Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 3 percent, to $72.54. It had been down as low as $67.53 earlier in the day, the lowest it’s been since July 2009.
Oil is down about one-third since June, and late last week the commodity plunged even more precipitously after OPEC announced it would not stem the price drop by ramping up production among its 12 member nations. But some analysts saw Monday’s jump as merely profit-taking after last week’s sell-off.
From The Wall Street Journal:
From Reuters:
OPEC stands pat … will $70 oil be the new normal?
/in Economy, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom StaffThe big news in the international oil markets last week was that OPEC decided not to cut production, which would have propped up free-falling prices, at least temporarily.
OPEC’s non-action sent oil prices falling further Friday, with the Brent benchmark slipping below $70 for the first time in four years.
NPR reports that some experts say oil in the range of $70 a barrel could last through 2015:
Some OPEC member nations, including Iran and Venezuela, which need a higher oil price to pay for their generous public services, had been pushing for the cartel to ease back on production to halt the plunge in prices. A moderate pullback would have come amid a global oil glut, thanks in part to reduced demand in Asia and Europe, as well as soaring production in the U.S.
Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, said OPEC’s decision was no guarantee that the United States would scale back production in North Dakota and Texas, a surge aided by advances in hydraulic fracturing.
“High prices are a disadvantage to OPEC’s market share,” Zanganeh said, according to Bloomberg. “If you want to increase your share, you have to reduce prices, but you can’t do it through ‘shock therapy’ over the course of three months if you want to change everything.”
EPA touts health, economic benefits of reducing smog
/in Environment, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom StaffThe battle lines already are drawn over the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement Wednesday that it’s seeking to reduce the nation’s levels of ground-level ozone, the main component of smog.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to review air-quality standards every five years. Under President George W. Bush, the agency set the ozone threshold at 75 parts per billion in 2008.
The EPA now wants to lower the bar to between 65 ppb and 70 ppb, the level that the agency’s advisory board of independent scientists and physicians has recommended. However, EPA will review comments on a lower benchmark of 60 ppb during its commentary period.
Ozone is created when sunlight hits emissions coming from vehicles, electricity-generating plants and factories. The EPA said ozone at the current accepted levels “can pose serious threats to public health, harm the respiratory system, cause or aggravate asthma and other lung diseases, and is linked to premature death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes.”
The NRDC said medical evidence shows that the revised limit, even at the lower end of 65 ppb, is harmful to health. ”So we urge EPA to set the standard at 60 ppb.”
That stance will put the EPA on a collision course with the manufacturing sector and Republican elected officials, who will control both the Senate and House in January. Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who will take over as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that the lower threshold “will lower our nation’s economic competitiveness and stifle job creation for decades.”
National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO Jay Timmons said the new ozone regulation “threatens to be the most expensive ever imposed on industry in America and could jeopardize recent progress in manufacturing by placing massive new costs on manufacturers and closing off counties and states to new business …”
The Associated Press notes that the EPA initially proposed a range of 60 to 70 ppb in January 2010. Had that gone into effect, it would have come with an estimated price tag of between $19 billion and $90 billion and would have doubled the number of U.S. counties in violation.
In 2011, President Obama, in advance of his 2012 re-election campaign, “reneged on a plan by then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to lower the permissible level to be more protective of public health,” The AP wrote.
“Seldom do presidents get an opportunity to right a wrong,” Bill Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies told AP. “Obama has walked the walk on air.”
Current EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, in a post on CNNMoney.com, put the health argument front and center. But she also said cutting emissions would help the economy, not hinder it:
“Missing work, feeling ill, or caring for a sick child costs us time, money, and personal hardship. When family health issues hurt us financially, that drags down the whole economy. … Special-interest critics will try to convince you that pollution standards chase away local jobs and businesses, but, in fact, healthy communities attract new businesses, new investment, and new jobs.”
Naomi Klein: 4 reasons Keystone matters
/in Environment, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom StaffEnvironmental writer and activist Naomi Klein writes in The Nation that the conventional wisdom, at least among supporters of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is that the project didn’t really matter. Even if it were scuttled, TransCanada, the company hoping to build the pipeline extension from tar-sands oil in western Canada to Nebraska, would find another way to get the oil to market, either by way of another pipeline across Canada or by rail.
But opposition to the project has put pressure squarely on President Obama, Klein writes.
Klein, author of the new book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, then outlines four ways in which the Keystone XL debate does, indeed matter.
Read it and tell us what you think.
BusinessWeek: Ethanol just avoided a death blow
/in What's The Buzz, World /by Fuel Freedom StaffBusinessWeek’s Matthew Phillips reflects on the EPA’s decision to delay proposed changes to the renewable fuel standard, a revision that was expected to reduce the amount of corn-based ethanol to be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply.
Now that the new RFS standards have been put off until sometime in 2015, ethanol producers have the chance to regroup and fight another day, Phillips writes.
Whatever OPEC does, U.S. oil companies will keep drilling
/in Economy, What's The Buzz /by Fuel Freedom StaffBloomberg has a story about what U.S. drillers will do in response to whatever OPEC does this week at its regular meeting.
OPEC, led by its top producer, Saudi Arabia, will do one of two things: Nothing, which means the cartel’s output will remain unchanged, and crude prices will say flat (or keep sliding). Or it could cut production, which “would lift prices and profits across the board and help finance further U.S. energy innovation,” the Bloomberg story says.
Either way, U.S. producers will have the same response: Drill on.
A continued price plunge would put more pressure on U.S. companies, but they’re increasingly insulated by OPEC’s actions, the story says.
Can alternative vehicles still play a role?
/in Environment, Featured, Over a Barrel Blog wtucker, newleaf /by Arctic LeafA couple of Google engineers shocked the world last week by announcing that after working on the RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal) Initiative for four years, they had concluded that renewable energy is never going to solve our carbon emissions problem.
In a widely read article in IEEE Spectrum, the prestigious journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Ross Koningstein and David Fork announced that after working at improving renewables on the Google project, they had decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing. Google actually closed down RE<C in 2011, but the authors are just getting around to explaining why.
Google’s abandonment of renewable energy raises the immediate question: What about the effort to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles? And here the news is much better.
Although everyone concentrates on coal and power plants, they regularly forget that half our carbon emissions come from vehicles. It’s typical that Google’s RE<C effort didn’t address what to do about our cars. It’s too complicated to try to control the emissions from 200 million point sources.
But what’s never discussed is the fuel that goes into these vehicles. It’s well known that ethanol and methanol cut carbon emissions compared with gasoline. That’s a good chunk of the battle right there. But it doesn’t even take into account the possibility of making both fuels from non-fossil-fuel resources, so that both would be all pluses on our carbon budget.
Ethanol, as currently produced in this country, is synthesized entirely from corn, so there is no fossil-fuel element involved. Ethanol currently takes up 10 percent of all the gasoline sold is this country, but it is currently marketed at 85 percent ethanol in the Midwest, with only a 15 percent element to guarantee starting on cold days.
Methanol is generally synthesized from natural gas, so there is still a fossil-fuel element there, but there is always the possibility of making methanol from non-fossil sources. Municipal waste could easily be converted directly to methanol.
And of course there is always the possibility of synthesizing ethanol and methanol using renewable energy. People always talk about storing wind or solar energy as hydrogen, but methanol would be easier to store than hydrogen since it is a liquid to begin with and not subject to leakage and escape. Methanol can be easily stored in our current infrastructure.
The Chinese are currently building six methanol plants in Texas and Louisiana to take advantage of all the natural gas being produced there. All this methanol is slated to be shipped by tankers back to China, where it will be used to boost China’s own methanol industry — and to run some of the 1 million methanol cars the Chinese have on the road.
Yes, the Chinese are far ahead of us when it comes to using methanol a substitute for oil. But there’s a scenario that will introduce methanol in the American auto industry. With all this methanol on hand in Texas and Louisiana, someone will install a pump on one of the premises for dispensing methanol. Cars at the site will use it. Then someone will say, “Hey, why don’t I use this in my car at home? It’s cheaper.” Before you know it, there will be a contingency to have the EPA decide that methanol can be used in automobile engines the same as ethanol is currently used. And in the end, we will have large quantities of methanol substituting for foreign oil.
Is it a dream? No more unrealistic than the dreams that kept the Google scientists occupied for four years.