Archive for category Energy Facts & Policies
Did You Really Think Your Investment in “Solyndra” Was a Good One?
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Stimulus/Bailout on May 26, 2010
Didn’t know you invested in Solyndra? Well if your if you are one of that small class of current taxpayers, or you have children, or grandchildren who will be smothered by Obamadebt, you have indeed invested in Solyndra.
You should perhaps know a few facts about Solyndra: It is a solar-panel manufacturer in Fremont, California. It has a new partially constructed facility that will provide 3000 temporary construction jobs in Fremont and it is expected to provide 1000 production jobs. It has accumulated debt of $557 million and paid for the new plant with $535 million of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package. Oh, by the why, Price Waterhouse & Coopers the auditor questions its ability “to continue as a going concern.”
Now, do you expect an equity return on that investment? That is a return commensurate with the high risk nature of the investment? You shouldn’t because while you have supplied the bulk of the capital it is in the form of debt. If anything you will get a debt return despite your equity type risk. The real return if any is ever made will go to the equity investors.
Now, a couple more facts: The sun doesn’t always shine on solar panels. To date solar panel generated electricity needs taxpayer subsidy to make any economic sense whatsoever. (So you and yours will also subsidize Solyndra’s customers, for which you will only get billed!) And, I saved the best for last: Hussein Obama visited Solyndra’s plant today, as an adjunct to his trip to generate bucks for Barbara Boxer’s senate campaign. (See: Debra Saunders’s The Obama Mantra: Bill, Baby, Bill in the May 27th RCP.)
Still feel good about that investment?
Indian Giver?
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Energy Facts & Policies, Environment, Politics on April 2, 2010
Obama opened up some offshore drilling, but kept more closed. Some have speculated that he’s come down hard on coal and will thus lose some democratic votes so he needs to fill the gap by cajoling some republican votes for his cap and trade debacle. His nuclear energy opening rings vaguely familiar with support by guarantees of debt but no real cut through of the environmental roadblocks. This is kinda a sleeves of your vest giveaway! As kids we used the term–now politically incorrect, I’m sure–Indian giver! Here’s the WSJ graphic from Thursday’s edition, President Seeks Middle Path.
Sean Higgins also penned this report for the Investors Business Daily, Obama To Open Up Offshore Drilling, But Not That Much. Reminds me of the old saw, how do you tell when __________is lying……his lips are moving!
Obama’s Playing Politics With Yucca……..What’s New?
Posted by Tom in Energy Facts & Policies, Environment, Politics, Yucca Mountain on March 17, 2010
Our ever disingenuous Hussein Obama said he’s in favor of nuclear power in his state of the union speech, yet he has his Secretary of Energy Steven Chu withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application. This was all of a sudden. Brian O’Connell of the Regulatory Utility Commissioners is calling foul: after over 8000 pages of data showing the suitability of Yucca as a repository filed by the Energy Department, “so the fact the same agency now says it’s not a workable option begs for more detail.” The withdrawal request “was very skimpy as to why.”
The Regulatory Utility Commissioners have filed a brief before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board challenging the Obama action. Of course Obama thinks nothing of wasting the $10 billion already spent on Yucca or for that matter the $17 billion already paid by ratepayers into the federal waste fund. See Rebecca Smith’s WSJ report, Utility Regulators Want Yucca Open.
Methinks Harry Reid is having his way with Obama on this one; he’s hurting Nevada in the process; see the arguments at NV4CFE.org.
Net Neutrality, Empowerment Nevada, NV4CFE.org, and the Cato Summit
Posted by Tom in Constitution, Democrats, Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Environment, Government Regulation, Military Policy, Politics, Statism, Yucca Mountain on March 17, 2010
What a great Reno Hayek Symposium Dinner last evening. I want to thank Susie Evans and Manny Martinez of Charter for the excellent discussion of net neutrality and its potential impact on our First Amendment freedoms and the free-market functioning of our economy. Broadband pipes are not free they require invested capital on which a return is expected. Demands for priority use of those pipes must be compensated. In essence, the “net neutrality” free loaders, with no investment at stake, are demanding priority use of those pipes without adequate compensation. Note that the pipe owners are not monopolies they are subject to free market competition; cable, phone, satellite all compete in a non-common carrier environment.
George Gilder points out in his recent WSJ article, Cap and Trade for the Internet, since 2001 the U.S. has led the world in internet deregulation with some $4 Trillion of investment increasing residential bandwidth 54 fold. But new attempts to promote regulation including net neutrality will turn this on its head. Economics-abundance or scarcity-in a free competitive market is regulation enough. Of course that’s not the tack the Obama statist are taking. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is moving to expand government control of the web. The WSJ editorial, Broadband Trojan Horse, discusses Obama’s “national broadband plan” including reclassification of the web as a “telecom service” subjecting it to “common carrier” status regulation and “open access” regulation. This solution in search of a problem is emblematic of Obama’s Soviet style control freaks. If implemented, it will destroy private investment. Thanks again to Susie Evans and Manny Martinez.
Ryan Costella and Dana Andrus gave a brief presentation on Empowerment Nevada a grass roots community action program they are initiating that basically promotes community problem solving without government involvement. Ryan hopes to enlist concerned citizens to re-ignite the spirit that founded this country and this state. He sees this as a springboard to other communities, other states and eventually the nation. “We want people who raise their hands to help, not hold their hand out.” His argument is that both left and right can agree on one thing: grass roots problem solving works. We wish Ryan luck in his efforts.
John Dunn gave us an update on Nevadans 4 Carbon Free Energy’s recent publicity campaign. The two Reno public meetings and attendant press reports have been well received. Politically the concept of a Yucca Energy Park including storage, reprocessing, power generation and research, seems to be a non-starter. The group has concluded that grassroots support is the key. This may, in fact, include a ballot initiative to let the voters decide. One thing for sure, jobs and money for Nevada and safe storage nationally are real necessities. I’ll keep updating as the occasion arises. Meantime check out: NV4CFE.org.
Finally, Jerry O’Driscoll briefed us on the recent Cato Summit in which he participated as a panelist. There were two presentations that particularly impressed him: Afghanistan-we need to win enough of the inter tribal wars to get the Taliban in charge so we can negotiate an exit. Climategate-the wounded scientific community caught in their phony research and conclusions appears to be as rough as Chicago politicians. My current issue of the Weekly Standard summarizes the reason on the cover!
Tom Motherway
Paleface Speak With Forked Tongue
Posted by Tom in Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Government Regulation, Nevada, Yucca Mountain on March 11, 2010
Yep, Obama’s at it again, saying one thing and doing another. This time it’s An Energy Head Fake, as today’s WSJ calls it. The litany of State of the Union promises included “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” and “new offshore areas for oil and gas development.” Hooray! The guy is really serious about reducing our energy dependency.
NOT! Since that time Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, halted the plan for leasing the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf. But this wasn’t a military command “halt,” it was more like death by a thousand cuts, including:
- extending the public comment period by six months,
- taking “several weeks” (which turned out to be five months) to analyze comments,
- informing Congress that he was scrapping the lease plan,
- informing Congress that leasing will not begin for another two years,
- failing to comply with the deadline for submitting a court-ordered EIR for new leases off the Alaskan coast, and
- rebuffing Virginia’s request to allow offshore drilling.
Onshore, Salazar is canceling oil and gas leases in Utah and Wyoming. He also plans to have Obama designate 10 million of acres of western lands as “monuments” under the Antiquities Act putting them off limits for mineral rights. Nevada is impacted in this effort.
On the nuclear front, Obama’s promised $8.3 billion loan guarantee for two nukes in Georgia while nice is meaningless in the absence of regulatory certainty according to Mike Morris, CEO of American Electric Power. And of course Obama continues his head fake by putting the kibosh on Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.
Growth and attendant energy demand in China and India are all too certain. Continuation of our serious energy dependency is painfully assured. As long as we ignore real energy resources at our disposal and waste taxpayer money on subsidies for wind and solar we are endangering our economic future.
Unfortunately we are stuck with a president caught up in himself and his last “teleprompted” rhetoric. To put it kindly, “he doesn’t walk the talk.” I sometimes wonder if he listens to it at all!
Tom Motherway
“idiocy of Yucca Mountain” Blasted by AEP CEO Morris
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Democrats, Energy Facts & Policies, Government Regulation, Nevada, Statism, Yucca Mountain on March 5, 2010
Today’s WSJ front page notes Democrats Revolt Over Energy. Apart from the subsidies wasted on wind energy used to enrich Chinese manufacturers and the EPA proceeding to regulate the air we exhale, the Yucca Mountain closing is coming under fire.
Big utility operators as well as some states like South Carolina and Washington are blasting the Obama administrations announcement that it will drop plans for a federal nuclear-waste vault beneath Yucca Mountain.
“The Energy Department’s move to formally drop its application for the Yucca Mountain waste site could hobble efforts to build more nuclear power plants—a strategy the Obama administration has promoted as a way to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. Without a permanent solution to the waste-storage problem, several states, including California, won’t let new nuclear plants be built.”
“Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power Co., said on Thursday that “there has to be a reaction,” because Yucca is the only site that’s been vetted and deemed capable of storing waste from the nation’s 104 operating power reactors. Speaking at a Wall Street Journal conference, he blasted the “idiocy of Yucca Mountain” being terminated as a repository, and said the government will have wasted $10 billion on the project if it doesn’t proceed.”
“Under federal law, Yucca is the designated site for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. But the repository is more than a decade behind schedule. As a result, the waste generally remains at the nuclear reactors and DOE sites where it was generated.”
But what’s a few billion dollars wasted, a significant number of jobs lost, and the pronouncement of conflicting federal policies to this consummate totalitarian? 2012 can’t come any too soon!
Tom Motherway
Yucca Update: NV4CFE Website is Live
Posted by Tom in Energy Facts & Policies, Nevada, Yucca Mountain on February 23, 2010
This is an update on our recent dinner presentation on the Yucca Energy Park, see Yucca Mountain=Jobs and Money For Nevada. Gene Humphrey, Mike Nusbaum and John Dunn are proceeding apace with the non-profit entity, Nevadans 4 Carbon Free Energy. Their new website, while still being constructed is live and open for business and any comments you want to share; check it out, http://nv4cfe.org. Sign up for email alerts on the right column, you can also get the latest news there, and by clicking the education tab at the top you have access to a DOE video describing the Yucca construction and testing being accomplished.
Tom Motherway
Who Owns Obama and the Democrats?
Posted by Tom in Democrats, Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Environment, Individual Freedom, Politics, Unions, Wall Street on January 29, 2010
There are primarily four major political groups that literally own Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats: Unions, particularly the public employee unions. Trial lawyers. Environmentalists. And, Wall Street and Business Rent Seekers. The cost of these relationships to the economy and to our freedom is significant but difficult to completely quantify.
Unions. According to the latest figures overall union membership as a percentage of the workforce has held steady with 2008 at 12.4% and 2009 at 12.3%. Within that overall group, however, the private sector unionization declined from 7.6 to 7.2% while the public sector grew from 36.8 to 37.4%. It’s no secret that Obama favored the unions over the bondholders in his nationalization of GM and Chrysler. Nor is it a secret that his most frequent visitor is Andy Stern who will let you know what they spent to get Obama elected! Oh, and about 1 million of the federal work force are union members, 28% of the wage and salary workforce. As to the effects of this, see my post of January 7th Unions and Excessive Government Compensation.
Trial Lawyers. This is that monopoly of “professionals” who are licensed to represent real or pretended injured people for “contingency fees” of 25-50% of the awards obtained in trial or, more likely, settlement. These “injured” plaintiffs can be investors, cancer patients, or “whiplash” victims. Oftentimes the attorneys advertise to let them know they are “injured” or purchase new issue stock to become self fulfilling injured plaintiffs themselves! Recent cases have highlighted the manufactured testimony that these lawyers pay for, the perjury that they suborn. According to a recent post in OpenSecrets.org, during the last decade the trial lawyer given over 90% of their political contributions to the Democrats. In 2009 $2.86 Million to the Democrats and $140 Thousand to Republicans. Is it any wonder that there are no caps on medical malpractice damages in Obamacare? Thus big awards, large insurance premiums and defensive medicine will continue to drive up medical costs. (In the interest of full disclosure, I was once one of these trial lawyers, but as Woodrow Wilson said, “I have repented of it”)
Environmentalists. This is the most difficult economic drag and freedom surrender to estimate. Consider the ethanol debacle both in terms of costs and free market damage where the government pays producers to produce, forces customers to buy and restricts cheaper imports for a process and substance which increases greenhouse gasses! Consider the recent cap and trade bill passed by the House. Or, how about the CO2 we exhale and the EPA’s intention to regulate it as harmful! Has there been a cost-benefit analysis on the solar, wind, insulation state and federal tax and other subsidies or the wasted economic investment as a result thereof? And all of this for a “global warming science” in which the scientists manipulate the data!
Wall Street and Business Rent Seekers. Now we get to the folks we love to hate, the money guys who have long sucked at the Democratic teat. These folks spend the money to get the edge. They love cap and trade because they will become the traders getting the juice of commissions. They love Barney Frank’s push on Fannie and Freddie for more subprime mortgages because they generated fees from packaging and selling them as securities. Some felt “forced” to deal like drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies in the recent Obamacare debacle. Others just sought advantage over honest competition; in economic terms they are simply rent seekers.
These poor seekers of corporate welfare are the easiest to turn on for political reasons, so Obama is turning on them appearing like the populist he isn’t, while still taking their cash. This is truly fun to watch but is of little significance.
As long as the elite Democratic rulers are literally owned by these very special and influential interests, our economy will flounder and our freedoms will diminish.
FOLLOW UP: Media-Educators. At dinner tonight on this penultimate day of January Bill Collins suggested that Hollywood should have been included in the list of “owners.” Sure enough, common knowledge and a cursory internet search reminds us that Democrats dominate “Tinsel Town.” But this is just one segment of the media, the entertainment segment of the Fourth Estate, if you will. So, it seems incumbent to include the MSM (Main Stream Media) like MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN. It’s not too obvious that fawning lap dogs like Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann are more than a bit biased. Stretching the “media” definition we can easily include the educational establishment. Hard to find a non-Obama hope-change professor on a college campus today. It would seem fair to say that the Media-Educators should indeed be included in the list of owners of Obama and the Democrats. Their influence aside from environmentalism would seem to be more social than economic. Things like “gay marriage” and “don’t ask, don’t tell” interest them. The cost here is to our intelligence and to the future of our society, thus our freedom. This is hard to measure in economic terms. But it is perhaps more critical to our democracy. The lack of education, intelligence in the electorate, and a free press willing to to its critical, investigative job will if continued doom our future.
Pray that the next generations are smarter than ours and will remedy this sorry state of affairs!
Tom Motherway
Industry Appeals For Regulation-To Avoid Obama Dictatorship
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Environment, Government Regulation on December 8, 2009
How sad it is that this once great democracy has devolved to a leftist dictatorship with Obama as its head.
His EPA on Monday declared emissions of “greenhouse gasses” including carbon dioxide and five others to be a danger to human health. That’s right, Obama’s administrative agency has declared carbon dioxide hazardous to your health. Think of it, when you flatulate (pass gas), the EPA says it is harmful to your health. I wonder if it would be harmful if you stopped flatulating, even though it would more pleasant for the rest of us!
But I joke, only to show the silliness and seriousness of this very dangerous action. No doubt this announcement was timed to coincide with the opening of the Copenhagen climate talks where our erstwhile leader plans to contribute his “fair share,” $10 Billion of your money. Our young US prince rides into town with his nobel peace prize in hand and leads the US and Europe into economic collapse. And this in face of evidence that the global warming data has been manipulated to show a preordained conclusion that profits the Al-Gorelike prophets of doom. Could Alice in Wonderland have been in a more sane environment?
US industry is worried because in a sense our economy and in fact our country runs on things that produce CO2. Whether its that Big Mac you eat, the CNN show you watch, or the electric light switch you flip on, carbon dioxide is produced. The utilities are particularly worried, worried that some unelected bureaucrat at Obama’s EPA will shut them down. Or shut them down economically by requiring expensive processes and equipment that will raise the cost of production beyond affordability. Yes, in the end this all translates into a carbon tax that the American consumer will pay. Now the EPA is not required to consider economics in its rule making.
But never fear, an EPA spokeswoman–excuse me spokesperson–in defending the “dangerous to human health” finding, said ” we invite the public to review the extensive scientific analysis informing” it. (Yeah, right!) Yet Obama and his EPA totally ignore the East Anglia University email fraud debunking global warming, otherwise known as Climategate.
So today the WSJ reports that US industry is asking Congress to regulate it! How often to you see businessmen asking to be regulated? You would expect industry executives to oppose regulation. In fact, they generally do oppose it. But where they fear something worse, like uninformed fiat imposed by a dictator’s unaccountable minions, they need to influence the outcome. Thus they want to bring the regulatory proposals into the political process, talk to representatives and senators who depend on contributions to be re-elected. So for the businessmen it’s the lesser of two evils and understandable.
What’s puzzling though is why Obama would want to take uneconomic action, especially job-killing action in the midst of a recession, and at a time when his deficits are breaking records, his national debt pile up is beyond sustainability and the action will produce no environmental results. Can hubris be that strong? Or ignorance that deep? Or lust for power that blinding? I’m at a loss for an answer.
‘Tis a sad day for America, indeed!
Tom Motherway
Peak Oil Update
Posted by Tom in Energy Facts & Policies on August 3, 2009
The following from Don Parsons on the dramatic changes in the peak oil assessment:
The IEA, for the first time, has done a comprehensive survey of 800 oil fields covering three-quarters of the world’s existing production. Note their new estimate of the global decline rate of 6.7%, nearly double their previous estimate. This is truly an alarming rate of depletion, equal to 5.5 million bopd, which must be replaced each year just to keep production stable. This amounts to new discoveries of the magnitude of 15 billion bbls per year. We haven’t found that much oil in a single year in the last quarter century. In the last 15 years, discoveries have averaged less than half that amount. As the aging super giant fields, most of which were discovered pre-1970, go into decline, the global decline rate is likely to worsen.
Here’s the report, Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast.