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Senate Pushing Bipartisan Green Energy Social Engineering Bill

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While there is no bipartisan clamor to use GOP Senate control to force votes on sanctuary cities, there is a rush to pass a bipartisan bill dumping more money into green energy programs. Some might have thought we were done with the green energy venture socialism after the Obama era of Solyndra scandals, but in Washington, both parties are addicted to corporate welfare. Hence the rush to pass S. 2657, the American Energy Innovation Act.

It’s hard to call this bill bipartisan, given that the lead GOP sponsor is Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Yet even after voting against Kavanaugh and flirting with support for impeachment, she seems to control the Senate floor agenda more than anyone pushing the Trump agenda on immigration.

On Monday, the Senate voted to proceed with debate on her compilation of 50 energy bills. However, instead of focusing on all the ways government, and the federal courts in particular, impede the exploring, production, and transportation of proven and successful forms of energy production in this country, the bill focuses on pumping more money and government preferences into tenuous forms of green energy. Party like it’s 2009?

The bill is full of subsidies and government research for alternative energy and for “carbon capture” investments. While it stops short of creating “climate change” carbon mandates, the entire premise of the bill accepts the universe in which the Left operates; namely, that we need to move away from reliable energy and work on global warming priorities.

Specifically, the 555-page bill would offer parochial research grants and subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric power. It also promotes carbon capture to reduce carbon emissions. The bill’s authors say the legislation “encourages smart manufacturing” in the industrial and transportation sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bill reauthorizes and grows all the Department of Energy programs the president promised to cut when he took office in 2017. The cost is estimated at $579 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

We know from past history that mandates and market distortions, responsible for creating junky products at a higher cost, begin with government subsidies and “encouragements” signaling to the market that “green” is the way to go. This bill promotes all sorts of workforce pilot programs for cutting greenhouse emissions and for green energy social engineering of our economy, industries, and labor market. It of course has numerous provisions to tip those programs to “minority outreach” companies.

What is perhaps most offensive is that this “bipartisan” bill dealing with workplace programs at the Department of Energy’s National Labs does nothing to address the concern of a bipartisan Senate report that 10,000 Chinese nationals are conducting research in those labs, some of whom are helping China steal our research.

It’s a little bizarre that in a Congress that has accomplished very little legislatively, there is a hellfire rush to pass this random bill to herald Lisa Murkowski’s legacy. But to the extent we are going to suddenly focus on energy policy, why not focus on the judicial war against our oil and gas production, which is probably our greatest economic miracle? No, Congress doesn’t need to subsidize it like they do with wind and solar, but at least get the courts out of the way.

In recent years, the courts have blocked every stage of pipeline construction, such as the much-touted Keystone XL Pipeline. They have also mandated that Trump continue Obama’s lawless policies holding up permitting for oil and natural gas exploration throughout the country.

While we have record production and refining of crude oil, there is still a need to transport that oil, which requires more pipelines. There is an infrastructure bottleneck being created by states like New York blocking more oil streams into New England. Why won’t Congress prioritize legislation to limit judicial review on these projects?

If they are going to dump more money into industries that can’t seem to make it on their own, shouldn’t they equally focus on getting the government out of industries that have single-handedly secured us from dependency on Middle Eastern oil?

A 2018 report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that “renewable energies” were subsidized at a rate 14 times greater than fossil fuels. Whereas renewable energy received $6.682 billion in subsidies in fiscal year 2016, fossil fuels received $489 million. Yet fossil fuels accounted for 78.1 percent of our annual energy production in FY 2016. Nuclear power contributed 10 percent, as the next largest source of production. What about green energy?

Biomass: 5.9 percent
Hydroelectric: 2.9 percent
Wind: 2.4 percent
Solar: 0.6 percent
Geothermal: 0.2 percent

What ever happened to the GOP mantra during the Obama years of letting the market work and refraining from picking winners and losers in an industry driven by practicality and results?

It sure seems like the more Republicans “fight socialism,” the more they become a lot like it and call it bipartisanship. (For more from the author of “Senate Pushing Bipartisan Green Energy Social Engineering Bill” please click HERE)

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DC’s Green-Approved Buildings Using More Energy

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Adam Stepien/Agencja GazetaWashington, D.C. may have the highest number of certified green buildings in the country, but research by Environmental Policy Alliance suggests it might not be doing much good.

The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.

LEED is the brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group.

Washington, D.C.’s Department of Environment made the capital the first city in the nation to mandate LEED certifications in the construction of public buildings. The standards are now being phased in.

The results are measured in EUI’s, a unit that relates a building’s energy consumption to its size; the higher the number, the more energy is expended by a smaller building.

Read more this story HERE.

Obama Gives Green Energy Cronies Green Light to Kill Eagles for Thirty Years

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Wind EagleThe Obama administration said Friday it will allow some companies to kill or injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty, an effort to spur development and investment in green energy while balancing its environmental consequences.

The change, requested by the wind energy industry, will provide legal protection for the lifespan of wind farms and other projects for which companies obtain a permit and make efforts to avoid killing the birds.

An investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year documented the illegal killing of eagles around wind farms, the Obama administration’s reluctance to prosecute such cases and its willingness to help keep the scope of the eagle deaths secret. The White House has championed wind power, a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, as a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s energy plan.

In other areas, too, such as the government’s support for corn-based ethanol to reduce U.S. dependence on gasoline, the White House has allowed the green industry to do not-so-green things. Another AP investigation recently showed that ethanol has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

Under the change announced Friday, companies would have to commit to take additional measures if they kill or injure more eagles than they have estimated they would, or if new information suggests that eagle populations are being affected. The permits would be reviewed every five years, and companies would have to submit reports of how many eagles they kill. Now such reporting is voluntarily, and the Interior Department refuses to release the information.

Read more from this story HERE.

Electric Car Owner Charged With Stealing Nickel of Electricity from Public School (+video)

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One Saturday in November, Kaveh Kamooneh drove his Nissan Leaf to Chamblee Middle School, where his 11-year-old son was playing tennis.

Kamooneh had taken the liberty of charging the electric car with an exterior outlet at the school. Within minutes of plugging in the car, he says a Chamblee police officer appeared.

“He said that he was going to charge me with theft by taking because I was taking power, electricity from the school,” Kamooneh said.

Kamooneh says he had charged his car for 20 minutes, drawing about a nickel’s worth of juice. Don Francis of Clean Cities Atlanta, an electric vehicle advocacy group, says the estimate of 5 cents is accurate.

“I’m not sure how much electricity he stole,” said Chamblee police Sergeant Ernesto Ford, but he added: It doesn’t matter. “He broke the law. He stole something that wasn’t his.”

Read more about this electric car owner HERE.

Obama Dumps Green Energy Billions on “Moderate Muslim” Country that Stones Adulterers

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagWhen Obama invited the tyrannical Sultan of Brunei to sit beneath the portrait of George Washington, it’s a wonder the painting didn’t fall off the wall.

Obama laughingly said that the Sultan had gone through “nine presidents”, which is what happens when you don’t do elections and praised the “160 years of friendship between the United States and Brunei.”

Meanwhile Obama’s pivot to Asia consisted of dumping billions on “moderate” Muslim countries like genocidal Indonesia and tyrannical Brunei for… what else… Green Energy.

Obama, in partnership with Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei and President of the Republic of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, today proposed the U.S.-Asia Pacific Comprehensive Partnership for a Sustainable Energy Future.

The United States will provide up to $6 billion to support the Partnership.

Read more from this story HERE.

Green Britain: Energy Blackouts Imminent

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagThe UK is facing its greatest risk of blackouts since 2007/08 in the coming winter. The National Grid, responsible for balancing the country’s supply and demand of energy, last week has given this warning because Britain’s reserves of electricity have halved in 12 months.

The UK and the USA are in the same boat here. Both countries have governments that have – or pretend to have — fallen for the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory hook, line, and sinker.

The Obama Administration’s regulations to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which The New York Times has described as “an aggressive move by Mr. Obama to bypass Congress on climate change with executive actions he promised in his inaugural address this year,” have been denounced as part of the president’s “war on coal.”

White House climate adviser Daniel P. Schrag, director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, admitted in an interview with the paper that this is exactly what it is:

The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants. Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Greens, Lobbyists and Partisans Helping Obama’s Fed Energy Commission Pick Move Through Senate

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama’s nominee to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is coordinating his campaign with two lobbyists for energy companies, a Democratic strategy firm and several other green-technology strategists, according to emails that show an unprecedented effort to gain a position on the obscure board.

Ron Binz, the former head of Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission, has become an unlikely nomination battleground in the Senate, where commissioners for FERC, a regulatory agency that oversees the interstate transmission of electricity, oil and gas, are usually accepted without any problems.

Mr. Binz’s opponents say the lobbying effort is evidence that environmentalists are trying to expand Mr. Obama’s global-warming agenda to FERC, a quasi-judicial independent agency that had until recently had shied away from the contentious debate.

The new emails, which The Washington Times obtained from a pressure group that requested them under federal open-records laws, indicte that FERC employees worked closely with lobbyists, strategists and an employee of the Energy Foundation, a non-profit that is supposed to be limited in what lobbying it is allowed to do.

The coordination has become an issue because it raises questions about who, exactly, is backing Mr. Binz and why lobbyists are involved.

Read more from this story HERE.

Europe and America are Suffering from Green Energy Tyranny

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

President Obama and the hard left ideologues, who guide his energy policies, don’t seem to be paying attention to European economies staggering under the weight of years of “green.”

In a new article called The Law of Unintended Consequences, Peter C. Glover details Europe’s difficulty in coming to grips with providing energy for a modern society:…. with the economic realities of actual paying for a green energy society:

“If there is a message to be gotten across to Joe Public it’s this: there’s no such thing as ‘free’ solar, wind or any other ‘clean energy’ source. Someone, somewhere always has to pay for them. And they will always cost far more than hydrocarbons – don’t believe the green hype believe the physics. The bulk of that subsidized social levy is set to continue to be sustained by Joe Public, especially those forced into fuel poverty by costly renewable levies in their domestic bills.”

Europe is buckling under the weight of subsidizing green and the United States wouldn’t be far behind, except for the fact we have astronomical amounts of fossil energy on private and state lands, where it can’t be sealed off, or regulated away by federal edicts….yet.

But the Obama administration policies are punishing, non green energy producers and the resultant consequences mean unnecessarily higher costs to American consumers.

I asked Richard Storm, an energy expert and power engineer affiliated with Citizens for Common Sense Energy & Environment, for a snap shot into where clean coal technology is today and his thoughts on America’s energy landscape: Coal power is the source of almost 40% of Americas electrical energy:

New coal plants are clean and efficient. In most cases, the new plants replace older plants with much more efficient and much cleaner generation

These new, clean coal plants are likely to continue to produce reliable electricity for decades to come at the most reasonable rates, using America’s Treasure of Coal Energy.

Natural gas prices are likely to increase in the future as more demand for clean natural gas materializes.

Let’s look at just one example: The Duke Energy Cliffside Unit #6, is one of the cleanest power generation plants in the world furnishing enough power for about 660,000 average sized homes

The new Clean Coal Plants are not only cleaner than any others in the world, but they are also more efficient and use about 10% less fuel per megawatt of electricity generated.

America’s oil and gas production has increased during the Obama Presidency because of American innovation, risk taking and hard work by the oil and gas industry. With no help or encouragement from the Obama Administration. In fact, the Keystone Pipeline is just one clear example of Obama’s administration fighting progress. He is against literally all forms of energy except “Green, renewables”

How about shale gas? Nope. Neither Obama or the allies in the Environmental extremists support shale gas either. After the Sierra Club received millions of dollars to fight coal plants from Chesapeake Energy, now they are against shale gas. So are the Dept. of Interior and the EPA. One of the planned new coal plants for Oklahoma was stopped by the Sierra Club and Cheapeake Energy. As in other states, natural gas fueled plants were built as a substitute. This may be economical for a couple more years, but then gas prices are expected to rise. So will power costs because fuel is about 80% of the production cost of electricity.

A reminder, America runs on energy. 90% of America’s Energy comes from the traditional fuels of Coal, Oil, Natural Gas and Nuclear. Yes, 90%. When organizations are against these, millions of jobs are at risk as well as America’s energy security. Not to mention the fact that America has a high standard of living which is enjoyed by all.

Who can be against America’s sustained strength? Here are a few answers. The Sierra Club, The Natural Resources Defense Council, PEW Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation,most of The Democrat Party and for certain, the Democrat leadership.

Come on America; let’s get back to making America strong again. I support the four E’s: Energy, Economic Prosperity, Education and Environmental protection. Yes, speaking for myself and every other power engineer in the business, I support clean air, clean water and a strong America. Who wouldn’t?

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

DOE Defends $100M Grant to Green Company that Now May File Bankruptcy

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The Energy Department is defending its decision to award nearly $100 million to a major green energy company that has been investigated by two federal agencies and says it may be forced to declare bankruptcy.

ECOtality announced the company’s potential bankruptcy in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week. It also revealed that it is under investigation by the Labor Department. The company was previously subject to an SEC investigation into alleged insider trading.

DOE spokesman Bill Gibbons defended the agency’s decision to award ECOtality $99.8 million to build electric-vehicle charging stations around the country.

“The Energy Department’s grant to ECOtality was used for the installation and data collection of charging stations in cities across America where sales of plug-in electric cars are on the rise,” Gibbons said in an email.

“Meant to establish the seeds of infrastructure needed to support a growing market for advanced vehicles, the company installed more than 12,500 charging stations in 18 U.S. cities — or approximately 97 percent of their goal,” he noted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans Feeling the Pain of the Left’s Misguided Energy Policies

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

A few years ago Americans were introduced to “Green Companies” with cutting edge and promising names like: Solyndra, Fisker, Abound Solar and many others. All of them were the recipients of government backed loans and almost all of them have gone bankrupt leaving the American taxpayer holding the bag for billions. See Heritage.

Not only were these “green companies” the recipients of outright taxpayer loans which they never repaid, they were also on the receiving end of tax breaks and subsidies designed to give them an edge.

For instance Tesla can get $45,000 for each car it sells in state and federal subsidies. The Tesla S starts at $69,000, so about 40% of its total cost is subsidies See: WUWT article.
See Tesla loses $10,000 Per Car: Profit Made From Government Subsidies, Loans and Incentives: Stephen Frank’s California.

But to even tilt the playing field farther in their favor, the government under the guise of the EPA and other agencies was busy punishing the competition of the favored “green energy industries.”

Obamas first Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said his stated goal was to get Americas gasoline prices in line with Europe’s. In California last week a gallon of supreme was 4.45.

The Keystone Pipeline has been delayed for years. More red tape and delay is greeting energy producers on federal lands. The war on the technology of fracking has delayed the capture of vast new resources of energy.

The administrations war on coal has been nothing short of a genocidal campaign against one of Americas most abundant and cheap sources of energy. Ignoring the fact huge advances have been achieved in the clean burning of coal and more advances are on the way. The government has decided to crush this industry with unreasonable timelines to impose their regulations.

Of course wind energy and solar subsidy campaigns are costing consumers billions and the unreliable power produced by these sources is far more expensive than conventional fossil fuel sources. Sometimes 3 times as much, when you count the hidden costs.

California has already warned consumers their electric rates will rise dramatically this year now that mandated renewable energy is coming on line. Other states will feel the pinch of higher utility rates, as coal fired power plants are shut down and renewable mandates start to kick in. See can’t afford to use the air conditioner.

America is suffering unnecessarily from high energy prices due to policies designed to punish them and foist on citizens forms of energy that are prohibitively costly and unreliable…..When at the same time America is sitting on an ocean of relatively cheap energy. See high cost of renewable electricity mandates by Hoover Institute.

Many European countries have embraced alternative energy at the behest of their left leaning governments and the citizens are now suffering as a result. Some households in the UK have to make a choice between buying food or paying their electric bill. See story in the UK Guardian.

America is about to have its day of reckoning with the reckless green energy policies foisted on them by the left……Elections do have consequences.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.