The White House Is Still Considering Carbon Taxes to Pay for Biden's Massive Spending
Speaking to reporters at the White House Tuesday afternoon, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration is still considering some kind of carbon tax to help pay for President Biden's big government, domestic agenda.
"There's a range of revenue raisers and options on the table," Psaki said, arguing corporate polluter fees don't violate Biden's promise not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 per year.
Americans for Tax Reform begs to differ.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) confirmed today that the Senate majority leader asked him to craft carbon tax legislation to be included in Democrats' $3.5 trillion tax and spend blowout.
Upon the request of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), Wyden is drafting legislation that could create a carbon tax starting as high as $18 per ton and set to increase over time, according to reporting from the New York Times. For context, the Congressional Budget Office has previously estimated that a $20 per ton carbon tax would increase taxes by $1.2 trillion over a decade while the center-left Tax Policy Center found a $20 per ton carbon tax reduces the pre-tax income of households in the lowest income quintile by nearly one percent.
This tax increase would violate President Biden’s pledge not to raise any form of tax on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. A carbon tax would increase the price of gasoline, household energy bills and everyday consumer goods.
The White House has had a hard time convincing Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to go along with Biden's $3.5 trillion spending plan. Manchin specifically is raising questions about carbon taxes already in the bill.
"I just heard about that," Manchin told reporters on Capitol Hill Monday. "Any type of a tax is going to be passed on to the people."
"Now if a tax is going to be beneficial to help something and give us more research and development and innovation and technology, it’s something to look at," he said.
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Missouri’s largest wind farm isn’t running at night for fear of killing endangered animals
Every night for months, turbines at Missouri’s largest wind farm sit idle to avoid killing endangered and threatened bats.
And now, as the wind farm’s owner, Ameren Missouri, seeks permission to increase customers’ rates, consumer advocates are sounding the alarm. They argue customers shouldn’t have to pay the full costs of the wind farm on their bills if it’s not fully functional. And at least one fears the company won’t meet state standards for renewable energy.
The St. Louis electric utility purchased the High Prairie Renewable Energy Center near Kirksville from a developer and started operations last year. The 175-turbine facility should produce up to 400 megawatts.
But according to testimony filed with regulators who are expected to decide on Ameren’s requested rate increase, High Prairie is not producing at full capacity.
“To be clear, the High Prairie Wind Farm has been curtailed from before dusk to after dawn since April 19, 2021,” Geoff Marke, chief economist for the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel said in sworn testimony filed last week with the Missouri Public Service Commission.
Ameren halted night operations for several weeks this spring after four bats, which are nocturnal, and 52 birds, including a bald eagle, were discovered dead on the property, according to a report submitted to federal wildlife officials.
It received a permit in May from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to operate in a way that seeks to minimize the number of endangered or threatened bats it kills each year. But bats kept turning up on the property.
So despite Ameren’s good faith efforts to protect the bats, in June, it voluntarily stopped running the turbines at night, said Karen Herrington, a field supervisor for the Missouri Ecological Services Field Office of the USFWS.
It’s the only wind farm in Missouri that Herrington said she is aware of that has had to stop operating at night to avoid bat kills.
Ameren is currently seeking a rate increase from customers worth nearly $300 million, including costs from High Prairie that it hopes to recover from ratepayers.
But consumer and business advocates filed testimony estimating that the wind farm is only operational about 75% of the year. They want Ameren to recoup far less of those proceeds.
“To the extent that you have to reduce the output or reduce the operating times of the wind farm so that you’re not running it at night, ratepayers should not be on the hook to pay a return for an asset that can’t fully operate,” said Greg Meyer, a consultant who testified before the PSC on behalf of Missouri Industrial Energy Consumers.
Beyond that, Marke said in testimony, Ameren is at risk of failing to meet a state requirement that, starting this year, utilities generate at least 15% of their power from renewable resources.
In a statement, Ameren’s chief renewable development office, Ajay Arora, said the company stands alongside supporters of clean energy and said growing solar and wind power benefits customers. Achieving net-zero carbon emissions, which Ameren has pledged to do by 2050, “will require significant investments in new wind and solar facilities.”
High Prairie, Arora noted, has been operating for nine months.
“It operates every day for the benefit of all of our customers, and we anticipate it will continue to do so for decades to come,” Arora said. “Throughout siting, construction, permitting, and now generating clean energy at High Prairie, Ameren Missouri has worked closely with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation.”
High Prairie History
Ameren first sought approval in 2018 for the High Prairie wind farm, which sits in Adair and Schuyler counties in northeast Missouri.
Even at that time, some groups raised concerns about the location, given the prevalence of the endangered Indiana bats and threatened northern long-eared bats, both listed by USFWS. The wind farm’s USFWS permit also covers the little brown bat, which is not listed federally but is a “species of conservation concern” for the Missouri Department of Conservation.
“If Ameren Missouri’s project results in fatalities of vulnerable, endangered or protected species, Ameren Missouri could be liable for financial penalties and potential enforced curtailment of generation, which in turn could raise future prudency concerns and would almost certainly include greater scrutiny of future wind projects,” Marke said in testimony in 2018.
Herrington said while USFWS doesn’t have a role in determining where wind facilities can go, the service informed Ameren that the site was a high risk location because of the prevalence of Indiana bats.
Federal data show seven Indiana bats have been killed on the premises since Ameren received its permit. Given the size of the property, there are likely to be more. The company is expected to file a report next week with USFWS to estimate its impact on birds and bats in the area.
Rate case
Both OPC and the Missouri Industrial Energy Consumers are advocating that customers pay a much smaller share of the High Prairie than Ameren proposed in its rate filings.
Marke said in testimony that he feared the reduced hours the wind farm can operate might mean Ameren fails to obtain its renewable energy standard, the state law requiring that it obtain 15% of its power from renewable sources.
“As such, I do not believe ratepayers should be responsible for any costs related to Ameren’s poor managerial decisions in electing to site its wind farm where it did,” Marke said.
Only 75% of the nearly $600 million in costs from the wind farm should be recovered from ratepayers, he wrote.
MIEC, represented by Greg Meyer, proposed cutting more than $8 million from the return Ameren is asking to receive on the investment.
The PSC is months away from hearing Ameren’s rate case, and new rates won’t take effect until next year.
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GOODBYE TO COAL? NOT SO FAST!
The obituary of coal as an energy source has been written many times, but rumors of coal’s death are premature, as two stories in the news show. In the U.K., Britain is forced to fire up coal plant amid record power prices and winter squeeze.
Like the U.S., Britain has been relying increasingly on wind power. Funny thing about that–it doesn’t work when the wind stops blowing.
Energy prices have spiked to a record high in Britain after calm weather shut down the country’s wind turbines amid a global shortage of natural gas.
Wholesale power costs surged to more than four times their normal level, forcing officials to fire up coal-based plants to handle demand.
It is feared the high prices will continue into winter as the weather gets colder, raising fears over household bills and putting a string of energy suppliers at risk of going bust.
A global natural gas shortage? The U.S. might do something about that, if we had an administration that was not determined to shut down one of our cleanest energy sources, along with nuclear power. More:
Electricity prices reached an all-time high of £240 per megawatt hour on Friday and were trading at £219.46 per MwH on the N2EX exchange on Monday morning.
The squeeze was worsened by a slump in wind output in the UK. It dropped as low as 474 megawatts, compared to a record of 14,286 megawatts on May 21, according to analysis by Bloomberg, as a three-day heatwave settled across much of England and Wales.
Wind now provides about 20pc of the UK’s electricity throughout the year, but this varies hugely day by day.
At 7pm this evening, real time data showed Britain was getting 45.6pc of its power from gas-fired turbines, 13.5pc from nuclear power plants, 5.5pc from wind and 12.3pc from interconnectors to the continent and Northern Ireland. 5.5pc was coming from coal.
National Grid ESO, which balances Great Britain’s power supply, asked EDF to switch on two coal-fired units at its West Burton A station this morning to help meet demand.
Coal has its faults, but unlike wind and solar, it is reliable and cheap.
Global demand for coal continues to grow, and Australia is a major exporter. A representative of the United Nations requested or demanded that Australia stop producing and selling coal. The government told the U.N. to pound sand.
A United Nations demand for Australia to accept coal’s days are numbered was comprehensively rejected Monday with a lawmaker in Canberra promising the future of the vital export and job creator will be “decided by the Australian Government, not a foreign body.”
“If the world does not rapidly phase out coal, climate change will wreak havoc right across the Australian economy: from agriculture to tourism, and right across the services sector,” [Selwin Hart, the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general and special adviser on climate action] said.
Australia’s Resources Minister Keith Pitt shot back by affirming coal would remain a significant contributor to the Australian economy well beyond 2030.
“The future of this crucial industry will be decided by the Australian Government, not a foreign body that wants to shut it down costing thousands of jobs and billions of export dollars for our economy,” Pitt said, according to the Australian Associated Press.
He pointed to three months to July that saw coal exports soar to $12.5 billion – a 26 per cent increase on the previous quarter – as evidence of just how vital the commodity remains to the Australian economy and the jobs that go with it, the AAP report said.
“Coal will continue to generate billions of dollars in royalties and taxes for state and federal governments, and directly employ over 50,000 Australians,” Pitt added, in a direct challenge to climate activists who join the U.N. in demanding Australia cease and desist the practive.
Support for “green” energy is a mile wide and an inch deep. Most people express favorable opinions of “green” energy, which is not surprising since the propaganda begins in kindergarten. But support for wind and solar evaporates quickly when energy prices triple or quadruple, and most of all, when blackouts begin.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/goodbye-to-coal-not-so-fast.php
*******************************************Australia: Coal prices are roaring back amid a global energy crunch
Soaring coal prices have placed Australia’s mining and energy exports on track to reach a record $349 billion this year even as the value of the nation’s biggest export, iron ore, appears to have peaked.
Markets for thermal coal, used for power generation, are booming around the world as a global recovery from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic drives up demand for energy. Metallurgical coal used in steel-making has also touched new highs as supply shortages combine with rebounding industrial activity.
Federal government trade data to be released on Thursday reveals an expected 10 per cent rise in resources and energy earnings to hit an all-time high of $349 billion in 2021-22, before falling back to $299 billion in 2022-23.
“The sector has gone from strength to strength and is performing better than it was pre-pandemic,” Federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt said.
Coal producers were hit hard in 2020 as the shock of the pandemic pummelled prices and a diplomatic feud led to China banning Australian coal shipments. The sector has also been under mounting pressure as global warming concerns cause investors to flee, while the United Nations, ahead of an upcoming climate summit in Glasgow, is calling on all countries to commit to phasing out thermal coal between 2030-40.
Although this year’s price rally signifies coal’s enduring near-term demand as an abundant source of energy, the federal Industry Department notes the commodity faces “significant competing forces”.
“Recent revenue surges are likely to run up against longer-term structural issues in the coal market,” it said. ”Investor and policy pressure has grown in recent years, and the global coal-fired power plant construction pipeline has contracted since 2015.”
Still, the share prices of ASX-listed coal miners have been rallying in the past month. Investment bank Morgan Stanley described Whitehaven Coal, whose value has jumped almost 50 per cent since August, as a “cash machine” amid expectations of higher coal prices lasting well into 2022.
Prices for the key steel-making ingredient iron ore, however, have been falling rapidly. China, by far the world’s biggest consumer of the commodity, has been seeking to cut steel mills’ output and tackle carbon emissions for the third straight month.
After hitting a record $US230 a tonne in May, iron ore has had its value slashed in half and is now trading below $US110 a tonne, hammering the share prices of the mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue.
UBS analyst Myles Allsop said Chinese steel production had weakened since July as Beijing put pressure on provinces to materially cut energy consumption and intensity to meet targeted emissions cuts of 3 per cent year-on-year. Problems plaguing top Chinese property developer Evergrande had also triggered a slowdown in construction reducing steel demand, he said.
Australia’s iron ore exports reached a record $153 billion in 2021 on the back of an aggressive infrastructure building blitz in China and weaker iron ore output from mines in Brazil, but is forecast to fall by as much as 35 per cent by 2022-23.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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