Biden EPA’s New Vehicle Emissions Standards Spark Backlash From Auto Industry, Republicans
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed emissions standards for automobiles and trucks are raising eyebrows in the auto industry and Washington alike.
“EPA’s proposed emissions plan is aggressive by any measure. By that I mean it sets automotive electrification goals in the next few years that are … very high,” John Bozzella, president and CEO of the automaker trade organization Alliance for Automotive Innovation, wrote in an April 12 blog post.
The federal standards would tightly restrict emissions from new vehicles. That will effectively force automakers to boost their sales of electric vehicles (EVs).
The agency’s proposal anticipates that under the new standards, two-thirds of new light-duty vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by the model year 2032.
It similarly predicts that 46 percent of new medium-duty vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by that model year.
EVs made up less than 6 percent of total new vehicle sales in 2022. That’s an increased percentage relative to past years even as total new vehicle sales were down to 13.8 million units from 17.3 million in 2018.
The EPA claims its standards would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 10 billion tons.
Agency administrator Michael Regan described the standards as the “strongest ever” during an April 12 press conference.
“The proposal exceeds the administration’s own 50 percent electrification target,” Bozzella wrote, adding that his industry is “fully committed to an electric and low-carbon transportation future.”
Not Enough Chargers
Less than two weeks ago, the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department issued complex guidance on EV tax credits that could make it harder for consumers to benefit from those financial incentives.
Bozzella, who began his career working for Democrat New York Mayor David Dinkins, said the guidance would reduce the number of vehicles qualifying for tax credits. That would seem to disincentivize EV adoption even as the administration steps up other measures intended to facilitate more EV purchases.
Bozzella added the 100,000 public, non-proprietary EV chargers in the United States are “not enough.”
An April 6 memo from the automotive alliance argued that electrification would take a “massive, 100-year change to the U.S. industrial base and the way Americans drive.”
Beyond the auto industry, other groups also voiced concerns.
Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, a consumer protection organization, said that the standards are “the same thing BlackRock and ESG extremists like Larry Fink are doing with U.S. pensions and retirement dollars.”
“The American people won’t stand for it,” he added.
Republicans Object
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill responded critically to the announcement, which comes days after new EPA coal plant standards and Biden vetoes aimed at furthering the president’s environmental agenda.
“The Environmental Protection Agency will make cars unaffordable by following California’s lead towards a complete ban on gas-powered vehicles,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“His [Biden’s] misguided policies are hurting American families while helping China,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
“The ‘electrification of everything’ is not a solution. It’s a road to higher prices and fewer choices.”
Sen Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, highlighted some potentially significant issues for the United States as the domestic EV fleet expands.
“These misguided emissions standards were made without considering the supply chain challenges American automakers are still facing, the lack of sufficiently operational electric vehicle charging infrastructure, or the fact that it takes nearly a decade to permit a mine to extract the minerals needed to make electric vehicles, forcing businesses to look to China for these raw materials,” Capito said.
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California’s Last Nuclear Power Plant Diablo Faces Closure Against Lawsuit
An environmental group on Tuesday sued to block Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from seeking to extend the federal operating licenses for California’s last active nuclear power plant.
A complaint filed in the San Francisco Superior Court by advocacy group “Friends of the Earth” asks the court to prohibit the utility from sidestepping its 2016 agreement with environmentalists and plant workers to close the twin-domed Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant by 2025.
In a Twitter post, the environmental group said, “We’re taking PG&E to court to make sure California’s last remaining nuclear plant is retired We won’t stop until the aging, destructive Canyon is closed for good!”
Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, called out PG&E for allegedly backing out of their agreement.
“Contracts simply don’t vanish into thin air,” Templeton said in a statement. “Yet ever since California passed legislation supporting Diablo Canyon’s extension, PG&E has been acting as if our contract has disappeared. Setting aside the agreement to retire Diablo, there are myriad legal prerequisites for extending operations of a nuclear power plant, including federal decisions that states cannot dictate.
“We hope our litigation can push PG&E to reconsider its potential breach and uphold its obligations, including preparing for the agreed-upon retirement.”
The Diablo power plant runs along the Pacific Coast and has been operating since 1985.
California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement that, for decades, has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels but leaves behind waste that can remain radioactive for centuries, requiring special waste treatment.
Nuclear Reactor Needed to Maintain Reliable Power
The California legislature passed SB846 last year, which was signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newson, in an effort to extend the power plant’s operations for another five years, according to the bill.
In March, Newson toured the Diablo Canyon Power Plant after it was announced that the plant may continue operating after its expiration date.
“As we experienced during the record heat wave last September, climate change-driven extreme events are causing unprecedented stress on our power grid—the Diablo Canyon Power Plant is important to support energy reliability as we accelerate progress towards achieving our clean energy and climate goals. I look forward to our continued work with the Biden-Harris Administration and the Legislature to build a reliable and resilient clean electric system,” Newson said in a statement.
The California Energy Commission ruled earlier this year that continuing Diablo’s operations past 2025 is needed to maintain reliable electricity supply throughout the state.
Siva Gunda, the Energy Commission’s vice chair, said that Diablo is an important part of California’s energy options.
“As California confronts a rapidly changing climate, extraordinary heat events and record energy demand are becoming increasingly ordinary. The state needs to keep all options on the table to protect public health and safety,” Gunda said in a statement to LA Times. “This includes maintaining Diablo Canyon’s operations.”
In 2016, then Gov. Jerry Brown agreed to a proposal that would shut Diablo down by its original deadline, along with California utility regulators and state Legislatures, according to the document. This could pose a potential issue during the current lawsuit against PG&E.
According to the PG&E website, “Diablo Canyon has continued to safely produce clean and reliable energy without greenhouse gases (GHG), avoiding 6 to 7 million tons per year of GHGs that would be emitted by conventional generation resources,” the site states.
PG&E said in a statement it had not yet seen the lawsuit but that, as a regulated utility, will follow state policy.
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Dutch minister warns EU leaders of waning public support for climate policies
A senior Dutch minister has warned fellow politicians in Europe of waning public support for the region’s climate policies as showcased by a continuing stand-off between farmers and the government over greenhouse gas limits in the Netherlands.
Deputy prime minister Sigrid Kaag, who also serves as minister of finance, told the Financial Times of the increasingly difficult task her government faces rallying some parts of the electorate behind policies with intergenerational ramifications, including the need to reduce nitrogen-based emissions, which has led to significant disruption, clashes with police and a political upset in elections for the Dutch senate.
https://www.ft.com/content/9777e52a-e290-4d87-ab7f-b5a073921222
*********************************************Australia’s ‘green energy’ chimera
The government has asked the Joint Committee on Trade and Investment Growth to inquire into ‘Australia’s transition to a green energy superpower’. It wants ideas on how to accelerate growth in sectors covering renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, and so on.
The inquiry attracted 125 submissions. A few submissions, like that of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), pointed out that the proposal rests on the case for reducing human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide but that there is no scientific proof that this would have any significant effect on our climate. And, the non-Western world is not going down that same path, with the consequence that the de-carbonising economic suicide into which the West is sleepwalking, can have no global effect.
But most submissions, including those from industry, advise the government on how to fund projects that cannot and will never stand up on their own merits.
For example, the Electric Vehicle Council calls on, ‘Governments [to] further support domestic industry development by providing guaranteed demand through bulk EV orders across government vehicle fleets and introducing programs that incentivise the use of local content.’ It also predictably seeks, ‘…further debt and equity financing to innovative projects to accelerate the clean energy transition.’
The Clean Energy Investor Group calls for the continuation of the subsidies to windmills beyond their cut-off date of 2030. By that time subsidy-seekers had previously assured us that this infant industry would have become the cheapest supply source. CSIRO claims this is already a reality even though wind/solar still needs the support of regulatory subsidies – subsidies that in 2020 amounted to $7 billion a year and which have been increased by the recently enacted Safeguard Mechanism.
The Advanced Materials and Battery Council claims Australia is already making huge gains in new technologies but warns, ‘Governments need to move fast to avoid losing these companies and opportunities to those more determined to develop national battery supply chains elsewhere.’
The Australian Aluminium Council seeks to get on the National Critical Minerals Strategy gravy train and makes the vacuous statement, ‘Providing electricity is supplied consistently, with firm power, and at internationally competitive prices, aluminium smelting can be run on renewable electricity.’ DUH!
The Australian Hydrogen Council claims members are going great guns in this pie-in-the-sky technology but just want the government to mandate targets ‘to develop markets for hydrogen across a range of sectors’. In addition, the council wants ‘investment attraction mechanisms in the vein of the US Inflation Reduction Act including fiscal or other incentives to draw foreign capital to Australia’.
The Green Energy Superpower proposal is that we continue to tax fossil fuels and subsidise their replacement with wind, solar, batteries, and eventually hydrogen (even though nuclear technology is the only one that might equal fossil fuels in cheapness activists avoid the energy ‘N-word’).
Regrettable outcomes have followed from the continued pursuit of a green energy superpower goal with its landscape-defiling windmills, solar farms, and a trebling of transmission lines to carry this intermittent energy. These facilities are planned to quadruple. Wind turbines are lethal for bird life when it gets too close and their land-hunger knocks out native animals. Concerns about threatened species in part led Apple to abandon its purchase of power generated by Windlab, Andrew Forrest’s proposed Queensland project. Added to the renewables conversation is the underlying environmental problem of the disposal of toxic wind turbines and solar panels at the end of their relatively short lives.
The failure of wind/solar installations to supply low-cost and reliable energy was illustrated by the collapse of the $22 billion Forrest/Cannon-Brookes Sun Cable project in the Northern Territory, which fortunately had only minor taxpayer support.
Green hydrogen is ear-marked as a future area of promise and its carpet baggers have attracted considerable government subsidies. At present, even its aspirational costs leave it 4-5 times more expensive than coal-based power, while considerable transport problems remain. And if at some future time green hydrogen were to become economical, that would be achieved by competition and profit-seeking creating the technological breakthroughs.
Australia has an ignominious history of terrifyingly expensive failures in seeking to have the governments play an entrepreneurial role. These include monstrous fiascos like the $70 billion broadband rollout.
We have also traversed the government-planned green innovation path trodden many times already. This wasted up to $20 billion on converting Snowy Hydro into a pump storage facility. Previous governmental plans to improve on private sector enterprise brought a blade factory in Victoria, which was to be the centre of a vast global supply chain taking advantage of government-stimulated growth of windmills; it collapsed within six months. Then there was the failed Ross Garnaut/Kevin Rudd geothermal venture in South Australia and, as the Spectator Australia catalogues, numerous programs to harness wave power.
Australia’s pursuit of the chimera of a ‘green energy superpower’ is part of a process under which, for the first time in human history, the Western world is using subsidies to replace the cheapest available and reliable sources of the energy by a more expensive and less reliable sources. The pursuit is accompanied by much collateral damage to the environment.
We have arrogated politics to a commercial role it can never play. Parliamentary inquiries will not only fail to discover the elixir that kickstarts new industries but, in holding out prospects for free government money, they distract entrepreneurs from seeking market-based solutions to profitable future breakthroughs.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/04/australias-green-energy-chimera
***************************************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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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