The Foundry

Archive for the ‘Energy and Environment’ Category

• The Debate on Nuclear Loan Guarantees

  Posted March 12th, 2010 at 4:32pm in Energy and Environment with 0 comments

  The debate over nuclear power in recent months has revolved around taxpayer backed loan guarantees for new nuclear projects. Not only has the President announced $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for a two-reactor project in Burke County, Georgia, his budget proposal includes tripling the nuclear loan guarantee program from $18.5 billion to [...] More

• NRC Commissioner Takes a Stand on Obama’s Yucca Decision

  Posted March 10th, 2010 at 4:31pm in Energy and Environment with 14 comments

  Dale Klein, Commissioner and former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) challenged the premise on which President Obama based his move to withdraw the application to permit the geologic repository at Yucca Mountain. At a conference in Bethesda, Maryland yesterday Commissioner Klein emphasized that it was politics, not science, which led to this [...] More

• Global Warming in Wonderland and the Green PR Machine

  Posted March 10th, 2010 at 4:00pm in Energy and Environment with 7 comments

  These are times straight out of Alice in Wonderland, as everything becomes an “un-birthday” and definitions are turned on their head. Climate change scientists, according to The Washington Times this last weekend, are turning to PR, rather than data, to defend their work. Then there’s Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who yesterday continued to [...] More

• Government Picks Wind as Winner, Oil and Natural Gas as Losers

  Posted March 10th, 2010 at 2:05pm in Energy and Environment with 3 comments

  Chris Horner from the Competitive Enterprise Institute is at it again, doing his best Sherlock Holmes imitation. After a Spanish study warned that renewable energy policies destroy more jobs than they aim to create, the Department of Energy released a strong rebuttal, claiming the report lacked rigor. A CEI-submitted Freedom of Information Act [...] More

• Nothing Jolly About California’s Giant Green Economy

  Posted March 10th, 2010 at 1:00pm in Energy and Environment with 1 comments

  The state of California likes to sell itself as a leader in the transition to a green economy. The only problem is, their policies are making that transition harder—and they’re not producing the job boom that politicians have been promising. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) recently reviewed the impact of the state’s 2006 climate change [...] More

• Lugar’s “Practical Energy Plan” Means More Government, Less Consumer Choice

  Posted March 9th, 2010 at 5:27pm in Energy and Environment with 12 comments

  Kudos to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) for recognizing that current “rhetoric and legislation [which] are focused primarily at climate change” are out of step with the concerns of most Americans. A January poll by Pew Research Center found “dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just [...] More

• Solar’s Bubble Busted

  Posted March 9th, 2010 at 11:25am in Energy and Environment with 13 comments

  The White House’s National Economic Council’s September 2009 report, A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs, informs us: “A strong economy, but too reliant on precarious, bubble-driven growth, is unsustainable.” And it is true: our government should not try and inflate bubbles in order to spur short-term economic growth. Which [...] More

• IMF on Climate Change: We Want to Play

  Posted March 8th, 2010 at 1:43pm in Energy and Environment with 3 comments

  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attempting to do what couldn’t be done at the international climate change conference in Copenhagen last December: Transfer large sums of wealth from developed countries to developing ones in the name of climate change. From BusinessWeek: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the organization is helping to [...] More

• Congress should do the right thing—nothing

  Posted March 8th, 2010 at 12:01pm in Energy and Environment with 5 comments

  The same ethical advice for doctors also makes sense for Congress as it considers several pending global warming bills – first do no harm. Given serious questions about global warming science as well as the efficacy of costly proposals to address it, the best choice for Washington is none of the above. With economy-wide cap and [...] More

• Rockefeller Takes on the EPA, Sort Of

  Posted March 5th, 2010 at 11:59am in Energy and Environment with 1 comments

  Yesterday, Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced legislation that he said would “safeguard jobs, the coal industry, and the entire economy.” Sounds like a pretty solid policy prescription for an ailing economy. What would his legislation do? …suspend, during the 2-year period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, any Environmental Protection Agency action under [...] More