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Showing posts with label US Energy policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Energy policy. Show all posts

Thursday, February 07, 2013

No One Killed The Electric Car This Time

Here's some more good news that has flown under the radar.

A green secret: It was the year plug-in car sales accelerated

Plug-in vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt, Toyota Prius PHV, and all-electric Nissan Leaf are on pace for combined sales of about 50,000 by year-end – far ahead of what hybrid sales were at the same stage of market development – and a 280 percent jump in sales over 2011, according to data from Baum & Associates, an auto industry research firm. Next year will bring 33 models from a dozen companies.

When you consider how much of a pummeling the electric car takes every day, this is truly fantastic. This will have an impact on the climate, no doubt, and that's despite the notion that we are trading one form of polluting for another. Electric power is coming from more diverse sources than ever before these days so any less carbon emissions in the atmosphere is a net gain.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Keystone XL Pipeline Will Make Gas Prices Go Up

For some time now I've been contending that the Keystone XL pipeline would cause the price of gas to go up because the fuel refined from it would be shipped off to China at world market prices instead of being "stuck" in the American Midwest where it winds up being sold as gasoline, often at lower prices than those paid on all three coasts.

Now we have confirmation. According to an analysis from the NRDC:

The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Midwestern refineries produce more gasoline per barrel than refineries in any other region in the United States. That gasoline is then sold to U.S. consumers. In contrast, refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas produce as much diesel as possible, much of which is exported internationally. By taking oil from midwestern gasoline refineries to Gulf Coast diesel refineries, Keystone XL will decrease the amount of gasoline available to American consumers. 
Meanwhile the Keystone XL pipeline will increase the price that gasoline producing refineries in the Midwest pay for crude oil. TransCanada, the company sponsoring the pipeline, pitched the pipeline to Canadian regulators as a way of increasing the price of crude in the United States (emphasis mine).
Right now, Midwestern refineries are buying crude oil at a discount—a deep discount. This allows them to produce products more cheaply than they would otherwise be able to. Building Keystone XL would change that. If TransCanada’s analysis is accurate, under current market conditions, Keystone XL would add $20 to $40 to the cost of a barrel of  Canadian crude—increasing the cost of oil in the United States by tens of billions of dollars
I was unaware of the propensity for diesel refining of the Gulf Coast, but that only increases the likelihood that Canadian oil will be sold to China. Most interesting is TransCanada's selling point to Canadian regulators was that it would increase gas prices for Americans.

The lesson: don't believe anything the oil industry says about oil prices. Their goal is to maximize profits, which means they want to maximize prices.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Now I Know Why I've Been Hearing Crickets

"Is there a criminal activity? Perhaps not," Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told POLITICO after last Tuesday’s showdown with Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "Is there a political influence and connections? Perhaps not. Did they bend the rules for an agenda, an agenda not covered within the statute? Absolutely." 

And with this admission, a spear of reality has penetrated the Bubble and the dreams of many dashed.

Perhaps the disheartened can spend some time trying to find a solution to the very much real problem of China burying our solar energy sector with billions of dollars of grants to their businesses.

You know, actually solving a problem....