GOVERNANCE - Inflation Reduction Act

"How Democrats coalesced around the Inflation Reduction Act" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  After working through the weekend, Democrats are on the cusp of passing an historic, half-trillion dollar spending package.  It's a mere fraction of what President Biden first sought more than a year ago, but significant nonetheless.  Lisa Desjardins is here to unpack what's in the deal and how party leaders managed to shepherd it to the finish line when losing a single vote would have sunk it.

 

 

"What the reconciliation bill would do to boost clean energy and combat global warming" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  If the House passes the Inflation Reduction Act in the coming days it will lead to by far the biggest investment the federal government has made on tackling climate change.  Several estimates have indicated the initiative may mean a 40 percent reduction in America’s carbon emissions by 2030 from 2005 figures.  Paul Bledsoe of the Progressive Policy Institute joins William Brangham to discuss.

 

 

"Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer discusses Democrats’ major climate and health bill" PBS NewsHour 8/9/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Biden on Tuesday signed the bipartisan CHIPS Act into law, just days before his top health care, tax and climate change bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act heads to the House, where it's likely to pass after proceeding through the Senate along party lines.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who played a key role in getting the bill passed, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

 

 

"How the Inflation Reduction Act could affect your taxes" PBS NewsHour 8/10/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  There’s a $1 trillion gap between what Americans owe in taxes and what the government collects.  The Democrats’ budget deal would unleash nearly 100,000 new IRS agents to round up all that missing money.  Former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen joins Lisa Desjardins to discuss the impact the crackdown on tax evaders will have on the nation’s bottom line.

 

 

"Democrats celebrate legislative win in passing of climate, health and tax bill" PBS NewsHour 8/8/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Congressional Democrats are celebrating a landmark legislative victory after passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden is set to sign into law this week.  Meanwhile, the Justice Department is investigating Donald Trump for potentially violating the Espionage Act after classified documents were found in his home.  Special correspondent Jeff Greenfield joins Geoff Bennett to discuss.

TRUMP AGENDA - Raping the Oceans

"How Trump could vastly expand offshore drilling" PBS NewsHour 1/4/2018

aka Lets forget the Exxon Valdez 1989 and Deepwater Horizon 2010 oil spills, and the damage they caused.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In a newly released five-year plan, the Trump administration has proposed opening up vast new areas to oil and gas exploration, including federal waters off the California coast and off the East Coast, from Georgia to Maine.  Amy Harder, who covers energy and climate change issues for Axios, describes what this all means.

TRUMP WORLD - Priorities

Jobs before environment, deregulation above health, and oil money above everything else.

"Seeing impediments to jobs, Trump prioritizes pipelines over environmental protections" PBS NewsHour 1/24/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone XL Pipeline were put on hold during the Obama administration.  But new executive orders by President Trump begin putting them back on track, as part of efforts to undo former President Obama's legacy.  How do these moves fit into the broader Trump agenda for energy and the environment?  William Brangham talks with Valerie Volcovici of Reuters.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Two of those moves gave new life to two of the most contentious oil pipelines in America, the Dakota Access Pipeline, which hundreds of Native American groups have been protesting, as well as the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Both of these had been delayed or put on hold by the Obama administration.

To understand how these moves fit into the Trump administration's broader plans for energy and environmental policy, I'm joined by Valerie Volcovici.  She covers this for Reuters.

Welcome.

VALERIE VOLCOVICI, Reuters:  Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  So let's talk about these two pipelines in particular.

The Dakota Access pipeline, what did Trump's order say about that?

VALERIE VOLCOVICI:  So, Trump's order this morning basically said that he wants to expedite the process.

As you well know, the Dakota Access protest has really galvanized Native American tribal sovereignty issues.  It's brought together so, wide coalition of environmentalists, social activists, in addition to tribes.

So it's been one of the more high-profile protests that we have seen in a while.  Right now, it's kind of stalled because former President Obama ordered an environmental review of a kind of contentious section of this pipeline that the tribe argues crosses into some sacred sites.  His aim is really to move it along, because…

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  He wants to get this built.

VALERIE VOLCOVICI:  He wants to get it built, and he said so on the campaign trail, and he is following through on day four, whatever it is, of the administration.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Yes, this one really wasn't that much of a surprise, if you had been listening to him all along.

VALERIE VOLCOVICI:  Right.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  And then what about the Keystone XL?  That is a slightly different issue.  This was another pipeline that goes from Canada down to the Gulf.

And this was one that Obama for many, many years seemed to wrangle with and debate what to do, and then eventually denied the permit for it.  What did Trump do today?

VALERIE VOLCOVICI:  Well, what Trump did today is, first of all, it invited Canada to reapply.  TransCanada is the company that wants to get it built.  As far as I'm aware, TransCanada has said it wants to reapply.

And then it will have the State Department.  They will do an environmental impact assessment of the permit and decide whether or not to issue it.  And it needs to be done within 60 days.

So, again, another sign that Trump wants to fast-track this, because, as we remember from the Keystone fights, it lasted a long time and kind of became a symbol of President Obama's environmental goals and it really also galvanized the environmentalists.

SLEAZE FILES - Chesapeak Energy

"Chesapeake Energy Faces Subpoena on Royalty Payment Practices" by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica 11/14/2014

The Justice Department’s inquiry comes after a ProPublica investigation and years of complaints from landowners who say they have been underpaid for leasing land to the energy giant for drilling.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating how Chesapeake Energy pays landowners for the natural gas it drills on their property, according to disclosures made earlier this month in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The probe comes after years of complaints by landowners that they are being underpaid, and an investigation by ProPublica, which found the company was using the fees it had been been paying those landowners to repay billions of dollars of hidden corporate debt instead.

Chesapeake received subpoenas about its royalty practices from the federal government and several states, the company stated Nov. 6.  The company did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica.

In lawsuits filed in several states, Chesapeake has been accused of inflating its operating expenses and then deducting those expenses from the share of income it pays for the right to drill on peoples' land.  Chesapeake has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments and to settle some of these cases.

In mid-2013, landowners in Pennsylvania who had leased their gas rights to Chesapeake saw the payments they were receiving abruptly slashed by as much as 97 percent.  In some cases checks for thousands of dollars a month were replaced with payments for less than a dollar.  Those early complaints prompted a probe by Pennsylvania's Attorney General and a letter from the state's governor, Tom Corbett, to Chesapeake's chief executive calling the practices "unfair and perhaps illegal."

A ProPublica investigation traced that shift in payments to a series of complicated corporate transactions, worth nearly $5 billion, in which Chesapeake sold its pipelines for an inflated price, but then signed long-term contracts to pay the pipelines' new owner exorbitant fees to continue to use them.  While Chesapeake raised billions through the sale, it committed to repay all of that money and more in fees.  The fees Chesapeake paid to the new company, called Access Midstream Partners, were then charged back to landowners, erasing much of their share of the economic bounty from the surge in natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.  At the same time that landowners' gas income dropped, Chesapeake was attempting to raise cash to rescue itself from enormous and mounting corporate debt.

"I think they looked at it as an opportunity to effectively get disguised financing ... that is going to be repaid at a premium,'' an executive of an energy company who routinely does business with Chesapeake told ProPublica at the time.

In July, after news of the deals was published, county commissioners in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, where much of the Marcellus drilling was taking place, appealed to U.S. Attorney Peter Smith to investigate the company.  The commissioners wrote that ProPublica's reporting pointed to possible "violations of state and federal law."  Several new lawsuits have also been filed against the company in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

Throughout 2013 and early 2014, Chesapeake never responded to any of ProPublica's initial written questions or requests for interviews about the size or origins of its corporate debt and the sale of its pipeline companies.  But after receiving our written questions, Chesapeake for the first time acknowledged in its quarterly financial filings that it had $36 billion dollars in "off-balance-sheet arrangements," and that much of it was related to its pipeline businesses.

Chesapeake faces other inquiries as well.  Following a Reuters investigation alleging Chesapeake rigged land leasing prices in Michigan, the company was charged with antitrust violations by Michigan's state attorney general.  It faces separate racketeering charges in the state as well.  Chesapeake has said both sets of charges are without merit, and the two cases are expected to go to trial.  The company's financial disclosures state that Chesapeake has been served federal subpoenas related to anti-trust inquiries in Michigan as well.

AMERICA - Energy and Where Natural Gas Fits In

"Natural Gas: Where it Fits in America's Energy Future" by Rebecca Jacobson, PBS Newshour 8/10/2012

Ray Suarez recently visited Colorado, where he reported on a natural gas revolution occurring in the coal-powered state. It's part of a series on the changing landscape of energy in the United States.

For the story, Ray interviewed former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. We've provided extended excerpts from both those interviews below.

As governor of Colorado, a state known for its mining operations, Ritter pushed for reducing the reliance on coal and increasing renewable energy resources. He talks here about the competition between coal, natural gas and renewable energy.

"The question becomes how soon we can make a transition to an energy economy that reduces our emissions - let's say in 2050 - by 80 percent, and what role gas plays in that and what role renewables play in that," he said.

Arvizu says that natural gas and renewable sources complement each other well and when used in tandem can provide a stable source of energy for the grid. See more from him below.

Ray also reported on a booming economy in western North Dakota North Dakota and an unusual deal in Utah that involves both drilling and protecting the environment.

Online, we compiled articles, videos and social media coverage of hydraulic fracturing and we interviewed John McChesney, a former veteran reporter for NPR who now directs the Rural West Initiative at Stanford University.

Jeff Brown wraps up the series on the NewsHour Friday with a debate on the pros and cons of increased oil and gas production.

(reprise)

AMERICA - North Dakota Oil Boomtown

"North Dakota Boomtown Suffers Growing Pains Trying to Keep Up with Demand" (Series Part-1) PBS Newshour 8/7/2012

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Tonight, we begin a series on the changing landscape of energy in the U.S. and the consequences of ever-increasing development.

Ray Suarez is our guide this week. Tonight, he visits the booming economy in western North Dakota, where new drilling technologies have opened up massive oil reserves.

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): In western North Dakota, near the Montana border, there's so much oil around, it almost feels risky to say it: boom -- a 1 percent unemployment rate, heavy traffic in what was once a sleepy town of 12,000, nowhere to live, restaurants that close early because they can't find enough people to work at $15 an hour and others offering signing bonuses to dishwashers and fast food workers.

Geologists say there is a small ocean of oil, hundreds of billions of barrels trapped underground here in North Dakota. So, thousands of workers flocked to Williston to pull it out. Instant towns rose, instead of corn and wheat, as Williston joined a new American energy boom driving growth in parts of the West.

Just two years ago, the United States was importing two-thirds of its oil. Today, imports are down to less than half U.S. oil needs. Oil companies have known about these supplies for decades, but new technology makes the deposit, known as the Bakken, profitable to drill.

ENERGY - The Texas 'Smart Grid'

"In Austin, Charged up About Smart Power" PBS Newshour 7/13/2012

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Next, an energy story about electricity and a so-called smart grid.

This month's big storms and power outages have prompted questions about whether there's a more efficient system for managing power and electricity.

NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien explores the approach that one community in Texas is taking.

WORLD - World Need For Diversified Energy

"Author Daniel Yergin on U.S. Need for a 'Diversified Energy Portfolio'" PBS Newshour 12/23/2011

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): New drilling platforms in South America, a contentious pipeline through the heartland of the U.S., the enormous demand for automobiles in China, they're all part of the changing world of energy around the globe and the worries over its environmental impact on the planet.

Author and analyst Daniel Yergin tackled the history of oil in 1991 in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Prize." Now he's updated the story and widened the lens further in a new book, "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World." Yergin is the chairman IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which does consulting work for the industry. He has also served on government panels looking energy use.

ENVIRONMENT - Wind Energy Technology Update

"For Wind Energy's Future, Researchers Look High in the Sky" PBS Newshour 12/5/2011

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): We look at new technology used to harness powerful winds located high above the earth into usable energy.

Our report was produced by Christopher Bauer for the science program ‘Quest,' which airs on KQED San Francisco. The story is narrated by Andrea Kissack.

It is part of the series ‘NewsHour Connect,' which showcases public media reporting from around the nation.

ANDREA KISSACK: On a windswept tarmac at the former Naval Air Station in Alameda, California, an inventive group of scientists and engineers is testing the concept of a new clean energy technology.

With a changing climate and mounting energy challenges, the race is on to develop viable sources of alternative energy.

"Airborne Wind Energy"
Quest, KQED San Francisco
(full program 10:54)

ENERGY - Future of Solar Power 10/2011

"How Bright Is Solar Power's Future in a Post-Solyndra America?" PBS Newshour 10/18/2011

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Next, the future for solar energy in the U.S., now clouded by the collapse of a California company backed by government loans.

NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS (Newshour): The solar industry boasts that it's growing fast, installing roof top panels that turn sunlight into electricity at a record pace. This year, it expects to create enough electricity to power 350,000 homes, double last year's rate. And that, say proponents, saves a lot of fossil fuel.

LYNDON RIVE, SolarCity: The average cost of electricity would be just under 10 cents.

SPENCER MICHELS: Lyndon Rive is the founder and CEO of the privately held company SolarCity in an industry that gets various forms of government subsidies, including tax credits and loan guarantees, that make it cheaper for companies to borrow money to expand.

LYNDON RIVE: The solar industry has grown 60 percent year on year. Last year, it grew 50 percent. This year, it's grown 60 percent. There's over 5,000 companies that are in the solar industry.

SPENCER MICHELS: His firm, SolarCity, operating in 11 states, is the largest solar installer in the U.S. with 1,300 employees, 500 of them hired in the last 12 months. Nationally, solar employs 100,000 workers.

Yet industry groups and leaders have seen trouble signs ahead for a while.

Dan Richer, director of Stanford's Center for Energy Policy, says the industry is at risk.

DAN REICHER, Stanford's Center for Energy Policy: We may not see the loan guarantee program extended. We may see a major cut in federal support for clean energy research and development. There's going to be a major battle next year over extending some key tax credits for clean energy.

COMMENT:

Another excerpt

ERIC EISENHAMMER, Coalition of Energy Users: The green energy industry involves a lot of hedge fund managers who are making a lot money off it. And a lot of these guys are also making large donations to politicians and then they're getting these massive taxpayer-funded subsidies in return. But it's for an economic model that doesn't really pan out.

Green energy is a few times more expensive than conventional energy. So, I don't believe that it really competes very well in a free market.

Note that "Coalition of Energy Users" is a conservative group.

Right, and the oil industry and "traditional" energy industry, are NOT making large donations and getting big subsidies?

Wonder where the "Coalition of Energy Users" gets much of its funding? Big-oil? Nuclear power industry?

Also, a NEW industries with new technology is supposed to have competitive costs?! ALL new industries, or new products, have high initial costs. The cost comes down as the industry, or product sales, grow.

ENERGY - What is Your Home's Biggest Energy Hog?

"Atop TV Sets, a Power Drain That Runs Nonstop" by ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, New York Times 6/25/2011

Excerpt

Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.

There are 160 million so-called set-top boxes in the United States, one for every two people, and that number is rising. Many homes now have one or more basic cable boxes as well as add-on DVRs, or digital video recorders, which use 40 percent more power than the set-top box.

One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.

These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. The recent study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States — and that 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. That is more power than the state of Maryland uses over 12 months.

“People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,” said John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission who is now with the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation. “Companies say it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.”

The perpetually “powered on” state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Fixes exist, but they are not currently being mandated or deployed in the United States, critics say.

Similar devices in some European countries, for example, can automatically go into standby mode when not in use, cutting power drawn by half. They can also go into an optional “deep sleep,” which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent compared with when the machine is active.

Another example of "it can be done better" from outside of the U.S.

One note from this techie: Your cable box SHOULD be on all the time to allow firmware (in the box) to be updated without disturbing your viewing, but this can still be done if there was a Standby Mode, the update would simply wakeup the box. Being on all the time also takes care of area outages, allows resetting of your box even if you're not home.

SCIENCE - Spy or Scientist With a Viable Solution

I am posting this as a political/science question not as a comment on the "Secrets Case."

The question? We need cheaper and safer energy sources. So just WHY is this scientist's idea not worth investigating? Why does our government not fund this research, but chose a more "elaborate" (aka expensive) path?

"Zeal for Dream Drove Scientist in Secrets Case" by WILLIAM J. BROAD, New York Times 9/27/2010

Excerpts (from 2pg article)

Dr. Mascheroni, who is known as Leo, was trained at a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. At Los Alamos, he was exposed to information on nuclear arms and worked on teams that sought to make energy advances.

In 1988, after nine years at the weapons lab, he left and embarked on a personal crusade to achieve what had eluded thousands of other scientists: a controlled version of nuclear fusion, the violent process that powers the Sun, the stars and hydrogen bombs. His proposal — the use of a big laser — was considered among the most futuristic of the alternatives on the table.

Skeptical of federal plans for laser fusion, he promoted his own as cheaper, faster and far more likely to succeed. Its wavelength was much longer, and its blasts of concentrated light far easier to achieve. He dismissed resistance to his plan as an overzealous commitment to the status quo.

“It’s a cultural thing,” he told The New York Times in 1988. “They don’t want to admit something different.”

He won guarded approval. A Los Alamos panel led by Gregory H. Canavan, a respected senior scientist, found Dr. Mascheroni’s idea worth exploring. The main attraction, the panel said, was that his laser system might prove to be as little as one-twentieth the cost of its rivals.
----
Despite his rebel status and impolitic ways, he was often taken seriously. He won the backing of a former Central Intelligence Agency director, R. James Woolsey, who helped him promote his vision. Ultimately, however, the nation chose a more elaborate laser path.

Bold emphasis mine

ENERGY - Good News on Solar Energy

"Solar cells change electricity distribution" by DAVE FREEMAN and JIM HARDING, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

In separate announcements over the past few months, researchers at the University of Johannesburg and at Nanosolar, a private company in Palo Alto, have announced major breakthroughs in reducing the cost of solar electric cells. While trade journals are abuzz with the news, analysis of the potential implications has been sparse.

We approach this news as current and former public electric utility executives, sympathetic with consumer and environmental concerns. South Africa and California technologies rely on the same alloy -- called CIGS (for copper-indium-gallium-selenide) -- deposited in an extremely thin layer on a flexible surface. Both companies claim that the technology reduces solar cell production costs by a factor of 4-5. That would bring the cost to or below that of delivered electricity in a large fraction of the world.

The California team is backed by a powerful team of private investors, including Google's two founders and the insurance giant Swiss Re, among others. It has announced plans to build a $100 million production facility in the San Francisco Bay area that is slated to be operational at 215 megawatts next year, and soon thereafter capable of producing 430 megawatts of cells annually.

What makes this particular news stand out? Cost, scale and financial strength. The cost of the facility is about one-tenth that of recently completed silicon cell facilities.

Second, Nanosolar is scaling up rapidly from pilot production to 430 megawatts, using a technology it equates to printing newspapers. That implies both technical success and development of a highly automated production process that captures important economies of scale. No one builds that sort of industrial production facility in the Bay Area -- with expensive labor, real estate and electricity costs -- without confidence.

Similar facilities can be built elsewhere. Half a dozen competitors also are working along the same lines, led by private firms Miasole and Daystar, in Sunnyvale, Calif., and New York.

But this is really not about who wins in the end. We all do. Thin solar films can be used in building materials, including roofing materials and glass, and built into mortgages, reducing their cost even further. Inexpensive solar electric cells are, fundamentally, a "disruptive technology," even in Seattle, with below-average electric rates and many cloudy days. Much like cellular phones have changed the way people communicate, cheap solar cells change the way we produce and distribute electric energy. The race is on.

Bold emphasis mine

Great for consumers and the environment. I wonder what Big Oil is thinking about this, in private (big loss in revenue when we don't need oil-powered electric plants any more).