Posts Tagged ‘Energy’

December14

If the BP disaster was an “incident,” then Katrina was a little rainstorm

By: Angela Bradbery

You just can’t make this stuff up.

The government announced today that it is going to let BP do exploratory deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, BP — the oil giant that in April 2010 was at the helm  of the worst environmental catastrophe in our history. That BP. It was awarded $27 million of leases by the Interior Department.

This happened on the same day that the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council said in a report that more needs to be done to prevent another Gulf drilling catastrophe. I am not making this up.

The National Journal story about this development quoted Michael Bromwich, the former head of the main offshore energy regulator, as saying in October that the BP disaster was just “one incident” that did not justify “the administrative death penalty.”

As Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said in a statement  released today, calling the BP disaster an “incident” is like calling Katrina a little rainstorm.

Yes, the federal agency charged with overseeing offshore oil drilling got an overhaul after the BP spill, but Congress never acted on the package of measures developed after the disaster to boost environmental and worker safety in the Gulf. Those were critical to helping stave off further oil gushers. God forbid lawmakers should anger the big oil giants.

Read Slocum’s full statement here.

 

 

Posted in: Energy, Regulation0 comments

September12

Rap on regulations an often used wolf cry by Big Business that is not about jobs but all about profits

By: Rich Robinson

In the debate over the current economic crisis, there is a continued drumbeat from Big Business that regulations will “kill jobs.” It’s an old trope that gets trotted out every few years. So as the drumbeat to roll back the nation’s vital public safeguards gets louder in the coming weeks and months, remember it is just Big Business crying wolf… again.

Photo by BlackburnPhoto via flickr

The latest example was found in a recent CNN Money page story Does a healthy environment harm jobs?, which repeated the theme that regulations “will result in factory closures and jobs losses just when the nation needs them least.” Fortunately, the article included the other, factually-based side of the story.

Included is a study from the Center for American Progress, which concluded, “The data shows that the fear of drastic economic harm due to a stronger (ozone) standard is unwarranted, despite industries’ fevered predictions.”

The article also quotes supporters saying “industry always cries ‘job losses’ whenever it’s told to clean up its act,” which, it turns out, is completely true.

Here’s EPA Director Lisa Jackson, in Politico: “Today’s forecasts of economic doom are nearly identical — almost word for word — to the doomsday predictions of the last 40 years,” EPA chief Lisa Jackson said in a September speech. “This ‘broken record’ continues despite the fact that history has proven the doomsayers wrong again and again.”

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Posted in: Environment, Regulation, Uncategorized0 comments

August26

Claims of EPA “train wreck” derailed

By: Rich Robinson

Seems these days, there are a zillion Big Business leaders, their puppets in Congress and legions of corporate cheerleaders crying wolf over the regulations that keep you, me and our fellow countrymen safe from unchecked corporate greed. The latest example of this is a study by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the largest trade association representing the electric utility industry, which concluded that the looming Environmental Protection Agency rules for power plants will create an economic “train wreck.”

flickr photo by jk5854

Not surprisingly, this prophecy of doom and gloom has been found to be completely overblown, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

CRS analyzed EEI’s study and found it was severely flawed and lacked credibility. The discredited EEI study is just another example of the disconnect between the alarmist rhetoric coming from special interests and reality.

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Posted in: Energy, Environment, Regulation, Uncategorized2 comments

August24

Hey supercommittee! Listen up! We have some ideas for you.

By: Angela Bradbery

flickr photo courtesy of visulogik

If the supercommittee tasked with finding more than a trillion dollars to cut from the federal budget needs some advice, we have it for them.

Public Citizen and three other organizations today issued a new report, “Green Scissors 2011,” outlining $380 billion in environmentally harmful subsidies that should be trimmed. That would go a long way toward solving our nation’s budget challenges. The other groups are Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and The Heartland Institute. Yes, we know, The Heartland Institute is a really conservative, free-market think tank. As Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said during a press conference call today, the fact that people from such varying perspectives can come together and agree on something means that it’s doable, and the supercommittee ought to do it too.

The groups propose cutting many fossil fuel, nuclear and alternative energy subsidies (like ethanol). Other targets include massive giveaways of publicly owned timber, poorly conceived road projects and a bevy of questionable Army Corps of Engineers water projects.

Time magazine has a good take on the report. Wrote Michael Grunwald:

Hopefully, the congressional Super-Duper Cuts Committee will take a look at this report before it starts slashing Social Security or food stamps or public transit or vaccinations or other government programs with legitimate public purposes.

U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and former U.S. Rep. Robert Inglis of South Carolina joined the press conference call. Inglis wisely noted that if conservatives get locked into the Grover Norquist school of thought, in which every time a subsidy is rescinded it’s called a tax increase, “we will never move forward.”

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Posted in: Energy, Environment1 comments

June8

How many public interest groups does it take to change the nation’s electicity rate structure?

By: Dorry Samuels

Scott Nelson is Public Citizen's attorney taking on FERC in federal court

Public Citizen is arguing a huge case today in federal appeals court that could change how the nation is charged for its electricity use.

Since the 1990s, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been allowing wholesalers to charge market-based rates with disastrous results. (Consider, for example, the 2000-2001 California energy crisis.)

In this case, Public Citizen, along with the Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel and the Public Utility Law Project of New York, is challenging a rule by FERC that allows sellers of wholesale electric power to charge market rates for electricity and to avoid the Federal Power Act’s requirements that rates be just and reasonable and that all changes in rates be filed with FERC before they go into effect.

Public Citizen argues that the rule exceeds FERC’s authority and conflicts with the plain language of the act. In case we needed even more support, the attorneys general of Illinois, Connecticut and Rhode Island joined Public Citizen’s brief challenging the lawfulness of FERC’s market-based-rate regime.

Learn more about the case. And check back to find out how the 9th Circuit judge rules.

9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that could upend the agency’s market-based rate structure.

Posted in: Energy, Litigation, Regulation0 comments

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