The cost of operating an electric car is catching up with gas-powered car costs. The Institute for Energy Research cites work of the Anderson Economic Group: “In the fourth quarter of 2022, drivers fueling a typical mid-priced Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car paid $11.29 to fuel their vehicle for 100 miles of driving. That cost…
Author: Jane Shaw Stroup
Wednesday Highlights
- India is expanding coal mining. The government has “reopened old coal mines, carved out new ones, and, perhaps most telling, extended contracts to private mining companies for longer periods,” says Karishma Mehrotra in the Washington Post.
- $375 million here; $2 billion there. The Dept. of Energy is lending money to private firms to produce mineral components for electric vehicles, says Jeff St. John of Canary Media.
- A federal public/private partnership is offering $10 million in federal funds for “recycling, reuse and remanufacturing R&D projects.” (Pocket change compared with the above.)
- William McGurn talks sense about East Palestine chemicals in the Wall Street Journal.
- “The force-fed energy transition to renewable fuels is destabilizing the U.S. electric grid,” writes the Wall St. Journal editorial board.
Tyler Cowen and Alex Epstein Debate Fossil Fuels
Economist and “Marginal Revolution” blogger Tyler Cowen takes issue with points in Alex Epstein’s 2022 book Fossil Fuels. Cowen believes that it is time to begin changing from fossil fuel use to other energy sources. “We do have to adjust.” Writes Cowen: “[I] really do think we need to deviate from the world’s recent course…
Australian Agriculture Making Millions on ‘Carbon Farming’
The Australian outback has become a hotbed of carbon farming—raising and maintain trees that supposedly absorb carbon. The goal is to create “carbon credits” for companies that can’t reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. But the Australian government is buying most of them. Write Michael E. Miller and Frances Vinall in the Washington Post: “Here in…
A Weak Defense of ESG in Investing
Two writers on the Harvard Business Review blog claim that ESG (that is, adding environmental, social, and governance criteria to investment decisions) is not bad when you stick to the straight and narrow: identifying material risks from non-financial criteria. “To us, ESG is simply about identifying material risk factors that matter to company profitability and…