Environmental activists recently knocked down Senator Joe Manchin’s effort to relax permitting rules for major energy projects. That will slow down fossil fuel projects, but renewable energy projects—their darlings—face long delays, too. “The demise of permitting reform reveals that many people within the environmentalist movement are undermining the nation’s emissions goals in the name of…
Tag: Energy
Why People Aren’t Using Their Dishwashers Much Anymore
The simple answer, says Christian Britschgi at Reason, is dishwashers take too long to wash dishes—nearly two-and-a-half hours, reported one survey in 2018. And that’s due to federal energy standards that President Trump tried to relax. The Biden administration went back to the previous rules. Says Britschgi, those regulations “limit the amount of water and…
Buy EVs, says the L.A. Times. Forget “Range Anxiety.” You Only Need 30 Miles or So.
Here’s what’s wrong with Americans and electric cars, says Bloomberg’s Ira Boudway, writing in the L.A. Times: Americans have “outsized range expectations” about their needs; they want “too much car.” Nearly two-thirds of drivers surveyed by Bloomberg expected “300-plus miles of range,” while “less than 10% would settle for 200 or less.” This means: “There…
Environmental Activists Oppose Carbon Capture as a ‘False Solution’
It’s hard to keep up with what environmental activists are against. (See Ron Bailey on solar geoengineering.) Now it’s carbon capture. Carbon capture (CCS) is the largely experimental technology for removing carbon dioxide during or after a combustion process and then storing it, usually underground. The Biden administration is promoting carbon capture, and this month Energy…
Justice Delayed—and Delayed—Is Justice Denied
After nearly a decade of litigation, the family of Sidney Longwell may be able to use a Montana oil lease he purchased in 1982. Longwell died in 2020. The 10-square-mile lease is in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana (the forest covers 2,912 square miles). Drilling on the site has been bitterly opposed…
No. The Climate Act (“IRA”) Does Not Invalidate the Supreme Court Decision on West Virginia vs. EPA
“Sponsors of the Democrats’ massive, inflation-enhancing, anti-growth, tax-and-spending bill, deceptively titled the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ (IRA), are trying to fabricate legislative history,” writes Marlo Lewis in RealClearEnergy. “According to them, certain IRA provisions were crafted to counteract the Supreme Court’s landmark deregulatory ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. (2022). The cleverly inserted…