“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…
Category: Jane Shaw Stroup
Does Biden Want Minerals But No Mines?
“Biden Wants Minerals, but Mine Permitting Lags,” says a headline in E&E News‘s Greenwire. And the Washington Post asks: “Is Sustainable Mining Possible? The EV Revolution Depends on It.” If the minerals for electric vehicles are to be available, overly strict and lengthy environmental reviews must be curtailed or we must rely on China (and…
How to Protect Eagles from Wind Turbines
A paper by Molly Espey and Eamon Espey says that tradable permits can reduce the killing of eagles and other birds by wind turbines. “By effectively creating a market for eagle take, wind energy producers would be forced to consider the marginal cost of killing an eagle and adjust their behavior accordingly, ” say the…
Raising Water Prices in California Will Not Just Cut Demand. It Will Supply More Water!
California’s extreme drought will force rationing of water or higher prices, say John McKenzie and Richard McKenzie. Raising water prices has a great advantage: “Higher water prices can increase the state’s available water supply—without additional rainfall or the construction of desalination plants. California is annually losing a massive amount of accessed water in its distribution systems…
Regulation Is Holding Back Geothermal Energy
Geothermal energy, which comes from steam hidden beneath the earth’s surface, should be an attractive source of fuel these days because it is carbon-free. But its use right now is tiny. While Iceland gets 65 percent of its energy from geothermal sources, few other places do. That’s because Iceland exists on a fault line that…
Recycling Plastic Bottles: A Tangled, Costly Web
Major bottling companies like Pepsi-Cola and Coke are under pressure to produce more bottles out of recycled bottles, but recycled plastic bottles are increasingly scarce! As a result, recycled plastic is a more expensive raw material than virgin plastic. (The material used for bottles is polyethylene terephthalate, or PET.) The Wall Street Journal explains: “Recycled…