Category: energy

Who pays for ozone pollution?

If the WSJ (editors, of course. Red Tape Rising, March 21, 2008) is to be believed, the Bush administration has unleashed a last-minute flood of not only expensive but mis-guided regulations on America. Singled out for scrutiny is the modest reduction in allowable levels of man-made ozone pollution. Continue reading “Who pays for ozone pollution?”

One-man brown cloud

20,000 miles per year!? A heavy-duty pickup truck as personal transportation!? Diesel!? Loads of particulates, loads of air pollution. He is a one man brown cloud!

Eric Anderson, Title: Transportation director, Maricopa Association of Governments…His daily commute: South on Loop 101 to the Loop 202 and Interstate 10 into Phoenix. What he drives: A 1999 Ford F-250 diesel pickup so he can haul a horse trailer. It gets about 18 to 20 miles a gallon and has about 80,000 miles on it. Gas costs: Around $70 a week. He drives about 400 miles.

— FOR FREEWAY CHIEF, HIS WAY IS THE HIGHWAY, October 27, 2007, Glen Creno, The Arizona Republic

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Carbon’s New Battleground

WSJ article Carbon’s New Battleground, Sept 12, 2007 describing the choice as basically between cap-and-trade scheme vs. a carbon tax. The carbon tax is virtually universally favored by economists as being superior. So we will end up with a cap-and-trade system that is susceptible to political nonsense. Continue reading “Carbon’s New Battleground”

High cost of free parking

A prominent “negative externality” of suburban living is the so-called free parking spot. Since the users, that is customers arriving in private automobiles, do not pay for its use economic inefficiencies inevitably result. It is normally supposed that the proprietor pays for parking facilities as a cost of business however that is often perverted by subsidies granted by government

 

Continue reading “High cost of free parking”

Book: “Future Energy”

I read the book Future Energy: How the new oil industry will change people, politics and portfolios. The author is Bill Paul.

It was ok. His idea was to explain various opportunities and identifies specific companies to “watch” (presumably, potential investments).

He believes that “well meaning but misguided people” should stop tring to get Americans to drive less. But then goes on to support the idea of TGR (Tradable Gasoline Rights) which is really just a a government imposed free-market solution to make gasoline more expensive. Which would, of course, lessen demand. He also fully supports the notion that imported oil carries hidden costs and is detrimental to our foreign policy. He quotes Milton Copulos’s testimony before the senate foreign relations committee at length in Appendix B: Primer on Why Gasoline’s True Cost in 2006 was more than $11 a gallon. I should point out that these figures only take into account the externalites surrounding the military, and makes no allowance for any of the many other social costs of gasoline consumption / automobile use (mayhem, pollution, free parking, etc.).

The whole TGR thing is very interesting, but logistically horrendously complex. It was laid out in a WSJ op-ed piece by Martin Feldstein who is a Harvard Economics prof.

Jevon’s Paradox

(also sometimes spelled / misspelled? Jeavon).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
In economics, the Jevons Paradox is an observation made by William Stanley Jevons, who stated that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase, rather than decrease…

Thus it is a dangerous folly to simply improve efficiency, think hybrid gasoline powered cars. Many, unfortunately including most policymakers, constantly harp on “technical improvements” as a way out of our energy problems. We know that this will likely increase demand. Chalk it up as another victory for the law of unintended consequences.

See also, Pigovian tax.

Engery Intensity of various automobiles

A gang called CNW Market Research released a report a couple of years ago, they call it “Dust to Dust”, that purports to measure the entire amount of energy consumed by cars broken down by type and specific models. They have reached the breathless result that: “Hybrids Consume More Energy in Lifetime Than Chevrolet’s Tahoe SUV”. Continue reading “Engery Intensity of various automobiles”

Gas Taxes (again), or WSJ duplicity

This is fairly typical of the duplicty in WSJ editorials. They denounce the Democratic leadership for not calling for a large gas tax. But apparently Republicans get a pass, even though they were the leadership before 2006 for many years (12, was it?). They also don’t really endorse the gas tax, they merely assert (correctly) that higher priced fuel would lessen demand — so they can have it both ways it seems. Continue reading “Gas Taxes (again), or WSJ duplicity”

Pigovian tax

Definition from wikipedia

A pigovian tax is a tax levied to correct the negative externalities of a market activity. For instance, a Pigovian tax may be levied on producers who pollute the environment to encourage them to reduce pollution, and to provide revenue which may be used to counteract the negative effects of the pollution.

The best answer to America’s “problem” with energy, and with private automobiles in particular is to simply tax (mainly fuel) to compensate for the negative externalities. Pollution, mayhem, free parking, noise — all of these have a cost which is not being paid for by their users.

See Mankiw’s ( past chairman, Council of Economic Advisers in the George W. Bush administration)  The Pigou Club Manifesto.

Money collected via such taxes would best be used to lower payroll taxes — or to lower taxes on wages and/or investment generally, as Holman Jenkins points out in his column…

Continue reading “Pigovian tax”

US CO2 Emissions down 8%?

Lies? Statistical manipulations? US CO2 emissions (which comes primarily from fossil fuel use) down 8%? — I don’t think so! Just the usual WSJ editorial spin.

Take your pick. Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. … Meanwhile, in the U.S., under the president’s oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period.

— Wall Street Journal column, June 8, 2007, Bush 1, Greens 0, by WSJ editorial board member Kimberley A. Strassel

[UPDATE: reference to data for CO2 emissions from the EPA, US Emissions Inventory 2006. 1995 was 5325 and 2004 was 5988 in metric tons. That’s a 12% increase. The inventory lists every year from 1990 to 2004 there is no way shape or form that there was any 8% decrease]

According to EIA (Table 1-3 Annual Energy Review) fossil fuel consumption was ever-increasing from 77.49 quads (quadrillion Btu’s) in 1995 to 86.23 in 2004. That is an increase of ~12%. That doesn’t account for differences in a particular fuel’s carbon content, but a casual glance at Table 1-3 shows that natural gas (the least carbon intensive of the fossil fuels) use was flat, while both coal and petroleum useage were up more.

A more recent editorial (An Inconvenient Reduction, December 3, 2007) said “The Bush Administration announced last week that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide fell by 1.8% from 2005 to 2006” (and GHGs overall were down somewhat less at 1.5% reduction). This is supposed to mean that a policy of doing nothing is superior to doing something. They go on to point out that for the period 2000 to 2005 U.S. carbon emissions were UP 2.5% vs. the EU-15 at 3.8%

I wonder what the per-capita emissions for EU vs US are? Since they (the WSJ editors) don’t want to talk about it, I’m guessing that EU is significantly below US. [UPDATE: yes, it is. At least a casual glance at the list broken down country-by-country. The large European countries all run something like 1/2(!) US’s emissions. The GDP-efficiency list is much the same story which is to say the United State’s economy is twice as energy consuming (CO2 emitting) per dollar of output.]