Earth Track Blog

When the drinks are flowing at the open bar, it's not a big surprise that patrons swarm for their free pints. Tax bills are the same, with amendments aplenty as the hours ticked on towards the Senate passage of a massive tax reform package last week. Hey, when you are spending somebody else's money...

The optimal position for your industry in any tax reform is to see general tax rates drop while also keeping all of your old subsidies. The political lobbying on these bills is enormous, and given the scale of the energy sector in the US economy, and the need to transition towards lower carbon fuel...

Republican-led plans to reform our tax system have now been introduced in the Senate and passed in the House. This is trillion dollar legislation (the extra deficits alone are estimated at $1.5 trillion between 2018 and 2027), and a feeding frenzy for lobbyists trying to get new perks in the bill or...

These have been busy months in the world of subsidies to nuclear power. 1) Reality continues to bite the nuclear renaissance. Over the summer, Duke Energy moved to cancel its Lee nuclear project in North Carolina and its Levy project in Florida. Duke is seeking reimbursement of $353 million in...

It's been a rough few months for nuclear power, with the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, the US nuclear arm of Toshiba; continued cost escalation at both US reactor projects and the UK's Hinkley C; and the decision on Monday to abandon two in-process reactors at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina...

PJM Interconnection is a regional transmission operator (RTO) serving more than 60 million customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia. The service region is centered in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Incumbent base load generators within PJM have complained that subsidies to...

1) Windmills hacked by Russians. In a worrying escalation of software attacks, Russian engineers penetrated control systems at a number of US windmills, causing erratic operating performance and increased bird kills. Yeah, if only things could be that simple. In another example that the "internet of...

Jobs matter. For the job holder, this is obvious: the wages support them and their family. But jobs also matter to the country overall, as economic strength forms the basis for a strong foundation of political stability, prosperity, and growth. Community relationships can turn ugly if lots of people...

1) Earth Track congressional testimony. Read Earth Track's testimony to the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives: Federal Energy-Related Tax Policy and its Effects on Markets, Prices, and Consumers. 2) New work on subsidies: US public lands...

If newly minted EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt managed environmental risks more similarly to the way he manages the financial risks in his own portfolio, we would be far better off. He does not. To the contrary, he leverages any hints of uncertainty on environmental damages as a justification to do...

In yesterday's confirmation hearings for Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO stated that 'I'm not aware of anything the fossil fuel industry gets that I would characterize as a subsidy... Rather it is just the way the tax code applies to this particular industry.' You can review the relevant...

Most fossil fuel subsidy assessments tabulate aggregate support to a particular fuel at the national or international level. Our new paper, Effect of government subsidies for upstream oil infrastructure on U.S. oil production and global CO2 emissions, just released by the Stockholm Environment...

The mysterious Q Division in the James Bond movie franchise was always on hand with inane, though coldly effective, inventions that would save Bond and defeat even the most diabolical enemy. In the magic of the movies, a bit of public money directed towards the R&D staff of the British Secret...

It turns out that if the US takes its commitments under the Paris climate agreement seriously -- the ones where we pledge to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade so as not to fry the planet -- there is too much coal. Standard markets rationalize capacity based on price signals. If...

In years past, when my project work would divert me from posting about energy subsidies on the Earth Track blog, I'd get an incoming email from Michael Mariotte at NIRS. This wasn't an intrusive inquiry. Rather, he'd merely be checking in to be sure everything was okay, saying he'd noticed I hadn't...

Two important, though not particularly cheerful, goings-on to mention. The first is a new paper that suggests climate change is likely to occur much more quickly, and to be more severe, than previously predicted. This finding underscores a central limitation of so many efforts to analyze highly...

It was pure coincidence that the release event for my detailed review of US subsidies to nuclear power -- a document a couple of years in the making -- was on March 11, 2011, the day of the Fukushima accident. I was in DC for the launch, traveling in a cab to the event with David Lochbaum of the...

My many years of criticizing fossil fuel subsidies aside, I still get asked fairly regularly whether there might just be some good times and good places where fossil fuel subsidies would make sense. It is not useful to dismiss the question, as it often comes from serious and well-intentioned people...

1) Solar parity and my cousin Jeff. Congrats to Jeff Koplow, an energy researcher at Sandia National Labs, for being named the inaugural recipient of the Innovator in Residence Fellowship awarded by DOE's SunShot Initiative. He'll lead a multi-disciplinary team in attacking key limits in current PV...

Here's hoping that 21 will be the magic number, and there will be real progress on a global agreement to constrain greenhouse gas emissions at COP21 meetings now underway in Paris. Removing subsidies to fossil fuels are now well recognized as a central element to getting energy prices right, and the...