Earth Track Blog

Corn and ethanol markets may make little sense in terms of rationality, but they do provide never-ending entertainment in seeing the new ways people can exploit regulatory interventions for fun and profit. Dried distillers' grains (DDGs) are a byproduct of US ethanol production increasingly used as...

When people look for official information on US energy policy and trends, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), part of the US Department of Energy, is one of the first places they look. I look there too: EIA staff do great work in many areas; they are willing to talk about their work and...

With the liquid biofuels industry so well organized and so well financed, it is sometimes easy to forget that there are other uses for biomass. No, not habitat, compost, or food; other subsidized uses. Like burning it for electricity. Scott Learn in The Oregonian has a nice summary of the issues...

David Coady and his team at the IMF have just released an update on estimated global subsidies to petroleum products. They have done consistently important work in this area, documenting how petrol subsidies have weakened the fiscal health of many countries around the world. The IMF work has...

Subsidy recipients rarely admit their government largesse is a subsidy rather than some sort of altruistic investment they've reluctantly agreed to accept on behalf of their good work for the commonweal. This natural spin tends to go into hyperdrive when the public affairs team of a trade...

It has been a banner couple of weeks for the ethanol industry. To my inbox come their daily proclamations and jubilations over a reprieve they have been given in a recent US EPA analysis of GHG impacts of the fuel. Corn-based fuels from new plants had to reach a minimum of 20% GHG reductions...

I've just posted the slides from a presentation I gave at the New America Foundation in December. The discussion provides some additional detail on why I am so critical of the Obama administration's push for massive loan guarantees to energy facilities. There are three main issues here. The first...

After my last post on the new subsidies to nuclear power, inquiries have started to come in on Obama's plan to end subsidies to fossil fuels. A common question is whether his plan would really end subsidies to fossil fuels entirely. The simple answer is "no". Although implementing their proposed...

With federal guarantees already on the table for up to 100% of project debt for new reactors ($18.5 billion) and front-end enrichment investments ($2 billion), the Obama administration's decision today to push for an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees to new reactors is puzzling. Taxpayer...

Check out CNN's Stimulus "Big Bang", a graphical representation of federal stimulus spending over the past year or so. You can click on the various elements to get additional details on the programs covered. What immediately struck me is their estimate that more than 80% of total support came...

When I think of former Senator Pete Domenici, the first thing that pops into my mind is his long-standing, unwavering, and open-checkbooked support for nuclear power. A 2007 MSNBC article on him called him the "nuclear renaissance man," noting that he has "worked hard to subsidize the nuclear...

Judy Pasternak summarizes a sobering review of lobbying spending by US nuclear industry conducted by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University. The total lobbying spending exceeded $600 million since 1999, with and additional $63 million in campaign contributions. Even with the old...

The US Supreme Court has just greatly loosened the restrictions on spending corporate cash on political candidates and elections. The onslaught of cash that will follow will, I suspect, suprise even the supporters of this change. More importantly, the web of obligations that this cash creates among...

With subsidy reform finally reaching the levels of the G20, I wanted to take a bit of time to acknowledge a number of recent transitions among people who have made important contributions to the state of knowledge in the subsidy arena. First, congratulations to Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth...

For years Armin Wagner and his team have toiled to pull together a consistent set of motor fuel prices from around the world. Though the work may not get the attention showered each year on the the Economist's "Big Mac" index, the GTZ analysis in my mind is far more important. GTZ tracks what is...

A central thrust in many of the energy-related legislative initiatives over the past few years has been a growing role for the federal government in funding and financing infrastructure for favored fuels. Some lessons from both energy and non-energy sectors highlight the problems with this approach...

Like favorite sports teams, affinity for particular energy types seems to run deep. Geography clearly plays a role: it is not surprising that Senators Tom Harkin (Iowa) and Richard Lugar (Indiana) have long been staunch supporters of biofuels, and corn ethanol in particular. The two have proposed...

Ethanol Producer Magazine notes that the "industry optimistically awaits E15 waiver decision." Faced with market mandates that drive up demand for all the ethanol they produced, but technical constraints on how much they can stick in each gallon of gasoline we buy, the industry has one again worked...

How frustrating to be on the verge of a nuclear renaissance, with only that little problem of economic viability getting in the way. To listen to industry advocate Matthew Bennett at Third Way describe it, the economics problem is merely the "last straw" of for nuclear opponents who have lost all of...

Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), a Washington, DC-based organization focused on improved transparency in government budgeting and spending, has just completed a nice summary of the state-of-play in federal oil and gas royalty subsidies. Royalties are the payments that private firms make to the...