Energy policy – USA Gov Policy

Many Americans are shivering from the latest arctic blast of frigid weather. At least, they can warm up in their homes and offices. Going forward, however, they, and others throughout the world, may not have that option if climate extremists have their way.

The latest push comes, ironically, at a time when NASA statistics indicate that there has been a two-year cooling period. Investors.com notes that Aaron Brown, in a Real Clear Markets analysis of NASA data indicates that for the past two years, the Earth has actually cooled. “The 2016-2018 Big Chill was composed of two Little chills, the biggest five months drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average.“

The climate change debate will rage on, but the need for sufficient energy to heat homes, provide electricity, and keep the economy moving is a constant. Despite that, many politicians have opted for unrealistic energy policies.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has successfully pushed for the closing of one of the state’s nuclear power plants, as well as stopping a major gas pipeline. He is a staunch opponent of fracking. Politico reports that “Both Con Edison and National Grid [two NY State energy companies] say they may have to turn away new natural gas customers if new pipelines aren’t built…” The New York Post reports that “Con Ed notified regulators that, come March 15, it won’t accept new gas customers in most of Westchester, thanks to supply shortages. National Grid has been issuing similar warnings. New-customer cutoffs in the city may be just around the corner. With no practical replacement fuel for heating, this will throttle residential and commercial growth…Cuomo hasn’t officially banned new pipelines; his staff just doesn’t OK very many, often citing lame excuses for nixing them. Team Cuomo reportedly has urged Con Ed to find alternatives to pipelines, and Cuomo himself has been pushing for a shift away from allfossil-fuel energy sources. Which threatens big trouble for new would-be customers — residential or commercial.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that “In 2017, about 4,034 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or 4.03 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale facilities in the United States. About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases). About 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 17% was from renewable energy sources. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that an additional 24 billion kWh of electricity generation was from small-scale solar photovoltaic systems in 2017.

There is no realistic expectation that the 17% renewable energy sources could expand to accommodate the other 83% of current energy needs, and the demand for power continues to grow.

While the pollution caused by carbon-based energy is frequently discussed, other forms of energy production have their own drawbacks. Opposition to nuclear power is well-publicized, but wind and solar pose daunting problems, as well.

The Wildlife Society Bulletin estimates that 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities) at 51,630 megawatt (MW) of installed wind-energy capacity occurred in the United States in 2012.

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According to the Brookings Institute, “Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces. Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH.

“To place these additional costs in context, the average cost of electricity to U.S. consumers in 2012 was 9.84 cents per KWH, including the cost of transmission and distribution of electricity. This means a new wind plant could at least cost 50 percent more per KWH to produce electricity, and a new solar plant at least 200 percent more per KWH, than using coal and gas technologies.”

The Energy Reality Project describes the challenges that would be encountered in moving to more emphasis on solar and wind: to generate America’s baseload electric power with a 50 / 50 mix of wind and solar farmsit would take a sufficient amount of land to cover land area totaling the size of Indiana. It would cost over $18 Trillion with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) farms in the southwest deserts, on parcels of land totaling the area of West Virginia.

“Tad W. Patzek, PhD, Chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin, and David Pimentel, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University stated … in Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences: “We want to be very clear: solar cells, wind turbines, and biomass-for-energy plantations can never replace even a small fraction of the highly reliable, 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year, nuclear, fossil, and hydroelectric power stations. Claims to the contrary are popular, but irresponsible…”

Economically, diplomatically, socially and militarily, America’s fortunes have declined precipitously during the past several years.

Each of those four areas, of course, is individually worthy of an intensive, lengthy analysis, but it is the consistency of deeply disappointing results across a broad spectrum that should be examined. The common thread that runs throughout Washington’s approach to each area is the pursuit of immediate gratification policies that are politically attractive in the short term, but will cause extensive long term crises. Over the next several days, the New York Analysis of Policy & Government will briefly outline each topic, describing how—and why– the nation’s condition has deteriorated. Today’s issue is the national economy.

The National Economy

Lower household income, extremely low job participation rates, deficit federal spending, and minimal business start ups all point to an economy in deep trouble. These distressing trends, in most cases, can no longer be called a result of the 2007 recession. They are caused by ruinous policy enacted since 2009.

According to Sentier Research, The July 2014 median household income of $54,045 was 2.9 percent lower than the median of $55,639 in June 2009.

America is hemorrhaging jobs, and new business start ups are at an unacceptably low level. The reasons are neither mysterious nor unsolvable. Washington continues to impose the highest corporate tax levels on the planet, as well as excessively high personal taxation. It is rapidly expanding a daunting regulatory regime that actively works against business formation and job creation. The evidence is clear and extensive. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, criticized the “feel good” goal of a 40% increase in minimum wage, advocated by many progressive politicians, which will result in a dramatic loss of jobs. America’s labor force participation rate is at its lowest rate since 1978.

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Some of the excess, including dramatically increasing spending on programs loosely termed welfare, can be seen as simple politics. A large portion of the public supports these efforts. Other endeavors, such as staunchly advocating for a higher minimum wage, and the extraordinarily expensive Affordable Care Act legislation, while more controversial, still garner significant support and widespread adulation in the major media. The long-term effects are drawbacks to employment growth and prosperity as a whole even as many individuals receive short-term benefits.

While ruinous in the long term, the reason these policies have been enacted is at least comprehensible from a populist political worldview. But there are other areas which have no plausible explanation.

There is no justification for the incredible waste that took place in the stimulus program, in which over $700 billion was spent without any discernible accomplishment. The White House attempted to draw a comparison with FDR’s New Deal. The comparison is inaccurate. New Deal programs produced buildings, parks, roads and dams. The stimulus developed nothing. It may well have been the greatest single wastage of funds in recorded history.

Despite an abundance of energy resources on federal lands that could make both corporate and individual lives far less costly, The White House chooses to intentionally keep them off the market while simultaneously working to eliminate current sources such as coal. Keeping energy prices high is a guaranteed way to hinder the economy.

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.