Electric Utility sues New York over CO2 regulation

All people need to know about Cap & Trade or any other Carbon Tax is that it will cause Electricity Rates to Skyrocket.
Obama: “Cap & Trade Will Cause Electricity Rates To Skyrocket”
Lets hope they win this case.

“mandatory, market-based”
I know what those two terms mean, but together they are meaningless.

We New England citizens have a bad habit of making our situations worse. Not everybody, just a significant majority are easily stampeded into these boondoggles. It’s already expensive to live here so what do we do as our economy gets bad? We make it worse. Bizarre.

People like to bash attorneys. But…in the most important hour….they can turn out to be your best friend.
But I want that big bully that everyone bashes….on my side…in the day of reckoning….if he is on the side of truth.
So if the battle is not fought in the august halls of the university and the science labs….and if it takes LITIGATION to call on the carpet the likes of the Gore-Holdren-Hansen axis of evil…then so be it.
Give em HELL!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA

Federal Regulations will win the day, the RGGI and WCI both were about to run into federal oversight via the EPA anyways.
BC is a member of the WCI and US Federal regulation will save us from participating, thanks USA for electing a environmentalist while we defeated all three running in our Federal Election!
That Said
Here in BC we have the ICE (Innovative Clean Energy) levy on our CO2 free Hydro Electric power to combat climate change. How is that for a tax grab? A fee on clean renewable energy to fund clean renewable energy.

“World Renowned Climate Scientist, Dr. James Hansen” ???
*ahem* Let me clear my …hmgmgmgmgm….throat: “What?!!!” Does that term “world renowed” mean famous or infamous?
Enter P.T. Barnum…for those of us who are old enough to remember snake oil and showmen…
Okay…snip me for being sarcastic.
James. Please retire before another blizzard surrounds the Dakotas and you discover the global sea ice is just fine.
Reply: ¿por qué? ~ carlos the moderator

mandatory, market-based?
Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Since when is something market-based if actions taken are done so at the point of a gun?

World Renowned Climate Scientist, Dr. James Hansen” ??? *ahem* Let me clear my …hmgmgmgmgm….throat: “What?!!!” Does that term “world renowed” mean famous or infamous?
…More like world renowned “ASTRONOMER” at best. But that is a side issue. Or is it??
How is the world’s leading “authority” on climate change….the person that effectively controls the IPCC data….an astronomer???
Should give one pause…..BIG pause…..

They are not thinking any of this through.
We all know what Hansen’s is after: He said it loud and clear.
Shut down all the coal plants in the US.
All of them.
It could not have come at a worse time.
The Sun, out to lunch, will throw it’s monkeywrench into alternative energy.
It’s okay to dump industrial waste in New York, but don’t you dare breathe out any CO2.
You might feed a tree or a tomato.

Newsletter from my (coal-fired) power company: Costs are up because of 200 megawatts of wind generation added, which requires addition of more coal-fired capacity for back up, because “the wind doesn’t alway blow”. Not only will they have to deal with Cap and Trade taxes, but also have to maintain dual facilities even if they convert partially to renewables. The cost of energy is shortly going to be beyond what our economy or we consumers can bear. The Corinth litigation is probably going to take 10 years. I don’t think we have the time to wait.

Is it true that Obama intends to get 900 Billion in Cap and Trade taxes to offset his Super Budget ?. If so, there is no hope of any introduction of commonsense into the AGW hysteria. Indeed, it is even more likely that the politicans will stick with it and ride the scam all the way down – they think that they are committed – I wish they were and in a padded cell.

“Mike Bryant (18:51:49) :
Smokey,
Hmmmm… “crook Messers Hansen, Gore, Mann”.
An excellent title for that trio… they HAVE made a crooked mess of things, haven’t they?
Mike”
Axis of Evil?
Hey…someone had to say it…it was just hanging there, like a chad.
JimB

I live in Maryland, one of the states in the RGGI. There is a skitzophrenic (SP?)character to politicians when it comes to energy in states that embrace climate change solutions like this. On the one hand they want to do everything they can to mitigate greenhouse gases so they sign up for RGGI and other energy initiatives which work to encourage conservation and develop new energy alternatives by raising the cost of fossile fuel energy. At the same time, they are the protector of the little guy and want to make certain the changes they make won’t affect jobs or the cost of electricity. So far they get away with it by essentially saying its the power provider who is raising prices and blaming excessive profits and bonuses for peoples bills. Never mind that the rates charged cannot be changed until approved by the public service commision and the rates allowed are based on the cost to produce power. I think people will eventually catch on but California, which leads the way in this insanity, watched its main electricity provider go bankrupt because of poorly thought out semi-regulation which allowed costs to rise at market rates but forced power prices at the end users outlets to remain the same. If you really get into the lawsuit in NY, you’ll find that is the heart of the problem. They do not have a mechanism raise prices as costs increase.

Ray B (01:29:08) : “We have come to the decision that the easiest way to comply with the government mandated 20% CO2 reductions was to disconnect known environmental/AGW groups and their supporters from power company service. Subsequently the CO2 targets will be met by the people that wanted them, and it will be done with no cost to the balance of our our customers.”
What a great idea!!!!
BTW, Florida has no state income tax, lot’s of sunshine, great fishing, golf weather year round, three NFL teams, two MLB teams, two NHL teams and two NBA teams, some of the best college football in the Country, housing prices near rock bottom and Disneyworld. If you are remotely contemplating a move south, now is the time before the rush starts. You just have to get used to an occasional hurricane or two.

I emailed my state Governor back in about September when they had their 1st auction to suggest he get the state out of this. I even suggested the State could be subject to risks of litigation. Well what do you know? I think I’ll send him a follow-up.
BTW, I got no response the 1st time.

There was a post recently on Prometheus by Roger Pielke, Jr. about the lack of transparency of RGGI.
Link:
I can only conclude that RGGI is in reality a tax…
Bye,
TMTisFree

James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Andrew Weaver, IPCC
Bogeymen of the C02 hoax losing ground
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, March 30, 2009
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. Eric Hoffer
James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), and Andrew Weaver, lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports, made statements clearly designed to frighten people.
Both men are politically active in climate change and at the forefront of the attempt to convince the world that CO2 is a problem. Their remarks are intended to scare people by threatening impending doom – nothing new – except there is increasing urgency and fear because their message is failing. As Andrew Weaver summarized, ”All those fossil fuel emissions need to be eliminated. And we must do so quickly if we are to have any chance of stabilizing the climate and maintaining human civilization as we know it.”
Hansen increases urgency for action claiming we are on the verge of a tipping point, defined as follows. “Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.”
We’re reaching a tipping point, but it’s not the one Hansen anticipates. We’re close to the point where the public and politicians realize they have been totally deceived about the nature and cause of climate change. Even before a shift to concern about the economy polls showed a growing shift in public opinion.
Weaver is also troubled by his own definition of dramatic change occurring. He wrote in a March 24 article, in the Vancouver Sun, “There are many depressing things about being a climate scientist these days. The emerging data is going from bad to worse and the political leadership is still acting as if we have all the time in the world to deal with global warming.”
Yes, it’s depressing but because people are not fooled any more and politicians are not acting as Weaver expects. And yes, emerging data is going from bad to worse, but only because it shows CO2 is not causing warming.
Other remarks by both men indicate their fear. For example, Hansen said, “The democratic process doesn’t seem to be working.”
It’s a bizarre comment from a civil servant prior to his apparently breaking US law (the Hatch Act) again by participating in a public protest at the headquarters of E.ON, a power firm in Coventry, England. The push for elimination of CO2 emissions is failing because, despite his histrionics, democracy is working.
A few days later in the Vancouver Sun article ironically titled “’Environmentalists’ are abandoning science,” Weaver wrote, “The scientific community has a very solid understanding of what is causing global warming: It is overwhelmingly because of the combustion of fossil fuels. Thus, the solution to the problem is as simple as it is daunting: The elimination of fossil fuel use in our economies.”
Weaver claims he and his IPCC colleagues “have been as a clear as we know how about the science and the measures needed.” This is simply not the case. Their rules mean they only look at human causes of climate change. They produce a political summary for policymakers then used to make sure the science report agrees with the summary. (Canada Free Press)
More important, the entire claim of human caused CO2 global warming is based on computer models that simply can’t work.
It’s not surprising Hansen and Weaver are computer modelers; they have the most invested in these claims and the most to lose professionally and politically. I watched over the years as computer modelers took over and dominated climate science, particularly through the IPCC. But as Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton, said in the May 1999 issue of the American Physical Society and still valid today, “They are not yet adequate tools for predicting climate.” However, “If we persevere patiently with observing the real world and improving the models, the time will come when we are able both to understand and to predict. Until then, we must continue to warn the politicians and the public: don’t believe the numbers just because they come out of a supercomputer.”
Or as Pierre Gallois put it, “If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it,” but more and more people are criticizing it.
Why have two prominent scientists made such unsupportable sensationalist comments? Simple – they’re losing control of their ability to achieve their political objectives. Here is a list of events raising their fears.
Even the lowest computer model temperature projections have overestimated the reality. They failed to project the cooling that has occurred since 2000.
That cooling occurred as CO2 levels rose in complete contradiction to IPCC assumptions.
Scientists doing proper science yet derogatively labeled skeptics by Hansen and Weaver have consistently shown the fallacy in the assumptions and methods of the IPCC.
The Kyoto Accord has failed and attempts to find a replacement are failing.
Proponents of the claims of human induced global warming, such as Al Gore, have lost credibility by making money from the sale of carbon credits.
Increasingly illogical statements, such as the claim that current cooling is due to warming, raise doubts even if you don’t understand the science.
More and more politicians, such as Northern Ireland’s Sammy Wilson and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus are speaking out against global warming claims.
The real cost of reducing CO2 emissions and the inadequacies of alternative fuels are emerging.
The public does not see warming as a concern. A Pew Center poll of January 22, 2009 showed it 20th on a list of 20 top priorities. On March 25, 2009 the Gallup Poll reported, “Global warming is clearly the environmental issue of least concern to Americans. In fact, global warming is the only issue for which more Americans say they have little to no concern than say they have a great deal of concern.”
The growing lack of commitment of the Obama government who they believed would implement their policies. Hansen notes, “he was growing “concerned” over the stance taken by the new US administration on global warming.”
Instead of accepting that their science and proposed actions are wrong they blame the people. Hansen’s comment that democracy isn’t working means it is not doing what he wants. Weaver’s remark that, “The public debate is becoming a caricature” is an arrogant insult and sadly typical of my experience with too many of the climate modelers. The people whose fears and lack of knowledge they exploited and who they thought were too stupid to understand are using democracy to stop the fraud. Hansen and Weaver’s comments disclose their fears as Hoffer predicted.

A really neat trick would be to get a sample or two of coal from the Pittsburg/Antioch Calif. deposits, a couple of geologists, anthropologists and confront Hansen in Concord with a question: What was the place like when this fossilized biomass was formed, the animals & plants and the atmosphere, climate etc?

Discovery will be interesting when the utility demands the algorithms of any climate models used as evidence.

Smokey (18:47:16) :
“I’m in agreement with the posters here. FatBigot echos my feelings: “Oh what fun we have in store.”
If by hook or by crook Messers Hansen, Gore, Mann, et al. could be lassoed into the inevitable depositions, it would be almost more fun than a mortal being could endure!”
And imagine the entertainment for us IMmortal beings!

Cap and trade for electric utilities is not all bad. Mostly bad, but not all bad.
Indeck Corinth is in a bad position because they already use the most efficient technology to generate power, a combined-cycle gas turbine, CCGT. This is what California law mandates for all new gas-fired power plants (excepting of course the peaker plants, but that is a different story).
Indeck Corinth has very few options to reduce their carbon emissions, which places them at a disadvantage from the get-go. No wonder they are unhappy.
Where the cap and trade may make sense is for a coal-fired power plant to be replaced with a CCGT. The low cost of coal is offset by the higher efficiency of the CCGT. Also, the coal-fired plant has a higher capital cost for all the coal-handling equipment, the particulate scrubbers, and SOx removal. The reduction in CO2 by replacing coal power with CCGT is rather large. These carbon reductions are worth a lot of money these days.
California is a participatant in the Western Climate Initiative, an agreement among several western states and Canadian provinces that will be similar to RGGI. Details are yet to be formalized.
http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org/Index.cfm

If this is true they can sew the President as well:
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/03/obama-intimately-tied-to-carbon-trading.html

I’m curious.
How much ‘clean renewable’ energy is bought?
How much is generated?
If you only want ‘clean renewable’ energy, does your supply get cut off when the wind isn’t blowing?
DaveE.

Tom in Florida (04:08:42) :
Since GoreHansenMann the Manbearpig has established that warm is bad and cooler is better, I’m puzzled that we don’t see more of you Florida folk flying up here to spend your Winter vacations with us friendly folks in Minnesota.

The Thune Amendment
By Roger Pielke, Jr., Prometheus
The ability of Congressional legislation on cap and trade that results in actual emissions reductions died an early death last night. An Amendment was introduced by Senator John Thune (R-SD) on the Budget Resolution and its text is as follows:
To amend the deficit-neutral reserve fund for climate change legislation to require that such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices.

old construction worker:
You are right that it is better to leave cap and trade alone. But that is not going to happen. We have had cap and trade schemes (laws) for many years, one on the East Coast for NOx and SOx, and one on the West Coast (SCAQMD area in and near Los Angeles) for NOx and PM10 (particulate matter 10 microns size). They worked, after a fashion, reducing acid rain on the East Coast, and smog on the West Coast.
The carbon cap-and-trade will be with us, whether we (the little people) want it or not. So, the best way for a utility to participate is as I wrote above, shut down a coal-fired plant, replace it with a CCGT, and sell the carbon credits in the marketplace. One has to wonder, though, where all the natural gas will be found. Imported as LNG, some, and domestic, some. But the natural gas pipelines are barely adequate or inadequate on the East Coast during winter as it is. Pushing more natural gas through them to keep the power plants running will be rather difficult.
Gas pipelines are funny critters. After a certain point, one just cannot shove more gas through the thing. No amount of government legislation will overcome the basic laws of physics. Pipelines win, every time.
The alternative for coal-power plants is to capture and sequester the CO2 from the exhaust stack. As I wrote on another thread, the cost for this increases the power price between 2.5 and 4 cents per kwh. Not too bad, really, when one learns that replacing the plant with a nuclear power plant will increase the cost of power by 25 to 30 cents per kwh.
Most engineers know these things, and see them as obvious. Now, if we can only convince the politicians…
Anybody have any ideas on that one?

Graeme,
I am with you in the head shaking over coal-based power. But, being realists, we must comply with our laws, no matter how poorly designed. The fines for failure to comply are large, and our government has the power to shut down a facility for non-compliance.
Just today, April 1, a new California ordinance went into effect for gasoline dispensers at service stations. Those not in compliance will have their pumps tagged as inoperable and fined approximately $6000 per month. The new ordinance will reduce vapor emissions slightly. The old design captured 95 percent of gasoline vapors, and the new design captures 98 percent. It requires approximately $11,000 per pump to upgrade to the new design. No kidding, folks. All this for 3 percent fewer vapors in the atmosphere!
http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2009/rule461factsheetfinal3.pdf
There was no evidence that refrigerants destroy ozone, but the law was passed and everyone had to switch to more energy-intensive refrigerants.
This idiocy of mixing ethanol in gasoline does nothing to reduce CO2, as the ethanol production uses as much energy as the car obtains from burning it. Yet the law is there, our gasoline costs more, and here we are. The amount of imported oil saved by our making ethanol for vehicles is so small as to be a joke.
My solution is to require every step in the ethanol production process to burn nothing but ethanol for energy supply. Then, we would see just how much ethanol is left over to mix with gasoline for the cars. But that is too sensible an approach.
The US has a number of idiot-laws on the books, each one increasing the cost of goods and services, and providing questionable societal value.
Just wait until you see our Green Chemistry Initiative — if you have not already. That one will surely end our economy, yet it is coming along with AB 32.
http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/PollutionPrevention/GreenChemistryInitiative/index.cfm
The lunacy never ends in this state…

old construction worker
“1) Are you saying that cap and trade was only one way to deal with acid rain and smog and that other ways would not have worked better?
Rightttttt, UK CO2 cap and trade has done wonders reducing their CO2 emissions. NOT. And the money flow is soooo transparent.”
Yes, there were/are alternatives to cap and trade. One frequently mentioned is command-and-control, in which government dictates what technology is to be used and by what date. Catalytic converters on cars are one example. CAFE standards for gas mileage on cars is another.
Another approach is to limit the pollutant at the pipe, or smokestack in this case, via both a concentration limit and an annual tonnage limit. That approach is used in Southern California (and elsewhere) for NOx, among others, by limiting the NOx concentration to around 2 or 3 ppm, and the total tons per year based on the size of the power plant.
The industries usually lobby for cap-and-trade, as this gives them the most flexibility (and opportunity for mischief). However, some oil companies have argued for the case you put forward, just a simple carbon tax and be done with it.
” 2) Since CO2 is a non toxic, harmless gas, why regulate it at all. If you want to shut down coal fired electric plants, tax coal as it comes out of the ground. Don’t hide behind “CO2 drives the climate” scam.”
My view is the same, CO2 is good for living things. But our law makers tend to listen to some scientists rather than others, and in this case they have chosen to listen to the AGW alarmists. I suspect that all this will change in a few years when coal plants are shut down, nobody can afford to build nukes, the wind stops during winter, and natural gas gets cut off for political purposes during a cold winter. Suddenly domestic supplies of coal will look mighty good! Especially to inland areas far from the sea where wave power might do some good — or might not as it is highly variable.
I wrote on an earlier thread on WUWT about the unusual cold snap in Texas during winter of 72-73. The local gas supplier ran out of gas and the entire state had to curtail businesses and non-essential services for nearly two weeks, so the residents could stay warm. Texas had no nuclear power in those days, and I believe the coal-fired plants were on-line so we had power, too.
@3 x 2: re California as the leaders. I live in California, and see how it works…my advice is to never follow where California leads…our demonstrated inability to manage a state budget, keep people employed, keep the populace safe from crime, enforce immigration laws, manage our water resources, provide adequate basic infrastructure, establish rational goals and reduce pollution rationally, extract our mineral resources (oil and gas), to me suggest this is not a place to emulate on any matter. If this state did not have warm weather, sunshine, and lovely scenery, nobody would live here.
Pyromancer — agreed, some chemicals are potent pollutants and should be regulated. As a chemical engineer, I fully appreciate that. Nobody should ever have to endure hexa-valent-chromium, (from the movie Erin Brokovich), or any of a host of other toxic substances.
3 x 2 and o.c.w., — never mind those figures! The California Air Resources Board has spoken! The power price will only increase 12 percent by 2020. They have experts that told them so! ( sarc off now)

Roger Sowell
‘But our law makers tend to listen to some scientists rather than others, and in this case they have chosen to listen to the AGW alarmists.’
Then it’s time to slap politicians upside their collective heads.
Jam their phone lines, fax lines and send letters. And, let them know you will work to throw the ones who vote for CO2 cap and trade out of office.
Bottom line
There are more of us than there are corporations and corporations don’t vote.

“Then it’s time to slap politicians upside their collective heads. Jam their phone lines, fax lines and send letters. And, let them know you will work to throw the ones who vote for CO2 cap and trade out of office. Bottom line: There are more of us than there are corporations and corporations don’t vote.”
Old Construction Worker, you are correct even more than you may know. Remember the Graham-MCain-Kennedy immigration bill. The one Bush wanted passed? Talk about bipartisan & executive support! Do you know what defeated it? You did; we did…using exactly the same tactics that you propose. It was crazy up here. Insane. It even spilled over into House offices.
In the end, House members where calling their Senate colleagues and asking them not to vote cloture (in other words keep the debate going endlessly – avoiding a vote). The House heard the voice of the people’s anger directed at the Senate and wanted no part of it. They just wanted the bill to go away.
When we are ready, when the time is right, we will again focus this wrath. Until then, we must continue to educate.

OCW, here you go from Financial Times on 2 April:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9b68690-1fbe-11de-a1df-00144feabdc0.html