Numerous bureaucratic agencies are just doing their jobs to implement regulations to save the underprivileged from emissions, at the expense of the other 40 million Californians.
Published June 18, 2023 at CFACT https://www.cfact.org/2023/06/18/californias-emissions-regulatory-death-spiral/
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
I just got back from a recent 2-hour lunch with one of the guys who serves on working groups and committees of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), and he shared his frustrations working with these agencies.
The frustration stems from the devastating impact that an enormously complex system of rules and regulations involving federal, state, and regional agencies are having on individual businesses and entire industries in California and the rest of the United States.
No one can argue that a certain degree of regulation of business practices is necessary to protect employees, the public and the environment from the negative impacts of their operations. But over time, the federal, state, and local regulations have not only increased in number, complexity, and cost but have gotten so oppressively burdensome that it has become economically infeasible to produce certain products anywhere else except outside the United States.
Ironically, this outsourcing of our once-proud domestic manufacturing capability has bolstered the economies of our allies as well as our enemies.
Here in California for example, bureaucratic agencies like CARB and the SCAQMD will follow federal law and enact even more California laws in the form of additional rules and regulations which means they are doing everything possible to shut down all the emissions from the oil industry inclusive of oil production and manufacturing, i.e., refineries.
While the bureaucracies within CARB, SCAQMD, and other air districts, feel secure in developing and enforcing an endless stream of regulations, none of them has a replacement for the fossil fuels they are actively ridding the state of, nor do they have any concern about the unintended consequences on ALL of humanity, as they slowly achieve the elimination of the oil industry from California and inflict restrictions to the supply chain of products that are the basis of our economy.
Without a replacement for the fossil fuels that California wishes to rid the state of, the domino effects from tinkering with the supply chain of crude oil, is supply shortages and soaring prices for thousands of products that support the DEMANDS of the entire medical industry, all branches of the military, airports, electronics, communications, merchant ships, container ships, and cruise liners, as well as asphalt for roads, and fertilizers to help feed the world. Product shortages are fueling (no pun intended) inflation as it imposes serious damage onto the energy and raw materials infrastructures.
The law of supply and demand guarantees further inflation and shortages in perpetuity as fewer refineries will be available to manufacture crude oil into the derivatives that account for more than 6,000 products for society, as well as manufacturing the fuels for 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.
In the last few years, California has shuttered two refineries (Phillips 66 at Rodeo and Marathon at Martinez), both in Northern California, that once manufactured many fuels and oil derivatives used to make thousands of products for humanity, are now only focusing on manufacturing renewable diesel fuel.
Today, the Bay Area AQMD (BAAQMD) in Northern California has their regulatory sights set on the refineries at Chevron Richmond and PBF Martinez (the old Shell site). If the courts uphold the recent BAAQMD rule 6-5 for a further reduction in particulate emissions, both the Chevron Refinery at Richmond and the PBF Refinery at Martinez have stated that they will shut down before spending one billion dollars at each site to retrofit their refineries to comply with further particulate emission reductions to 2.5 microns or less.
With the potential loss of two more California refineries in the coming years, Northern California’s gasoline and jet fuel demands will be imported from China and India to supply military bases, and the major international airports in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento, along with many oil derivatives that shuttered California refineries will no longer be manufacturing.
While the folks at CARB, SCAQMD, and the other air districts continue to do their job according to the regulations they have in hand, they are only tinkering with the emissions reductions that are needed to achieve our emissions attainment goals and the reductions in fossil fuels from the supply chain, while demand for the fossil fuel oil derivatives and fuels continues to increase worldwide.
Because the emissions from manufacturing operations and the production and use of fossil fuels doesn’t recognize community or international boundaries, those who live in underserved communities or developing countries will derive little if any benefit from this massive trove of government regulations.
While wind turbines and solar panels are seen as a promising source of renewable electricity to transition away from fossil fuels, it’s important to acknowledge their limitations. Two of the key drawbacks are their inability to generate continuous electricity, and most importantly, their inability to manufacture any goods to meet the demand for products for the growing population around the world.
With California being the 4th largest economy in the world, California may have regulated itself into an emission reductions death spiral. The few in the underprivileged communities of California will benefit from a reduction in emissions in their backyards, while the other 40 million residents of the state, and others around the world pick up the expense associated with the impact from the reductions to the supply chain of products and fuels now being manufactured from oil that are supporting the 8 billion on this planet.
Ronald Stein, P.E.
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
Ronald Stein (energy consultant) Wikipedia page
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‘But over time, the federal, state, and local regulations have not only increased in number, complexity, and cost but have gotten so oppressively burdensome that it has become economically infeasible to produce certain products anywhere else except outside the United States.”
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Yesterday this quote popped up:
“John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Biden on clean energy, said in a speech last month. “We got so good at stopping projects that we forgot how to build things in America.”
Two questions.
Has the air quality in California gotten better as these regulatory agencies have tighter regulations? This article says California counties continues to lead the list of most polluted in the nation. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-ranks-california-cities-among-nations-most-polluted/#.
Second question, will California’s move from constraining manufacturing to constraining warehousing, transportation and distribution improve air quality and will these changes improve the life and health of black and brown citizens that remain in the state?
It never ends. Air is better but eventually bakers can’t bake, nail salons must close their doors and gardeners must pull up certain plants and trees.
Has the air quality in California gotten better ?
One needs to realize some places in CA get atmospheric inversions, natural episodes, that trap the air near the surface. Volatiles from any source — call it pollution — slowly increase in concentration. While air quality is likely better than it otherwise would be, it will never be pleasant in those air traps.
Solution — move. 🙂
Very good review, a similar argument is brewing with the SCAQMD in the Los Angeles area under rule 1109.1 for NOx emissions
Good report by Ronald Stein. In addition to the obvious (there is no net carbon reduction occurring by importing from China and India, and actually there probably is a net increase due to lax regulatory environment), California, and New York and Illinois, are suffering a dramatic tax revenue reduction, as the taxpayers, either commercial or individual, are closing up shop and leaving. What idiocy to trade taxpayers for Sanctuary status and a homeless plague, also destroying tourism in the process. The entire State of California is successfully chasing the Detroit model.
It’s emancipation in reverse.
Ah well – bang goes the ‘Balanced Diet’
I don’t expect it’ll affect anything tho: $4 Trillion pa on medicines & healthcare is more than enough.
Quote:“The most prominent change we’ve seen is that people are preparing simpler dishes with fewer ingredients.
BBC
Spare them
story tip
NHS Scotland: More than 18,000 Scots died while waiting on NHS treatment, as more rush to private treatment | The Scotsman
Trump says if he is elected, he will return to pumping as much American oil and gas as possible, in order to bring down prices, free the U.S. from enemy producers, and lower the price the enemy producers receive for their oil and gas, thus reducing their ability to make mischief, and will return to drastically cutting regulations in all areas of business, the way he did the first time he was in office.
Just what is needed to turn this nation and the world around from the death spiral Biden and this human-caused climate change insanity has put us in.
The problem is that every business knows that Trump has only 4 years and that whoever follows Trump could easily slam on the brakes again, and force them to close anything built while Trump was in office.
Investing in the US is rapidly becoming a fools errand. Profits, even the survival of your business itself is subject to the whims of whoever is in the White House this year.
If Trump wins, he has promised to fully implement his Schedule F. This was an EO he signed near the end of his term (too late) that categorizes all policy makers in the Federal bureaucracy as ‘at will’ employees. (It was one of the first of Trump’s EOs that Biden reversed). If he can pull it off, and it should be a high priority for any other Republican candidate, it would go a long way to bringing the unaccountable administrative ‘deep state’ to heel, including all the climate change nonsense and EPA overreach.
There is more to your story. Trump tried earlier in his presidency with an EO that Ketanji Jackson overturned (and thus secured her position on the SCOTUS). The Schedule F EO overcame her objections, but as you said, Biden reversed it on day 1.
It is critical that this EO or a similar be implemented. It could kill the Swamp. Nothing else besides a revolution could achieve that IMHO..
“Profits, even the survival of your business itself is subject to the whims of whoever is in the White House this year….” It’s called democracy Mark and while it has its faults, by and large it is better than the other options.
“Trump says…”
But we have to remember Trump says a lot of things that don’t happen or just aren’t true. Like the wall, stopping covid by Easter, he didn’t have sex with Stormy…… He also says he didn’t return the top secret files that included strategic weaknesses of the US’s allies because they contained his golf shirts. Yes Trump says a lot of thing….
“But we have to remember Trump says a lot of things that don’t happen or just aren’t true.”
So you say. Evidence? You are just parroting the same leftwing propaganda as the U.S. Democrats.
I’m voting for Trump, if given a chance, and it looks like I will have that chance. Trump is leading his nearest Republican opponent by 30 points. And this is after the latest Biden indictment (which shouldn’t even go to trial, it is such a flawed prosecution).
Tom I gave you three examples. How many would yo like? Name your number? One that I find so rediculous and beyond funny is him saying he will end the Ukraine war on his first day in office. Be honest Tom, do you genuinely think he is telling the truth on that?
And did you see the interview with Bret Baier? Trump all but incriminated himself. Someone needs to tell him not to do interviews at this time.
As an exercise to show the real cost of forcing parasitic intermittent power/energy into electric grids, identify all the costs necessary to make EACH mandated generator grid compatible and dispatchible.
Include all the make-up equipment for full time production capability (batteries, diesel engines,.. ) and compatible interconnection with the grid. For transmission interconnections, the utility should have a single connecting point.
Wind/solar generators must provide all substation facilities within their facilities. Including interruption, switching, communications, regulation devices.
For distribution systems include the cost to forced upgrades required to continue reliable local electric service, and the unique costs associated with placing generation into networks designed for delivery only.
Require evidence of on-site or reliable fuel supplies for make-up energy for each solar/wind installation (not just contracts).
Figure out how to allocate costs/lost value of the benefits inherent in existing rotating generators and the systemic costs of adding many small generators onto a grid designed and built over decades.
There is more detail of course, but it could be helpful to communicate the issues and costs of mandating intermittent generators to the general public and legislators.
What would have to be added to each wind or solar field for full time electric generation?
Unfortunately, the regulatory iceberg sinking the California Titanic threatens to suck down neighboring states that lack oil refineries. That’s in addition to water demand issues from the already elevated flow of California expat residents and investment fleeing across the borders. Don’t send up any distress rockets because a host of regulators and trainees will descend on you.
That’s a concern for knowledgeable Nevada citizens who realize our petroleum products come from California. It is an existential threat of which few Nevadan politicians are aware.
California :Just more troughs for political and financial opportunistic parasites.
I found it helpful to read about the “terminology” of inflation . . . Wiki has an entry . . .
“Over time, the term inflation has evolved to refer to increases in the price level; an increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation to distinguish it from rising prices, which for clarity may be called “price inflation“.
In this post, Ronald Stein, uses the single word for “price inflation”.
The term “inflation” is defined as “too many dollars chasing too few goods”. Not aware of any definition change by economic scholars. But then again, boys are now girls, men can get pregnant, rain can cause drought and cold is evidence of heating, so the only thing one can really say is definitions are fluid.
California, having decided with religious enthusiasm that any CO2 emissions are bad, is becoming the rare two-year old who decides to hold his breath till he turns blue, but stops his own CO2 emissions permanently with his last breath.
“The few in the underprivileged communities of California will benefit from a reduction in emissions in their backyards, while the other 40 million residents of the state, and others around the world pick up the expense associated with the impact from the reductions to the supply chain of products and fuels now being manufactured from oil that are supporting the 8 billion on this planet.”
Nobody will benefit from the increase in energy costs, energy scarcity, and prices of every single thing sold in California. I can’t think of a single group that benefits. EV owners? Nope, because your electricity will be more expensive, as will your cars. You also buy other stuff too. People who live near the refineries? Nope, you just lost your job that was directly or indirectly funded by the refineries, plus a huge portion of your tax base. Please tell me who exactly will benefit.
What I see is a huge opportunity for Mexico if they could convince the drug cartels it is easier, safer, and more profitable to do the following than running drugs. Expand the Rosarito port in Baja California. Build a nice highway for truckers to get to Arizona. Build a refinery and more off-shore wells. Truckers would love that. Just by-pass California and the EPA.
With the loss of port traffic, manufacturing, and oil and gas facilities, CA would see a drastic decline in revenues. Fine by me.
I would suggest that Canada has a similar opportunity, but their government is stuck on stupid as much as CA.
The author states, “As a result of continuously decreasing in-state oil production, California has increased imported crude oil from foreign countries from 5 percent in 1992 to 58 percent today of total consumption”.
My understanding is that my gasoline price, $5.00 plus per gallon, here is Cali is so high is largely from the loss of Alaskan crude from The North Slope via Alyeska. Am I wrong?
“Air quality” is being used as a facade, a handy club for battering what they are really after – fossil fuels. They knowingly conflate the bogeyman, CO2 with actual pollutants, It’s genius.