The campaign for a new solar energy ballot measure in Los Angeles has raised more than $267,000, nearly two-thirds of it from groups affiliated with the union that represents Department of Water and Power employees, according to a report released Wednesday.

An International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local contributed $50,000 to support Measure B, a March ballot initiative to add 400 megawatts of solar panels throughout Los Angeles by 2014. The nation union, IBEW Education Committee, gave $75,000, the Times reports, and an IBEW astroturf group ponied up $45,000.

Critics say the unions are trying to force the city into a monopolistic arrangement that narrowly benefits their members but sticks it to Angelenos with higher electrical rates. But we were struck by this weird connection:

Backers of the solar plan say it will create good jobs and has support that extends beyond DWP employees to include groups such as the Coalition for Clean Air, the Sierra Club and the American Lung Assn

Right, sure, those reliable proponents of new electrical generation and transmission, the Sierra Club.

Organized labor is generally pretty good in promoting new energy projects, but in this case, they’re getting into bed with anti-energy zealots. The Sierra Club led the opposition to a solar energy project promoted by San Diego Gas & Electric because transmission lines offend their environmental sensitivities.

The Sierra Club filed a motion with the [California Public Utilities Commission] demanding that they require SDG&E to proceed with an EIR before any route is established. The Sierra Club stated that by determining the route in advance, the public and the CPUC would be conceding the need for the power link plan and avoiding the mandatory listing of alternative plans, including a “no-project” alternative that would compare the impacts to the environment if the Sunrise Powerlink plan was either approved or denied.

 “The alternatives discussed should focus on ways to avoid or substantially lessen the project’s significant environmental effects,” said Paul Blackburn of the San Diego Sierra Club.

Once an electrical-generation project moves beyond the theoretical stage into threatening to become reality, big-money green organizations like the Sierra Club go into action to prevent its completion. Why would the IBEW make common cause with a group that, history tells us, will eventually try to block the realistic steps needed for the project?

Government subsidies must be involved, but in the end, the IBEW is just hurting itself. Dumb.

(Hat tip: Jim Gray.)

From The Calgary Herald, “Pick for U. S. energy secretary eyes opportunity in clean coal“:

Emissions – Steven Chu, president-elect Barack Obama’s choice for energy secretary, said the United States has an “opportunity” to develop technologies that would burn coal with fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

“I feel very strongly that this is not only an opportunity, it’s something the U.S., with its great technological leadership, should rise to the occasion to develop,” Chu, 60, said Tuesday at a hearing of the senate energy and natural resources committee, which is considering his nomination.

How disappointing for all the anti-energy activists to whom coal is the environment’s bete noire. Chu has told them to go to hoille.

Chu and by extension the Obama Administration’s endorsement of clean-coal comes just as big-money environmentalists are spending millions on an advertising campaign attacking the technology. The Sunday news-chat shows are full of the TV spots, which are clever enough — a fellow standing on an empty, windswept plain, saying triumphantly, “This is today’s clean-coal technology.” (Watch it here.)

At the Metro Center subway stations here in D.C., the coalition that promotes itself at This is Reality.org, has bought most of the wall display space and hung banners to sell the message that there’s no such thing as clean coal. Like the TV spots, it’s another effort at hip advertising — see, this Sasquatch (mermaid, space alien) is holding a piece of coal claiming it’s clean, and since Sasquatches don’t exist, clean-coal doesn’t exist.

The message strikes us as too complicated and ironic for an effective ad campaign on public policy. Worse: It’s stupid and anti-science. The argument is that because some technology does not currently exist, it will never exist, and therefore we should not use that source of energy now or embark on any R&D.

If you applied that attitude consistently, then we’d never have wind, solar, biofuels, nuclear power — or certaintly not competitively price power generation from those sources. We’d never make any progress, period. This Is Reality is selling Luddism as an answer to today’s energy and environmental challenges.

The editorial page editor of The D.C. Examiner, Mark Tapscott, wrote a column on the campaign by the groups — Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters. Tapscott reminds us that coal represents the No. 1 source of power generation in the United States, identifies the amazing progress made in reducing coal emissions, and the prosperity and life-saving technology made possible by affordable production of electricity. From “Coal Lies From A Progressive Fable Factory“:

New technologies are on the horizon such as gasification and carbon-capture that promise to make coal burning even more environmentally friendly.

So strictly speaking, the “clean coal” technologies aren’t here yet. But then neither are the alternative energy supplies the environmentalists regularly cite as ready replacements for coal and other carbon-based fuels. And there are serious trade-offs with the alternatives that environmentalists don’t like to talk about.

In the end, whom are we to believe, a Nobel prize-winning scientist or an ironic Sasquatch?

There’s been much huffing on the activist left about “Midnight Regulations” being issued by the Bush Administration, that is, the supposedly last-minute surprises that the White House and agencies are springing on the public without adequate notice.

Groups like the American Association for Justice (trial lawyers), the Sierra Club (environmentalists), and ProPublica (activist, anti-business journalism) have all pounded the table against this circumvention of the regulatory and oversight process. But in most cases, these regulations have been in the works for many months if not years and have indeed followed standard practice, in line with OMB’s instructions to avoid the shortcuts and gaming that undermines the implementation of these rules.

What’s really going on here is an effort to delegitimatize the substance of the regulations, especially those that attempt to encourage energy production while maintaining public health and safety. These groups have all lost their arguments during the drafting and public comment period on the rules, so now they try a process attack against the outcome.

Why else haven’t we seen an outcry against President Bush’s announcement this week that is he is using his executive branch authority to declare national monuments in three areas of the Pacific Ocean – in total, the largest fully protected area in the world, 195,274 square miles worth? It’s an astonishingly far-reaching expansion of government control over vast regions, done not after a full policy debate in Congress but instead with a stroke of the president’s pen. Are any of the groups aggrieved over “midnight regulations” upset with this display of executive branch authority?

To its credit, at least OMB Watch acknowledges the President’s actions, trying to distinguish it from “midnight regulations” in a blog post, “Last-Minute Ocean Conservation from Bush“:

Bush’s conservation move comes not by agency regulations, but by powers granted to presidents under the Antiquities Act of 1906, according to the Post. Though the regulatory machine is shutting down, Bush has other ways of advancing his policies. Executive orders, proclamations, and the like — though easier for future presidents to undo — remain an option for Bush until his final minutes in office.

Well, then, shouldn’t OMB Watch and its allies among the anti-Bush-regulation crowd be as exercised about the new Marine Monuments as they are about the “midnight regs?”

Sure they should be, but they’re not, which tells us it’s not the midnight that offends them, it’s Bush keeping the clock.

BusinessWeek’s summary of a theme in yesterday’s Senate Banking Committee:

But it was clear from the statements and questions posed by Senators to Wagoner, Mulally, and Nardelli that many think Detroit’s problems are self-inflicted, and that the companies lack the innovation to climb out of their hole.

The criticisms come both from liberals who believe everyone should drive a little green car and the conservatives who blame executive arrogance and unions for the Big 3′s problems.

You can argue the points, but to maintain any sort of fairness or honesty in policymaking you should also acknowledge that Congress bears responsibility for Detroit’s problems as well. In their zeal to to replace the marketplace in determining what vehicles the manufacturers should produce — 35 miles per gallon?  No, 38! — elected officials* have added thousands of dollars in costs and inefficiences to each vehicle while unleashing a fleet of unintended consequences. You know, consequences like forcing Detroit to produce cars people don’t want to buy.

The Wall Street Journal makes this case in a provocative editorial today, taking on the left-leaning critics, “The Environmental Motor Company — Making Detroit a subsidiary of the Sierra Club.”

When is $25 billion in taxpayer cash insufficient to bail out Detroit’s auto makers? Answer: When the money is a tool of Congressional industrial policy to turn GM, Ford and Chrysler into agents of the Sierra Club and other green lobbies.

That’s the little-understood subplot of the Washington melodrama over a taxpayer rescue for Detroit. In their public statements, proponents describe the bailout as an attempt to save jobs, American manufacturing and the middle-class way of life. But look closely and you can see that what’s really going on is an attempt to use taxpayer money to remake Detroit in the image of the modern environmental movement. Given a choice between greens and blue-collar workers, Congress puts the greens first.

Perhaps Congress should consider lifting some of the mandates it has imposed on the industry, things like CAFE standards, or the various strings attached to the $25 billion authorized in 2005 for “retooling.” No? Well, can we at least have an open discussion of these issues after committee members finish lambasting the auto executives?

* We shouldn’t limit the criticism to Congress. Many governors and attorneys general also claim to be more knowledgeable than the marketplace. From Legal Newsline, “Automakers must cut emissions in return for federal money, AGs say“: (continue reading…)

The Examiner newspaper featured a pro-and-con, yea-and-nay, thumbs-up-down pair of columns last week on the value of offshore drilling. The advocate was Virginia state Senator Frank Wagner (R-Virginia Beach), a member of the NAM board of directors. Sen. Wagner has been a longtime advocate of accessing the vast energy resources off the coast of Virginia, helping to spur the nationa interest in Outer Continental Shelf energy development.

In “Offshore drilling is safe, essential to our future,” he writes:

There is no one silver bullet.  Rather, think of the energy solution as a shotgun shell with many silver pellets—and we must scatter all of them, including greatly expanded nuclear generation, clean coal technologies, oil shale recovery, synthetic fuels from coal, biofuels, renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and conservation, and expanded access to resources on the outer continental shelf.

The General Assembly studied all aspects of the offshore industry and found its environmental track record superb. No significant spills from platforms occurred during Rita and Katrina, the largest hurricanes on record. In fact, each offshore platform has become its own ecosystem, with over 30,000 fish congregating there (see www.towersoflife.com). 

Senator Wagner’s column was paired with one by the director of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, Glen Basa, “Offshore drilling distracts us from solving our energy, climate crisis“:

Here’s why the environmental community opposes it: Offshore drilling has become a politically popular symbol for our failed status quo energy policy.  Chants of “drill, baby, drill” suggest that if we could just tap our offshore resources, we could go back to the halcyon days of cheap gas and gas-guzzling SUVs.  But as much as some Americans might wish it, there are many reasons why that is a time we will not see again.

That’s a straw man argument, putting forth claim that advocates of OCS energy development believe 49 cents a gallon gasoline is the goal of offshore drilling. Misrepresent the advocates by putting the weakest argument possible in their mouths and then knock it down.

But have you ever seen any pro-drilling advocate actually contend the goal is the energy-rich days of, oh, 1971? Read Sen. Wagner’s column: His makes the same case the NAM does – develop and access all sources of energy to ease the pressure on prices. And pursue conservation. Sen. Wagner:

What is needed—now—is a comprehensive national strategy, with streamlined permitting for not only offshore resource recovery, but also nuclear, clean coal and renewables. I have watched a Virginia entrepreneur struggle for years through three lawsuits and reams of bureaucratic red tape in an attempt to erect 20 wind turbines in Highland County. The permitting process for offshore drilling can take ten years; permits for nuclear plants even longer. 

A comprehensive strategy versus a straw man. Which one is more credible?

This post with video by the Politico’s Ben Smith on Senator Biden’s abjuration of coal is getting widespread play among the bloggers, chatterers and the commentariat.

Some great rope line video from Joe Biden’s recent Ohio swing, where he was asked by an anti-pollution campaigner about clean coal — a controversial approach in Democratic circles for which Obama has voiced support, particularly during the Kentucky primary.

Biden’s apparent answer: He supports clean coal for China, but not for the United States.

“No coal plants here in America,” he said. “Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there. Make them clean.”

“We’re not supporting clean coal,” he said of himself and Obama. They do, on paper, support clean coal.

Even disagreeing (strenuously) with Senator Biden on coal as a matter of policy, we must concede that his position is not unheard of. It’s shared by quite a few leading environmentalist opponents of energy development:

• “There’s no such thing as clean coal” — Bruce Nilles, who directs the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign. (Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 11, 2008.)
• “There’s no such thing as clean coal” — Robert Kennedy Jr. “‘Coal is dirty and destructive in every aspect of its production and burning.” (Real News Network, Aug. 28, 2008.)
• “There’s no such thing as clean coal” — Ilan Levin, legal counsel for the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) in Austin, Texas (The New Scientist, Aug. 3, 2007.)

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) has raised an important point about any legislation to open up new areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for oil and natural gas development: Enact a law and you still face scores of environmental groups eager to block exploration and development through legal action.

In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Shadegg notes that that Earthjustice, a green lobby group that employs more than 150 people, has filed hundreds of lawsuis. Earthjustice boasts: “Because lawsuits can be so effective, we have a team of policy experts in Washington, D.C. that work hand-in-hand with our attorneys to stop legislative backlash . . .”

Shadegg’s office has compiled a summary of the anti-energy lawsuits, and he comments further in today’s op-ed.

In February 2008, the administration issued 487 leases in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, which holds an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and other groups used the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act to challenge and delay progress on all 487 leases. In a separate lawsuit, they challenged the entire national outer continental shelf (OCS) leasing program, seeking to block all future leases.

Even if a lease makes it through these challenges, it isn’t clear sailing. Right now, there are 748 leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Exploration activities in every single one were challenged in May of this year by EarthJustice in conjunction with others.

The Alaskan OCS contains 26 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Not one offshore lease has escaped litigation.

Shadegg’s solution? Citing political and legal precedent — construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, for one — he argues for legislative provisions that would limit abusive lawsuits through waivers of environmental laws. On the House floor yesterday, he said, “We can allow lawsuits. But they don’t have to be dilatory. They don’t have to be such that no oil will ever be produced.” (Floor statement here.)

Puzzled by the sudden prominence of such a significant point, we asked the NAM’s energy policy expert about the litigation issue. Why now? Well, it’s because all these Outer Continental Shelf areas had been locked up legislatively, so the environmenal litigators didn’t have to sue. But if development is actually possible, bring out the briefs!

Earlier this month, Shadegg introduced H.R. 6887, to authorize the President or a designee of the President to waive any legal requirement under any provision of Federal law otherwise applicable to a covered energy project as the President or such designee determines necessary to ensure expeditious conduct of such project. (Statement here.) Any realistic, substantive, actually energy-focused “energy bill” will need language of this sort.

Last week we took a look at the Presidential candidates’ Senate records on energy, noting that Sen. Obama had sponsored legislation to increase research into coal-to-liquids technology (Fischer-Tropf) but then moved away from that aspect of coal development as his campaign got going. Coal-to-liquids transformation is high on the environmentalists’ list of things to hate (right below Alberta oil sands), so primary politics played a role in the evolving positions.

So it’s interesting to see one of Obama’s prime constituencies fully embracing coal-to-liquids. We’re talking American Indians, specifically the Crow Tribe in Montana.  (The Crow Agency’s website prominently features the May political rally held with Senator Obama.) And now the tribe has signed an agreement for a major new energy project.

CROW AGENCY, Mont. — A $7 billion coal-to-liquids plant proposed for southeastern Montana’s Crow reservation promises an economic boon for the region, but must first overcome economic and political hurdles that have kept any such plant from being built in the United States.

The Many Stars plant — a partnership between the tribe and Australian-American Energy Co. — would convert the reservation’s sizable coal reserves into 50,000 barrels a day of diesel and other fuels.

State officials said Friday it represents the most valuable economic development project in Montana history.

“We’re talking about one of the most technologically advanced, sophisticated energy projects on the planet,” Gov. Brian Schweitzer said at a news conference detailing the project.

The tribe’s interest is economic, the goal being jobs and income and self-improvement. From an earlier AP story:

The American Indian tribe’s chairman, Carl Venne, said the coal-to-liquids project offered an unprecedented chance at improving the lives of the tribe’s 12,000 members. The agreement calls for the Crow to receive up to 50 percent of profits from the plant after investors in the project recoup their costs.

“It means we will become self sufficient as a tribe,” Venne said. “I won’t need no more federal dollars. I won’t need no more state dollars.”

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council would prefer your continued dependency, Chairman Venne.

Michael Barone, dissecting the politics of energy, uses ANWR as a case study. Public opinion that previously rewarded groups and politicians for blocking energy development there has shifted.

The ANWR ban is the work of environmental restriction groups that depend on direct-mail fundraising to pay their bills and keep their jobs. That means they must always claim the sky is falling. They can’t get people to send a check or mouse-click a donation because they did a good job, the restrictions they imposed on the Alaska pipeline in the 1970s have done a good job in preserving the environment or because clean air acts of the past have vastly reduced air pollution.

ANWR is a precious cause for them because it can be portrayed (dishonestly) as a national treasure and because the pressure for drilling there has been unrelenting. Democrats have enlisted solidly in their army, and they have also been able to recruit Republicans who wanted to get good environmental scorecards to impress enviro-conscious voters in states like Florida, New Jersey and Minnesota.

Now all that is in danger, because the pain of paying $60 for a tank of gas has convinced most Americans to worry less about the caribou or the recurrence of an oil spill that happened 39 years ago. Democratic leaders are preventing Congress from voting on continental shelf and ANWR drilling or oil shale development because they fear their side would lose and are making the transparently absurd claim that drilling won’t lower the price of oil. They’re scampering to say that they would allow drilling somewhere — mostly in places where the oil companies haven’t found any oil.

ANWR’s used as a fundraiser?