Green Jobs: Debunking the Debunkers
Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
Energy markets are neither free nor efficient, so traditional economic arguments against regulation and other government interventions do not apply.
In response to my recent article digging into green jobs, a reader sent me a copy of a March paper by Andrew Morriss et al at University of Illinois that attempts to debunk green jobs myths. While I see major flaws in most green jobs papers I read, many of the myths cited by this paper are irrelevant to what I consider the most important questions:
Can government intervention to clean up the energy sector create jobs...
AltEnergyStocks Endorses Elizabeth Warren For President
by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA, Editor
Past Endorsements
AltEnergyStocks.com has endorsed a candidate in all the US Presidential races since 2008 (Obama, followed by Obama in 2012, Clinton in 2016, and a generic endorsement of congressional Democrats in 2018.
Despite the long string of Democratic endorsements, AltEnergyStocks this site does not automatically endorse Democratic or liberal candidates. We are issue driven, and all our endorsements to date have been purely based on the policy positions of the candidates.
It is simply a sad fact about the Republican party that they have not fielded a conservative who actually cares about conservation of the environment...
Renewable Energy Standards: Savvy or Silly?
David Gold State renewable energy standards have gained momentum over the past decade with 29 states having put in place various types of standard mandates and five more having implemented voluntary standards (34 total). Now the federal government is looking to get into the game with a bi-partisan bill (S. 3813) aiming to set a minimum national standard. Renewable energy standards certainly feel good, but do they really provide the best path for achieving their goals? The existing renewable energy standards are savvy in finding a way to reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions while simultaneously being...
The Worst Waste
Jim Lane Peter Brown of FFA Fuels, promotes his company these days with the pithy slogan, “Fuels from the Worst Waste Around.” Which of course raises the legitimate question, what is the worst waste, and can we find a use for it? Discussions of worst waste will usually focus on the obvious say, landfill or the odious say, medical or nuclear waste. Toxicity and longevity are typical concerns, and that’s one of the reasons why nuclear energy remains controversial to this day. No Waste in Nature As LanzaTech’s Jennifer Holmgren observed in a recent article by...
Warren Buffett: Closet Tree-Hugging Billionaire
By Jeff Siegel Is Warren Buffett sending mixed messages on green energy? That's what the folks over at Bloomberg Business have suggested. But nothing could be further from the truth. After all, Buffett's making a fortune in the alternative energy space. Yet here's what was reported in Bloomberg this week: Warren Buffett highlights how his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. utilities make massive investments in renewable energy. Meanwhile, in Nevada, the company is fighting a plan that would encourage more residents to use green power. Berkshire’s NV Energy, the state’s dominant utility, opposes the proposal to increase a cap on...
How Economics Finally Brought Community Solar to IREA
by Joseph McCabe, PE My uber-conservative utility, Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA) has been against solar since before I moved into the service territory in 2007. IREA's long-serving general manager, Stanley Lewandowski Jr., would include climate change denial leaflets in the envelope along with the monthly electric bills. Now he is gone, and attitudes seem to be changing towards solar. With a new general manager, a couple of forward thinking board of directors and a handful of active IREA owners/members the solar landscape has changed and now includes a large solar project. Currently IREA...
Hurricane Sandy: “It’s Global Warming, Stupid”
Garvin Jabusch On today's broadcast of the news show Democracy Now hosted by Amy Goodman, Cynthia Rosenzweig, co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, went out of her way to begin her comments on Hurricane Sandy and the effects of global warming to issue a disclaimer: "but first Amy, I need to make something very clear: any one storm cannot be associated directly with climate change…we have to be very careful not to say Hurricane Sandy was caused by climate change." Unfortunately, this could easily be taken to imply that warming and Sandy may have...
Discom-fort: Barriers to Renewables in India
by Ishaan Goel
Energy is crucial to India’s policy agenda. Millions of households are yet to gain reliable access to electricity, hampering their potential for economic growth. Severe pollution issues create widespread health problems. Renewables are prioritized as viable solutions across the political spectrum, with their low costs and ease of installation in remote regions. The current administration has ambitious plans for renewable energy (RE), targeting an almost 4x increase in installed capacity to 450 GW by 2030 and introducing a spate of tax and investment reforms.
At the heart of the Indian power supply chain lie distribution companies (discoms). The...
Nature Conservancy Endorses Fossil Fuel Funded Trojan Horse
An article posted by ClimateLiabilityNews.org Hearing Glosses Over Carbon Tax Proposal’s Liability Waiver explains the ‘grand bargain’ being set forth in a proposal from the Climate Leadership Council. A Carbon Tax & Dividend plan is now being supported by big corporations, polluters and fossil fuel companies, which would seem to be a miraculous change in sentiment. But the fine print discloses that the deal includes a liability waiver exempting fossil fuels companies from federal & state climate tort lawsuits. The carbon tax is on the low end for “social cost of carbon” calculations, at $40/ton, so as a value...
China Trys to Cork EU Solar Tariffs With Wine Probe
Doug Young China is quickly learning how to play the game of tit-for-tat trade wars, with news that Beijing has launched a new anti-dumping probe against wines imported from the European Union. Anyone who has followed recent China-EU trade relations will know, of course, that announcement of this new probe by the Commerce Ministry comes the same day that the EU formally announced anti-dumping tariffs against imported Chinese solar panels. While I certainly don’t condone this kind of trade war rhetoric, I have to say that China’s decision to target Europe’s wine industry looks like a very...
Biofuel Industry Reacts To EPA New Renewable Fuel Standard
Yay or Nay for EPA? RFS Volumes out for 2020, Biodiesel for 2021 – What’s the reaction from industry?
by Jim Lane
What’s the reaction from industry? Coal for Christmas?
Should Santa bring coal for EPA’s stocking this year? Do the biofuels and agriculture industries think the EPA just put coal in their stocking? Is it thumbs up or thumbs down from biofuel industry advocates on last week’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency renewable fuel volumes? What about the exempted volumes?
The Ruling – Rotten or Respectable?
First, a bit on the EPA ruling that establishes the required renewable volumes under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program for...
Occupy Wall Street and the Next Economy: Clamoring for Solutions
Garvin Jabusch The Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS), now in its fourth week, is getting a lot of media attention. Opinions are divided. By and large, conservatives represent the protesters as 'a mob' (a notable exception is former governor of Louisiana and current GOP presidential candidate Buddy Roemer, who said on MSNBC that "politicians need to listen to these young people, it could change America"). Meanwhile, progressives view them as a justifiable, if not inevitable, reaction to the social inequity that results from a system rigged in favor of the ultra-wealthy. In their foundation document, the ...
What Obama Did To Coal Investors, What The Next President Might, And How Investors...
by Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA Investing in the past is a good way to lose money. Just ask anyone who has been investing in coal stocks since Obama we re-elected. A glance at the chart above shows that the VanEck Vectors Coal ETF (KOL) is down about 50% over the last four years, even while the broad market (as represented by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)) has gained almost 50%. But even if we knew this was going to happen, should investors have rushed into the energy sectors most loved by liberals: That is, Wind, Solar,...
Net Metering Is the Solar Industry’s Junk Food
Shoppers who bring reusable bags to the grocery store buy more junk food. This example is part of a growing body of behavioral psychology research showing that when we feel good about ourselves for doing one thing right, we give ourselves permission to be careless in other areas. The solar installation industry seems to be falling into the "reusable shopping bag" trap. Solar itself is the reusable shopping bag. The junk food is net metering. Net metering is a simple, intuitive way to pay for solar generation at retail rates. But it puts solar companies on...
What the ARRA Means for Clean Energy: One State’s Example
Last week, several branches of the Colorado state government organized a symposium on "How Colorado Electric/Gas Utilities and Their Customers Can Benefit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)." I attended, with an ear to how the likely implementation would affect Clean Energy Stocks. Overall, Colorado seems to be taking a very organized approach to a monumental task. According to Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) Chairman Ron Binz, who officiated at the conference, they intend to organize proposals into an overall thematic plan for spending stimulus money. In addition, they are working to eliminate barriers to regulated utilities...
350.org’s Smart New Campaign
Garvin Jabusch Many parallels exist between the college campus divestiture campaigns of the 1980s and today. Both were/are seeking to apply intense student and community pressure to persuade boards of trustees to get endowment monies out of investments in businesses or locations perceived as undesirable. In the '80s it was South Africa and Apartheid that students objected to. Back then, one could almost conceive of college students versus a beleaguered South African government as something of a fair fistfight between entities with comparable chances of winning popular opinion and thus investment dollars to their side. And indeed the students...
