Exorbitant production costs, pervading stench raise concerns about"green" technology
Environment & Climate News
June 2005
By Greg McConnell
Energy
A new series of books for young people offers objective and balanced discussions of controversial issues.
A new series of books for young people offers objective and balanced discussions of controversial issues.
By Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart,
Andrew Dorchak, & Roger E. Meiners
Summary
By Jane Chastain
Some people learn from their mistakes. It appears Barack Obama is not one of them.
Dog waste is powering a gas light with methane in a Cambridge, MA, dog park.
A new drilling technology is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States. This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half.
Hundreds of billions in government subsidies for green energy will not reduce pollution or revitalize the job market Competitve forces working in a free market are the most efficient and effective way to achieve these results.
Regulations requiring greater fuel efficiency in cars and create unintended consequences such as more driving andmore energy use because of the car's fuel efficiency.
Promises that green energy will change almost everypart of our lives for the better is an enchanting idea, but it is also a myth.
PERC's Roger Meiners writes that calls for massive changes in all aspects of modern life from transportation to food production in
order to reduce carbon emissions are unrealistic. Repeated failures of such utopian experiments suggests extreme caution.
One fellow at PERC's 2011 Enviropreneur Institute explored ways to create incentives for oil companies to work with conservation organizations like TNC to plan their projects to avoid sensitive areas and minimize impacts.
As PERC’s Rick Stroup often says, “Efficiency has no constituency,” and that’s certainly true of environmental policy. The federal government is replete with inefficiencies resulting from overlapping, redundant, and wasteful spending programs.
As oil continues to gush from BP's Macondo well and politicians posture, it is time for us to ask why we are drilling in such risky places when there is oil available elsewhere. The answer lies in the mantra NIMBY—"not in my back yard."
As America’s energy production reaches record levels, it's time for a new system of public land management that promotes cooperation instead of conflict.
By Brian Lutz and Martin Doyle -- Our research shows that for the Marcellus Shale significantly less wastewater is generated for every unit of natural gas recovered by hydraulic fracturing than by conventional gas production.
For more than two decades, special interests have persuaded Congress to mandate Americans buy ethanol whether they want to or not. As a result, 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is now used for ethanol rather than food.
In this PERC Case Study, Sierra Crane-Murdoch explores the challenges facing a tribe atop the nation’s biggest oil play. While mineral owners off the reservation have earned thousands of dollars for each acre leased, most allottees within have earned only a few hundred.
Saturday night marks the end of daylight-saving time for 2012. Time for those clocks to "fall back" an hour to standard time, when the sun really is highest at high noon.
Denis and Barbara Prager fear the day that hydraulic fracturing takes place on their land in the Shields Valley of Montana.
According to Steven Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy and a Nobel physicist, “The most direct way to reduce our dependency on foreign oil is to simply use less of it.” That makes sense.
The current administration continues to push for cleaner air. That means reducing carbon emissions according to the 2009 EPA ruling that defines carbon dioxide as an air pollutant.
The Washington Post reports the Environmental Protection Agency will release proposed regulations gover
The Center for Biological Diversity announced that they, together with some 40-plus other organizations, were able to rally 793,000 signatories for a petition against the Keystone XL pipeline.
Back in 2007, Congress created a biofuels mandate under which oil companies are required to use a minimum amount of cellulosic ethanol each year. The mandate was supposed to encourage the development of a domestic cellulosic ethanol industry. This has not happened.
National Geographic recently launched its "Seven Billion Special Series"--a year-long series on global population.
Others have commented on President Obama’s decision to punt on the Keystone XL pipeline project.
In 2002, federal reguators predicted it would take between 18-months and three-years for the proposed Cape Wind energy project in Nantucket Sound to receive federal approval.
We are running out of oil, so the story goes. A finite resource with limited supply and massive consumption -- at some point the last drop will be used up, right? Wrong.
PERC's Andrew Morriss appeared on MSNBC last week to discuss green energy and Solyndra with Dylan Ratigan:
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is trying to become "coal-free" by 2020 but can't find any torrefied pellets, which are a biom
A useful principle in business is not to throw good money after bad trying to salvage a mistake.
Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problem has an interesting post that might be of interest to enviropreneurs.
According to the U.S. Bureau of land management, wind power is the fastest growing energy technology in the United States. With this growth comes the desire to develop a legal framework for wind rights.
Bjørn Lomborg draws upon the work of Bruce Yandle of PERC to warn against climate solutions touted by emerging green activist/big business alliances:
Cap and trade, a favorite of statists and even many economists who otherwise are not statists, continues to be touted as a great sc
In 1965, the American economist Kenneth Boulding popularized the phase “Spaceship Earth” expre
Similar to politicians from the past, President Obama is pointing fingers at bogeymen for causing higher gas prices.
Readers, writers, students, and teachers still confess to believing that there is a garbage problem. “We have too much garbage,” they claim.
Last Saturday night (March 26) was Earth Hour. A time that, presumably, billions of people turn out their lights to support energy conservation.
It is often believed, and in fact intended, that regulations requiring increased energy efficiency will reduce energy consumption.
A new book from PERC scholars Roger E. Meiners and Andrew P. Morriss, and co-authors William T. Bogart and Andrew D. Dorchak:
Just hours before Tim DeChristopher made false bids in a BLM oil and gas lease auction, he to
by Pete GeddesWhat will our energy future look like? Of course, I have no special insights, but I see two interesting trends.
PERC senior fellow Bobby McCormick appeared on Florida's WUSF 89.7 today to discuss the White House's new ban on offshore dril
by Pete GeddesThe excellent Roger Pielke Jr. asks:
by Shawn Regan
This summer, the unthinkable happened. Without litigation, an energy corporation and an environmental group reached a voluntary compromise on how to achieve two seemingly irreconcilable ends: environmental preservation and natural gas drilling. The Bill Barrett Corporation and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) agreed to limit drilling on Bureau of Land Management lands on the West Tavaputs Plateau in central Utah – an area rich in recreational opportunities, archeological resources, and natural gas.The story goes like this. The Bill Barrett Corp. had acquired leases to drill for natural gas near Nine Mile Canyon, an area revered by recreationists for its stunning landscapes and prehistoric Indian petroglyphs. The area is also home to abundant reservoirs of natural gas – a scenario that typically results in political jockeying and lengthy legal battles. However, a series of meetings between SUWA and Barrett negotiators resulted in a plan to limit the number of drill wells by about 70 percent and reduce the surface area impact from 3,656 acres to 1,603 acres by implementing “directional drilling” techniques. “This is the purest win-win we could come up with,” remarked Barrett’s vice president. The plan was also hailed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and others as an “unprecedented” and “historic” agreement.The unfortunate reality is that compromises between industry and environmentalists are the exception, not the rule, on public lands. Multiple-use mandates and environmental review processes keep public land managers in a perpetual state of political gridlock that is often marked by protracted litigation.But compromises between industry and environmentalists are not so uncommon on privately-owned lands, where land managers have the right incentives to reach such win-win agreements. In this way, private lands offer a valuable lesson on how to ensure that cooperation between such diametrically-opposed groups becomes less the exception, and more the rule.Consider the Paul J. Rainey Preserve in Louisiana, which is owned by the Audubon Society. For nearly 50 years, a natural gas company operated within the sanctuary under strict rules put in place by the Audubon Society, such as no pumping during nesting season and equipment requirements that makes less noise. This arrangement brought in more than $25 million for Audubon, which was used to improve the sanctuary and purchase additional lands for preservation.
Environmental Kuznets Curves for carbon emissions raise doubts about the feasibility of reducing global carbon emissions..
Features
Are subsidies for ethanol somewhat different from other subsidies???in other words, not all that bad? In this free-flowing dialogue, free market environmentalists debate the issue.
Are subsidies for ethanol somewhat different from other subsidies???in other words, not all that bad? In this free-flowing dialogue, free market environmentalists debate the issue.
The benefits of ethanol are largely a myth, but its political life is nothing short of miraculous.
Banzhaf argues that free market environmentalists should applaud the cap-and-trade approach over more government regulation.
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If these advances continue,
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over the next fifty years.
Perspectives
HABIHUT AT YOUR DOORSTEPLiving in the Korogocho slum, a small settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, is not easy. Think crowds, no running water or sanitation, minimal electricity, and widespread crime. Furthermore, property rights are limited, at best, and most goods and income are amassed in the underground marketplace.
In the basement of an engineering building at Northeastern University in Boston, a strange eggbeater-type machine is strapped to a gurney in the corner.
A proponent of wind power takes on Thomas Tanton's article from December, and Tanton replies.
In Wyoming's Powder River Basin, efforts to access a major new source of natural gas stalled when drilling for coalbed methane also produced millions of gallons of tainted groundwater.
Founded 30 years ago in Bozeman, Montana, PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—is the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets.
PERC’s publications, each designed to resonate with specific groups, move ideas generated at PERC to broader audiences.
Research is at the heart of PERC's work, with a focus on the question: What is the link between economic growth and environmental quality?
The goal of PERC’s programs is to fully realize the vision of establishing “PERC University,” where scholars, students, policy makers, and others convene to expand the applications of free market environmentalism.
PERC's fellowships share a common goal of exposing new scholars, students, journalists, and policy makers to free market environmentalism, as well as enable scholars already familiar with FME to explore new applications.
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