Daily Policy Digest
Environment Issues
| How the Wheels Came Off for Fisker The failure of electric car maker Fisker represents yet another example of the federal government's poor ability to pick winners and losers in the private market, particularly with firms that seek to limit fossil fuel use... |
| Capitalist Profit Motive Reduces Pollution The transformation of industrial waste into lucrative byproducts is one trend that has ensured that pollution decreases while reliance on environmental resources is minimized... |
| Increased Natural Gas Production Lowers Emissions Carbon dioxide emissions from energy production has fallen 12 percent between 2005 and 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Department... |
| Wind Energy Cannot Compete in Free Market The cost per megawatt-hour (MWh) of combined capital and operating expenses of the lifetime of a new wind energy unit is $96/MWh versus $66.1/MWh for natural gas... |
| Reasons to Reject the Law of the Sea Treaty The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty is essentially a new world government of the sea that redistributes wealth and seeks to control supply and demand of oceanic resources, say Iain Murray, an adjunct fellow, and H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow, at the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| The Irrational Fear of Fracking Electricity production from natural gas is up 37 percent since 2007, while coal's share has plummeted 25 percent in the United States but risen in the rest of the world... |
| Climate Scientists Struggle to Explain Warming Slowdown The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035... |
| Washington's Renewable Energy Portfolio to Raise Energy Prices Washington's Renewable Portfolio Standard will raise the cost of electricity by a minimum of $675 million in 2020... |
| The High Cost of Low-Value Wind Power Subsidies for renewable energy distort markets and are economically inefficient, driving out legitimate competitors and leading to higher prices in the long run... |
| Environmental Protection Agency Regulations Threaten Coal Industry Tougher air-quality standards would make 66 percent of the nation's coal-fired power plants more expensive to operate than natural-gas fired plants... |
