Robert Waldmann

Joe Strawman argues that the solution to global warming is clean coal technology and in particular sequestering C02 from exhaust from coal fired power plants. Therefore cap and trade is a bad policy, because technology will solve anything soon.

In fact, if "clean coal" is not a contradiction in terms, the case for cap and trade (or a carbon tax) starting right now, is vastly strengthened as I argue after the jump.



A small tax on carbon or cap and trade with caps so high that rights to emit carbon are cheap will have a large quick effect on C02 emissions. Electric power companies have coal fired plants and natural gas fired plants, because natural gas fired plants are cheaper and coal is cheaper. The plants working all the time are coal fired. The natural gas fired plants work only during hours of peak demand.

A modest tax on carbon or fairly cheap carbon emission rights will cause power companies to switch this order of use so natural gas fired plants work all the time and coal fired plants work only during hours of peak demand.

The question is whether this will reduce C02 emissions or just delay them a few years. Natural gas supplies are limited. I guess that a few years of burning natural gas for electricity with reduce them to the point that the price will rise to whatever level required to make burning natural gas for electricity not competitive (even given cap and trade). My belief is that, since natural gas is very useful for home heating and making plastic and fertilizer, it won't be used to make electricity for very long.

However, if clean coal technology is possible, delaying coal burning is almost as good as preventing it forever. Clean coal technology is definitely not installed now. If, indeed, it will be installed in a few years, it is critically important to discourage the burning of coal now -- to encourage the use of stop gap measures to put off the burning until coal can be burned cleanly.

Thus if one believes that clean coal technology is feasible and just around the corner then one should rationally be more enthusiastic about cap and trade than if one doesn't.

by reader Sammy

Waxman-Markey: Intense Pain, No Environmental Gain

I know you guys won't like the source.... but try to deal with the issue.

From this Editorial:

If the pending Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill (HR 2454) becomes law, utility bills will soar. Farm and business energy costs will skyrocket — and be passed on to consumers, or defrayed by layoffs. Everything Americans grow, make, buy and do will be far pricier. And bureaucrats will control our lives.

Compared to no cap-and-tax regime, Waxman-Markey would cost the United States a cumulative $9.6 trillion in real GDP losses by 2035, concludes a study by the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis. The bill would also cause an additional 1.1 million job losses each year, raise electricity rates 90% after adjusting for inflation, provoke a 74% hike in inflation-adjusted gasoline prices, and add $1,500 to the average family's annual energy bill, says Heritage.

The Cong ressional Budget Office says the poorest one-fifth of families could see annual energy costs rise $700 — while high-income families could see costs rise $2,200. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein estimates that the average person could pay an extra $1,500 per20year for energy. And those are just direct energy costs.

Written largely by professional environmentalists, the numbingly complex 942-page bill would require an 83% reduction in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 — a level last seen in 1908......

There are disputes over the costs of cap and trade (of course), as modelling is extremely complex and fraught with assumptions.

Republican opponents have used the cost figure of $3,100 per household per year based on an MIT study which found a generic cap and trade program would raise an average of $366 billion per year in auction revenues for the federal government 2015-2030, divided by 117 million households. This assumes that the increase in permit costs will be passed to consumers, which seems reasonable to me, YMMV.

Recently,the EPA produced a study for Congress that pegged annual costs at $98-$140 per household. Heritage challenges this analysis here.

The major difference in the two studies, as well as the dissent of one of the authors of the MIT study, is that the smaller cost estimates assume that since the permit costs get paid to the Federal Government they are "returned" to each household, presumably in the form of public services. Ha ha ha ha.

But the bigger question is why?

Even worse, the draconian rules would have no detectable benefits, even assuming CO2 does cause climate change. Using global warming alarmists' own computer models, research climatologist Chip Knappenberger calculated that the painful 83% reductions would result in global temperatures rising a mere 0.1 degrees F less by 2050 than doing nothing. That's because Chinese and Indian emissions would quickly dwarf America's job-killing reductions.

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by reader Sammy


Update 3:00 PM: Rdan here- This was prematurely released by mistake, in that the most recent post is somewhat different. My apologies to Sammy and readers.

Additional sources National Black Chamber of Commerce, Carbon Tax versus cap and trade, state by state differences demonstrating national averages as mis-leading and the complexity of carbon foorprints per capita by state, and Scientific American on some objections to cap and trade models.