Small business owners who depend upon the economy in the Gulf of Mexico are still victimized by the ripple effects of the moratorium Team Obama put into place after the BP oil well explosion in April 2010, documents Greater New Orleans, Inc. after surveying approximately 100 Louisiana-based companies directly involved in the offshore oil and gas industry, led by marine services and ship owners/operators.
The Impact of Decreased Drilling Permit Approvals on Gulf of Mexico Businesses found that 41% of businesses are not making a profit. Other statistics of decline:
* 76% have lost cash reserves
* 27% of businesses have lost more than half of their cash reserves
* 50% of businesses have laid off employees as a result of the moratoria
* 39% of businesses have retained workers but reduced salaries and/or hours
* 46% of businesses have moved all or some of their operations away from the Gulf of Mexico
82% of business owners have lost personal savings as a result of the permit slowdown
* 13% of business owners have lost all of their personal savings as a result of the slowdown
Even if the current administration’s anti-energy policies are reversed, this study demonstrates that there is an opportunity cost in terms of lost business that will never be recovered.…
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
– F. A. Hayek: The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76.
The European Commission’s (EC) just-published Energy Roadmap 2050 (Roadmap) updates its last analysis (which I criticized here) of EU forced-energy-transformation projects to 2020 , as well as scenarios reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95% below EU 1990 levels by 2050. The forecast is stated (postmodernism?) as coincident with the need for energy security and affordability.
As one should “follow the money” when it comes to political capitalism, one should “follow the assumptions” when it comes to any roadmap pertaining to a post-carbon-based energy world.
…1. Renewables The share of renewable energy sources is projected to be 75% in gross final energy consumption and 97% in electricity consumption by 2050.
Many years ago at at a DOE/NARUC conference, I took note when Christopher Flavin of the environmental Left (EL) Worldwatch Institute commented that he didn’t support solar farms (macro solar) because of their large resource and land requirement. 1
‘Wow!’ I thought. That depletes the EL supply-side strategy, leaving just industrial wind and distributed (micro-solar)–and maybe a little biomass.
I was reminded of this when I read a recent article in ClimateWire (sub. req.), by Lacey Johnson, “Boom in Solar Panels injects NIMBY Battles into Neighborhoods.”
The story begins with Barbara Katz, whose hilltop home in historic north Baltimore, amid roaming wildlife, was threatened by her neighbor’s plan to install a 600-panel solar array. Johnson reports:
…“My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be an eyesore,'” remembers Katz, who was confronted by a plan for more than 600 ground-based solar panels on her neighbors’ lawn.