“At the end of the day, it seems that smaller markets are clustered at the higher end of the EV penetration ranking. This suggests it will be much more difficult to mandate and effect massive vehicle fleet shifts in favor of EVs in much larger markets without significant government subsidies and/or mandates, as well as significant infrastructure investment in EV charging facilities.”
“Tesla had about 80% of the EV market in Hong Kong. The cessation of the subsidy in April has raised the cost of Tesla cars by between 50% and 80%. Will Hong Kong’s EV penetration rate follow the others who have ended subsidies, and fall?”
The US Congress is hammering out the details of tax reform proposals from the House and Senate. At risk is a continuation of the subsidies for clean energy investments—investments in new wind turbines and solar panels, along with the subsidies for electric vehicle (EV) purchases.…
The IRS flouted Congressional intent …and knowingly transformed the PTC phase-out into a 5-year PTC extension. Without reform, the PTC tax will grow to an additional $32+ billion in the next decade, not including the credits awarded projects already operating.
The multi-national, multi-billion-dollar wind industry and its group-think sycophants in the media blew a collective gasket this month following approval of the U.S. House tax bill (HR 1). It seems that House lawmakers shrugged off 25-years of subsidy lore by daring to rein in the open-ended, unlimited wind-PTC tax that now costs Americans over $5 billion annually. [1]
The House was right to take aim at the wind PTC, and the Senate should follow suit.
Ignoring Congressional Intent
The provision of HR 1 causing the biggest uproar is the “Special Rule for Determination of Beginning of Construction,” which clarifies when a project is considered to have started construction. …
“We don’t observe the boundary effects in our modern economy and haven’t throughout oil’s history because reserve estimates have grown over time and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.”
Mineral resource alarmists, reflecting a fixity/depletionist view of the world, begin by arguing that “you must admit that there is a fixed amount of oil on this earth.” This is true in the purely physical sense that roughly 2 million barrels annually are created by the earth versus the 35 billion barrels consumed in a year.
Oil is a non-renewable resource, but that doesn’t mean our economic models should treat it as a drawdown of static inventory. A great example for the issue of fixity in resource economics is reservoir modelling for a singular oil well. In reservoir engineering, there are flow regime equations that model how the fluid moves from the formation into the wellbore.…