The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using real science.

Instead of a science-based approach, our energy and environmental policies are typically written by those who stand to economically or politically profit from them. As a result, anything genuinely science-based in these policies is usually inadvertent and accidental.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

—————————

A fascinating technical study at Phys.org…

The Fraser Institute recently published a study examining the impacts of green energy policies inOntario,Canada. The summary of the study, which was written by Fraser Institute Senior Fellow Ross McKitrick, is below.

———————

The Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy Act (herein the GEA) was passed in May 2009 with the purpose of addressing environmental concerns and promoting economic growth inOntario. Its centerpiece is a schedule of subsidized electricity purchase contracts called Feed-in-Tariffs (FITs) that pro­vide long-term guarantees of above-market rates for power generated by wind turbine farms, solar panel installations, bio-energy plants and small hydroelec­tric generators. Development of these power sources was motivated in part by a stated goal of closing the Lambton and Nanticoke coal-fired power plants.

This report investigates the effect of the GEA on economic competi­tiveness in Ontario.…

The major premise of the International Monetary Fund’s carbon tax proposal is the concept of social cost. According to the IMF, fossil-fuel consumers do not pay for all the harm they do to public health and the environment. Hence, the IMF reasons, fossil energy is under-priced, society consumes too much of it, and corrective (“Pigouvian”) taxes are needed to achieve “efficient” energy markets.

The IMF acknowledges that social cost of carbon (SCC) “estimates in the literature have varied considerably, ranging from $12 per ton (Nordhaus, 2011) to $85 per ton (Stern, 2006).” The IMF’s “estimates assume damages from global warming of $25 per ton of CO2 emissions, following the United States Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon (2010), an extensive and widely reviewed study.”

Actually, the Interagency Working Group recommends that agencies use four SCC estimates to calculate the per-ton benefits of CO2 reductions: $5, $21, $35, and $65.…

“It’s high time that people’s safety – and truly devastating impacts on important bird and bat species – stopped taking a back seat to political agendas, crony corporatism, and folklore environmentalism.”

Georgia residents recently learned that a rare bat has stalled state highway improvements. The May 2012 sighting of an endangered Indiana brown bat in a northern Georgia tree has triggered federal regulations requiring that state road projects not “harm, kill or harass” bats.

Even the possibility of disturbing bats or their habitats would violate the act, the feds say. Therefore, $460 million in Georgia road projects have been delayed for up to eighteen months, so that “appropriate studies” can be conducted. The studies will cost $80,000 to $120,000 per project, bringing the total for all 104 road project analyses to $8–12 million, with delays adding millions more.…