Possibilities

View this email in your browser

DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 04/09/2024

Subscribe Now

There is nothing President Biden can't do...when it comes to helping China.

Daily Caller (4/7/24) reports: "The Biden administration has put in place regulations that would require many Americans to adopt electric vehicles (EV) in the coming years despite U.S. companies struggling to produce the products, leading some experts to wonder if vehicles from China will be needed to meet current goals...The regulations are in spite of sluggish American EV demand that has led to both concerning losses and slowdowns in production for automakers, with both Tesla and Rivian missing production expectations for the first quarter of 2024. China’s EV industry could fill the gap left by the lagging U.S. market, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation...BYD has sought to infiltrate the American market through possibly building EV plants in Mexico, which, under current restrictions, could skirt around tariffs, delivering EVs that could compete with even gas-powered vehicles in terms of price to American buyers. Chinese EVs are also often of lesser quality, have access to cheaper materials and can utilize less expensive labor."

"When Scarecrow from 'The Wizard of Oz' lamented 'If I only had a brain,' he noted that 'it would be awful pleasin’ to reason out the reason for things I can’t explain.' He was more self-aware than the Biden bureaucrats unable to suss out why they cannot make people choose to buy — nor suppliers choose to supply — EVs to the arbitrary levels they demand."

– Jon Sanders,
John Locke Foundation

There are no EV chargers in the Sherwood Forest.

Daily Caller (4/8/24) reports: "President Joe Biden’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda will subsidize the lifestyles of America’s well-to-do while hitting average people the hardest, economists and auto market analysts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Biden administration is aggressively regulating the U.S. auto market to drastically increase the proportion of EVs sold over the coming decade, but consumer demand has not taken off as quickly as proponents had projected despite the subsidies made available by Biden’s flagship climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Manufacturers are slashing prices of their EVs to make the vehicles more appealing to consumers, which will increase prices for internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to compensate; this dynamic will only pick up speed and infect the used-car market favored by lower-income consumers as the administration’s stringent regulations kick in over time, economists and auto market analysts told the DCNF...These losses are poised to kick off a chain of second-order consequences on the auto market that will disadvantage lower-income consumers whose needs are especially not well-suited by EVs, O.H. Skinner, the executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told the DCNF. Democrats set aside billions of dollars to help build out a national EV charging network in the bipartisan infrastructure package of 2021, but those funds have so far only led to a handful of charging stations coming online across the country while 'range anxiety' remains a very real concern for consumers.

Shot:

Bloomberg (4/9/24) reports: "Alfredo De Avila grows increasingly frustrated when his electricity bill arrives each month. Price gains for groceries and other household essentials have eased in the past year, but the rising cost of power is still eating into his budget. 'Food has been a worry, but now electricity is the worry,' says the 75-year-old retiree. 'Unless you want to go to candles and firewood, we have no other choice but to bite the bullet and pay.' For the Oakland, California, resident, that bullet is coming from the state’s biggest electricity provider, PG&E Corp., which hiked bills for residential customers 13% in January. And it says more increases may be coming this year. It’s not just California. Nationwide, residential electricity inflation is outpacing the wider consumer price index...For De Avila, the Oakland resident, the smoke from wildfires in Northern California four years ago that turned the skies orange is still a fresh reminder of the dire impacts of climate change. So he’s gone further than many US homeowners and taken steps to go green, including installing solar panels at his three-bedroom house. But the panels only partially offset the costly power needed to run his new heat pump.
'We wanted to do the right thing for the environment,' De Avila says of the decision to add the electric heat pump, 'but ended up doing wrong for our finances.'"

Chaser:

Washington Post (4/9/24) reports: "The Environmental Protection Agency is considering significantly strengthening proposed limits on planet-warming pollution from power plants — a crucial part of President Biden’s climate agenda — according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions have been made. The discussions about toughening the standards, which are set to be released this month, have major implications for America’s fleet of power plants, which rank as the country’s second-largest contributor to climate change. They come as the administration weighs the political calculus of weakening or strengthening environmental regulations before the 2024 election. In some cases, the Biden administration has finalized rules that are less stringent than the original proposals. With power plants, it appears to be heading in the opposite direction...The change could affect the majority of new gas plants built in the United States, and it could have a significant climate impact. According to the EPA’s modeling, it could prevent up to 10.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year — equivalent to taking 2.5 million cars off the nation’s roads for a year."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $85.41
Natural Gas: ↑ $1.89
Gasoline: ↑ $3.60

Diesel: ↑ $4.05
Heating Oil: ↓ $268.67
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $89.84
US Rig Count: ↑ 632

Donate

Subscribe to The Unregulated Podcast

Subscribe to The Plugged In Podcast

Connect with us on Facebook

Forward to a Friend

Our mailing address is:
1155 15th Street NW
Suite 525
Washington, DC xxxxxx

Want to change how you receive these emails?
update your preferences
unsubscribe from this list