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Stunning and brave of Senator Cramer to keep a "cone of silence" about sneaking energy taxes into a spending package's report language. But I don't blame him. After all, he would lose if it were up for a vote.
E&E News (1/30/26) reports: "The sudden approval of a carbon trade bill thought to be dormant on Capitol Hill has roiled some conservative circles and left even the bill's longtime advocates surprised. But Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who pushed for including the 'Providing Reliable, Objective, Verifiable Emissions Intensity and Transparency (PROVE IT) Act' in a spending package signed last week, said the language has been hiding in plain sight, tucked into numerous iterations of legislation to fund the Department of Energy. In an interview with POLITICO’s E&E News, Cramer detailed the extended process by which the bill — which directs the Trump administration to study the carbon intensity of American manufacturing in comparison to other countries — became a one-paragraph add-on to the report accompanying a three-bill 'minibus' signed into law by President Donald Trump last week...The seeds for its ultimate approval were planted when Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), a member of the House until last January and a co-sponsor of the "PROVE IT Act," helped get it added to the House Appropriation Committee’s bill report for the fiscal 2025 Energy-Water bill. Spending bill reports are not technically law, but agencies tend to follow them...Cramer and his staff kept a 'cone of silence' about the measure's inclusion out of concern that opponents might raise alarms. Cramer spoke to neither the White House nor the Department of Energy about the matter, only breaking his silence once the minibus was officially signed into law. We were watching it, the language, all along. But I never felt the need to comment on it as long as it stayed in,” Cramer said. “I know how hard it is for a senator to not say anything about something that they support. ... It took tremendous discipline,” he added."
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Liz is killing it on X. Follow her.
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Europe's climate fantasies are destroying CO2 emissions Europe.
Wall Street Journal (1/29/26) reports: "Cutting emissions can sometimes look like what economists call creative destruction, with green innovators supplanting polluters. It’s painful when the destruction happens to you while somebody else (often in China) does the creating. The auto sector is Exhibit A, but the anxiety doesn’t end there. Take Europe’s beleaguered chemicals industry. The sector employs well over a million people and provides the ingredients for all the stuff of modern life, from polyethylene packaging to phenol for painkillers. Its struggles offer a window onto Europe’s predicament as it pursues environmental goals while adapting to a security-focused trade era. This month, fossil-free plastics company Vioneo abandoned a plan to build an $1.8 billion factory in Antwerp, opting for China instead, in the latest setback for Europe’s faltering push to build green industries...Other policies are supposed to balance that extra cost. A new border tax will penalize imports based on their carbon footprint, but it isn’t clear how exactly that will work in this complicated supply chain, said Matthew Thoelke of Chemical Market Analytics."
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News flash: a solar panel doesn't work in two feet of snow.
Cardinal News (1/30/26) reports: "The winter storm last weekend left Virginia covered in ice, snow and political talking points. Virginia’s new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, got her first chance to don an emergency services jacket and be seen managing a crisis. Meanwhile, Republicans got a chance to make the case that renewable energy isn’t reliable enough to get us through a winter storm. Last Saturday, as the storm was about to hit, the grid operator for Virginia and 12 other states plus the District of Columbia warned the U.S. Department of Energy that it expected to hit a record demand for winter-time power...This is not a new concern. Democrats and Republicans have been jostling since at least 2020 over whether a carbon-free grid is desirable, or even possible, and what type of energy we ought to be developing. Christie, who served on the State Corporation Commission, the Virginia panel that regulates utilities, before he joined FERC, has long insisted that wind and solar can’t replace natural gas and coal because they’re not 'dispatchable' — meaning something you can summon up whenever you need it. 'My point is energy policy has to be based on facts,]' he said during a telephone interview. 'We have to go on the facts and the facts are the physics. The physics doesn’t care about your legislation. We can’t do it without the generation mix you see on the dashboard now.'"
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Energy Markets
WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $65.59
Natural Gas: ↑ $4.08
Gasoline: ↓ $2.87
Diesel: ↓ $3.60
Heating Oil: ↑ $266.26
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $70.76
US Rig Count: ↓ 570 |
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"Moderate" Governor Spanberger, who ran on an affordability campaign, rejoins RGGI right out of the gate. Brace yourself, Virginians, for higher electricity bills.
IER (1/23/26) blog: "The Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, announced that Virginia will rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), falsely claiming that the state’s withdrawal from the program increased costs. She said that rejoining RGGI is aimed at lowering monthly utility bills and restoring investments that support energy efficiency and flood mitigation across the Commonwealth, particularly for lower-income Virginians. RGGI is a group of ten Northeastern states that have capped power sector carbon dioxide emissions to reduce them by forcing companies to buy allowances for the emissions that they release from fossil fuels used to generate electricity. The participating states are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Virginia’s previous governor, Glenn Youngkin, withdrew the state from the program indicating that it functioned as a regressive tax and did not meaningfully reduce emissions."
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