View this email in your browser
MORNING ENERGY NEWS  |  01/21/2020
Subscribe Now

TCI = Transporation Cost Increase


Yankee Institute (1/20/20) reports: "The Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) is pushing for a regional cap and trade system on gasoline distributors to fight climate change, invest in mass transit and fight for climate justice, but scientific modeling suggests the program would have no impact on global temperatures. Up to thirteen states on the eastern seaboard – including Connecticut — signed on to the initiative that could raise gasoline prices by 17 cents per gallon starting in 2022, with more price increases in the future as the emissions cap is lowered. But the overall effect on the climate is too small to be measurable, according to climate modeling conducted by Brent Bennett Ph.D. of Life:Powered – the energy policy division of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Texas is not part of the TCI compact....The implementation of TCI would result in a temperature change of less than a thousandth of a degree – too small to be measurable...Whether Connecticut – a state with the seventh highest gas taxes and the highest electricity costs in the continental United States – will move forward with the agreement likely rests with the governor."

"[Elizabeth Warren's fracking ban] would enrich Russia and Saudi Arabia, harm the American economy, make our energy supply less green, and make our foreign policy more dependent on bad regimes and the Middle East.  It is perhaps the single worst policy idea I have heard this last year, and some of the worst possible politics for beating Trump in states such as Pennsylvania."

 

– Tyler Cowen, Mercatus Center

Speaking of cost increases, someone else's free ride is over.


Electrek (1/17/20) reports: "IONITY, a European EV charging network owned by BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and VW Group (with Audi and Porsche) has announced that prices will be going up over 500% starting January 31 as they transition to a pay-per-kWh system. Previously, IONITY charged a flat, fixed rate of €8 for a DCFC charging session. This was a good deal if you showed up with an empty battery and filled most of the way. If you arrived with, say, 10% battery remaining, and added 60 kWh during your charging session, then you’d get away with paying about €0.13 per kWh. For context, in France, electricity costs about €0.19 per kWh at home, and €0.24 per kWh at Tesla Superchargers. In Germany, you pay €0.30 per kWh at home, and €0.33 at Tesla Superchargers in Germany. Starting next month, however, IONITY will be charging users a whopping €0.79 per kWh. The Audi e-Tron battery is 95 kWh, so if you 'filled it up' with 80 kWh, that’s €63.20 to travel probably about 160 miles, give or take. Terribly expensive."

Where have we heard this before?


Reuters (1/17/20) reports: "The tropical Maldives may lose entire islands unless it can quickly access cheap financing to fight the impact of climate change, its foreign minister said. The archipelago’s former president Mohamed Nasheed famously held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to submerging land and global warming a decade ago. Yet the Maldives, best known for its white sands and palm-fringed atolls that draw luxury holiday-makers, has struggled to find money to build critical infrastructure like sea-walls. 'For small states, it is not easy,' Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid told Reuters in New Delhi. 'By the time the financing is obtained, we may be underwater.' At the U.N. climate talks in Madrid in December, the Maldives and other vulnerable countries pushed for concrete progress on fresh funding to help them deal with disasters and longer-term damage linked to climate change - but failed...The United Nations has created a pot to help developing nations, called the Green Climate Fund, which has already approved nearly $24 million in funding to the Maldives, according to its website."

Oh, that's right...


The Canberra Times (9/26/88) reported: "A gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years according to authorities. The Environmental Affairs Director, MR. Hussein Shihab, sais an estimated rise of 20 to 30 centimetres in the next 20 to 40 years could be 'catastrophic' for most of the islands which were no more than a meter above sea level. The United Nations Environment PRoject was planning a study of the problem. But the end of the Maldives and its 200,000 people could come sooner if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992 as predicted." 

Energy Markets

 
WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $57.79
Natural Gas: ↓ $1.94
Gasoline: ↓ $2.54
Diesel: ↓ 2.99
Heating Oil: ↓ $185.41
Brent Crude Oil: ↑↓ $64.22
US Rig Count: ↑ 806

 
Friend on Facebook Friend on Facebook
Follow on Twitter Follow on Twitter
Forward to a Friend Forward to a Friend
Our mailing address is:
1155 15th Street NW
Suite 900
Washington, DC xxxxxx
Want to change how you receive these emails?
update your preferences
unsubscribe from this list