IRAN, NORTH KOREA, SUDAN RACK UP MILLIONS BY TRADING U.N. CARBON CREDITS

Thursday, June 15, 2012—From The Washington Free Beacon:

The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world.

. . .                   

Iran, with 16 separate CDM projects, brings in around 4.8 million CERs, worth about $26 million, every year, despite numerous U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

If the Climate Alarmists are right, then Saving All Of Life On Earth does justify supporting horrendous human rights abuses and mass murders around the world. But does it justify aiding a nihilistic regime bent on acquiring nuclear weapons while idolizing suicide, a regime that has stated that it would be better for its own nation to die in a nuclear reprisal than to allow other nations to live? The logic is not inevitable.

But if, as the great weight of evidence tells us, the Climate Alarm is nothing but an excuse for a worldwide power grab by people who need a Cause of Great Importance, then there is no justification at all for giving these evil governments so much as a bronze groat, much less millions of dollars.

The Dictator's Club called the UN brings to mind a verse from Sweeney Todd.  We can't claim that Mr. Sondheim will approve of its use, but this is political commentary.

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of ...

At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Turning beauty into greed and filth; I too
Have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
For the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru.
But there's no place like ... 

U.N. Climate Organization Wants Immunities Against Charges of Conflict of Interest, Exceeding Mandate, Among Others

Thursday, June 14, 2001—The UN Agency that is supposed to enforce cap-and-trade wants immunity from a wide range of misconduct and over-reach charges.

<... A study by consultants for the European Commission last December critiqued the mechanism for “lack of transparency,” “inconsistency of decisions,” “conflicts of interest,” and extensive support for “unsustainable technology for emissions reduction.”

In other words, the consultants accused the Kyoto mechanism of a number of the same things that the UNFCCC hopes to avoid through the adoption of broader immunities.

A Brussels-based non-government organization named CDM-Watch, which says it is sponsored by the British government s Department for International Development and the International Climate Protection Initiative of the Federal Environment Ministry of Germany, among others, issued its own scathing critique of the Kyoto mechanism at a UNFCCC climate conference in Durban, South Africa, last December.

Among other things, CDM-Watch claimed that anywhere from 40 percent to 70 percent of CDM projects removed no additional carbon from the atmosphere, that CDM projects “have been known to cause social and environmental harm,” and that only the say-so of governments that host UNFCCC projects is involved in declaring whether the projects actually contribute to “sustainable development.”

In other words, the consultants accused the Kyoto mechanism of a number of the same things that the UNFCCC hopes to avoid through the adoption of broader immunities.

What this says is that an agency charged with imposing restrictions driven by a theory on the world has failed utterly to do it even when it supposedly has cooperation from nation-states, that it has siphoned off money and broken even the few laws that govern it, and that it wants to be free of those laws so that it may do more of the same in the future. Why after all should we question the wisdom of giving free reaign to the rutheless unprincipled to serve the agenda of the unthinking well-meaning?

New Jersey Assembly to Vote on Solar Subsidies

Subsidize to Make It Cheap Enough to Sell; Restrict Supply for High Prices

Tuesday, June 12, 2001—The New Jersey State Assembley has pushed a solar energy subsidy bill out of committee. According to an article on the New Jersey Spotlight:

In a move eagerly anticipated by the solar sector, a legislative panel yesterday voted out a bill proponents say will revitalize the flagging industry in New Jersey. ...

The stakes, however, are enormous for ratepayers, who could end up paying even more than nearly $6.8 billion in subsidies they would owe under existing regulations requiring solar energy development by 2028, according to Division of Rate Counsel Stefanie Brand. Pending legislation would ramp up those costs even more, she said.

As the analysis below (from the Montgomery TEA Party) shows, solar power at current prices can only be "profitable" with heavy subsidies. And even discounting the subsidies, the net benefit of low-density, part-time renewables to the poewr grid is negative, because back-up generating capacity must be supplied and its costs must be covered. Since it will be "peaking" generation, it will be more expensive and less efficient than "baseline" generation. (For technical background on these issues and others, Robert Bryce's Power Hungry is a superb text and recommended if you are to go toe-to-toe with a Renewables partisan in a debate.) (Wind is even worse than solar and has its own unique problems.)

Continue reading below if you are interested in the basic economics behind the NJ Solar PV industry.  YOU WILL NEVER SEE THIS INFORMATION IN THE NEWSPAPER OR PRESENTED BY YOUR LOCAL POLITICO, UTILITY COMPANY or ENVIRO.

a. Solar PV Installation Capital Cost:  $5,500 per kW (1)

b. Average Annual full load Operating Hours: 1,300 (2)

c. Utility company regulated rate of return:  11%

d. Income requirement: $5,500 * 0.11 = $605/kW/year

e. Selling Price:  $605/kW/year  divided by 1,300 hours/year = $0.465/kWh or 46.5 cents/kWh or about 5.5 times the average grid price.

  

So, why does Solar sell at all to anyone?

f. 30% Federal tax deduction (3) on capital cost; deduct 13.95 cents/kWh - Balance: 32.55 cents/kWh

g. 18% Federal accelerated depreciation; deduct 8.37cents/kWh - Balance: 24.28 cents/kWh

h. NJ SREC payments (4) anywhere between 10 cents/kWh (current market) and about 35 cents/kWh (or similar level depending what comes out of A2966) = 14.28 cents/kWh (about right for offsetting electricity costs at the meter that include utility distribution costs) or if the SREC is at 35 cents/kWh as the bill is indicating, "the project is minting cash" and throwing off 10.72 cents/kWh in addition to the 11% rate of return above.

(1) Somerset county Phase II Solar tranch: 7.5 MW budgeted at $40M (bonded at $52M). $40,000,000/7,500kW = $5,330 - Call $5,500/kW. This is approximately the same cost as a nuclear power plant that generates power 8,760 hours per year, not the 1,300 hours per year typical of a solar PV system.

(2) 8,760 total hours per year.  Its more complicated than this, but here is the tangible logic:  Divide the total annual hours in a year by 2 for daylight hours = 4,330. Divide by 2 again for the sun not being directly overhead = 2,330. Divide by 2 again for cloudy days ~ 1,300.

(3) Solar panels are manufactured overseas in China as we cannot compete in this market in the US (remember Solyndra?).  As we borrow about 44 cents of every dollar spent at the federal level, our borrowed dollars that finance 48% (30% plus 18%) of the capital cost of these systems are exported to Chinese companies to procure these panels.  Think about this... We borrow money from China to buy solar panels from China to generate green electricity that is more than 5 times more expensive than average grid power?  Go figure...

(4) SRECS have traded at over 60 cents/kWh. The market is at present at about 10 cents/kWh.   The market quotes in dollars per megawatt hour so 10 cents/kWh equates to $100/MWH; just move the decimal place one point to the left to yield cents/kWh.

Private Property Is the Solution, Not the Problem

Nobody Washes a Rental Car

Monday, June 11, 2012—To protect something, unite authority and responsibility.  Let someone take a well-defined economic interest in preserving it, or else suffer the Tragedy of the Commons.

• From TownHall Finance: Property Means Preservation
• From Jonathan Adler, guest-blogging at The Atlantic: Property Rights and the Tragedy of the Commons.
• Ibid., Property Rights and Fishery Conservation.
• Ibid., How Property Rights Could Help Save the Environment.
• Also Adler: Back to the Future of Conservation (pdf).
• And a success story, from the Reason Foundation.  Predictably, it's exactly the kind of success that Congress wants to kill: the kind of success that doesn't revolve around them.

Property rights are basic to any kind of law that allows freedom. Freedom requires responsibility: liberty under law, two parts inseperable. Using property rights to protect the environment closes the circle of benefit and responsiblity, which makes them unpalatable to an age that detests responsibility and seeks to punish those who accept it.

A21 Roundup From Around theWeb

A Few Days from Instapundit, PJMedia, and Wherever

Monday, May 29, 2012 (Memorial Day)—In the last couple of days I have scanned some old familiar websites, ending with a small Instapundit binge.  (The latter combines a tautology and an oxymoron.)  Agenda 21 issues are gaining traction in the conservative blogosphere.