Dan Gardner gets it half right;

By September, if the new law comes into force, an average of five per cent of the fuel content of gasoline will have to come from renewable fuels made from corn or wheat. Long discussed, the government formally announced at the beginning of April that it would go ahead with the regulation.
Why wouldn’t they? Environmentalists love it because it will reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. In combination with other regulatory changes, the reductions will be “up to about four megatonnes per year,” a government press release says, which is “the equivalent of taking one million vehicles off the road.”
Farmers and agri-business love the regulation, too. Mandatory biofuel content means a huge volume of guaranteed sales. That’s big money.
So the Conservative government wins praise from across the political spectrum. And, just as importantly, the Tories get to say they’ve done something big to fight climate change. What’s not to love? Group hug!
But then reality barges in and spoils the moment.
A week after the politicians in charge of the government announced the regulation was going ahead, civil servants working for that same government quietly published the results of a cost-benefit analysis of the regulation. By assigning a reasonable price of $25 per tonne of emissions, the analysts concluded the regulation would deliver $580 million worth of reductions over 25 years. On the cost side, the regulation will not only raise the price of gasoline, but it will also require the construction of new plants and infrastructure. Total bill: $3.2 billion.
So it will deliver $1 in benefits for every $5.50 it costs. Impressive, isn’t it?

And we don’t need no stinking carbon tax, either, Dan.
But that’s not all! Let’s flashback…

Trouble is, a gallon of ethanol is 30 percent less efficient than a gallon of gas meaning that the more ethanol you mix in, the worse your gas mileage. Department of Energy studies show steadily decreasing fuel economy as ethanol blends rise from so-called E10 (fuel composed of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gas) up through E15 and E20 — with E20 suffering a 7.7 percent fuel efficiency loss.
Yet DOE’s green-zealot-in-chief Steven Chu still favors an increased mix of ethanol. So while automakers are sweating under the federal gun to make increasingly fuel-efficient engines, the government is mandating they do it with less-efficient fuel.

Not content with putting car companies out of business? Wait until you find out what our trusty governments are doing to your local auto body repair shop. Or shall we say – the one you used to have. More on that later.

Most folks leave things they don’t understand alone—they don’t try and turn the house upside down hoping it all comes out right. But that isn’t how McGuinty rolls—at least on this file.
Instead he is placing billions of your tax dollars and your children’s tax dollars on a bet that a mix of unproven wind, solar and other exotic means of electricity generation will one day put a meaningful dent into Ontario’s supply of energy. It is a high-stakes gamble—with about the same odds as winning the lottery.
Nevertheless, McGuinty last week announced his government was offering contracts for 184 renewable energy contracts. By some estimates this converts into an $8 billion investment. This is on top of billions more spent through at least four other outlandishly rich contracts designed to attract investors.
Whom has the province attracted? Well, they include such corporate luminaries as 2225054 Ontario Limited and 6718710 Canada Corporation. Others such as Zep Wind Farm LP signify that these outfits are organized as limited partnerships which means the investors who anted up the money to make the FIT application were able to write off at least part of their investment on their personal taxes. So as a taxpayer you are an enabler of this bit of speculation.
Most of these companies didn’t exist five years ago. Many likely formed just to apply for the FIT contracts. This is the cast of characters to whom McGuinty has decided to hitch Ontario’s energy future.

h/t Manotick

Margaret Wente keeps stealing all my best topics;

So who are the winners? The companies that harvest the subsidies. They’re flocking to Ontario like fruit flies to a bowl of overripe peaches. The government is trying to create a feel-good story by showcasing the little guys – such as schools that want to install solar roofs, and native-run wind companies with names such as Mother Earth (despite the fact that little guys are the most inefficient operators of all). But it’s the big guys who are the biggest winners – multinational corporations such as the Korean giant Samsung, with which Mr. McGuinty struck a $7-billion deal, and Brookfield Renewable Power, which plans to generate more power than all the little guys put together.

But wait, there’s more!

The government will pay Mr. Creeggan and other solar producers around 80 cents a kilowatt hour for the power they sell back to the grid. That’s about 15 times more than the current spot price that consumers now pay for power.

This helpful tip for Mr. Creeggan, straight from the SDA Suggestion Box – “…just hook up the AC into the output circuit of the solar panels.”

Not just synonyms anymore!

After press reports, it was established during inspections that several solar power plants were generating current and feeding it into the net at night. To simulate a larger installation capacity, the operators connected diesel generators.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said one industry expert to the newspaper “El Mundo”, which brought the scandal to light. If solar systems apparently produce current in the dark, will be noticed sooner or later. However, if electricity generators were connected during daytime, the swindle would hardly be noticed.

Meanwhile, if a giant fan falls into the sea, and no one can pay for the the splash….
h/t jcl and Ron in Kelowna

More people have been killed by Oregon’s windmills than died at Three Mile Island;

Today, 20 percent of America’s electricity, and 69 percent of its carbon-free generation of electricity, is from nuclear plants. But it has been 30 years since America began construction on a new nuclear reactor.
France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; China is starting construction of a new reactor every three months. Meanwhile, America, which pioneered nuclear power, is squandering money on wind power, which provides 1.3 percent of the nation’s electricity: it is slurping up $30 billion of tax breaks and other subsidies amounting to $18.82 per megawatt-hour, 25 times as much per megawatt-hour as the combined subsidies for all other forms of electricity production.
Wind power involves gargantuan “energy sprawl.” To produce 20 percent of America’s power by wind, which the Obama administration dreamily proposes, would require 186,000 tall turbines—40 stories tall, their flashing lights can be seen for 20 miles—covering an area the size of West Virginia. The amount of electricity that would be produced by wind turbines extending the entire 2,178 miles of the Appalachian Trail can be produced by four reactors occupying four square miles of land.

Amen.
h/t Eric Anderson

Harvesting the taxpayer;

What hasn’t received national attention is the stunning taxpayer subsidized profits the developer is expecting to reap from the [Cape Cod] project. A study by the Massachusetts based Beacon Hill Institute found that the proposed $1 billion dollars in subsidies from the project would contribute to a nearly 25% return on equity by investors – more than twice the average historical for return for all corporations. Add taxpayers to that list of groups opposed to the project.

h/t Manotick

The high price of magical thinking;

The Danish study finds that the energy technology sector in Denmark from 1999 to 2006 underperformed the broader manufacturing sector in Denmark by an average of 13% in terms of value added, reducing Danish GDP by approximately $270-million compared to what it would have been if the wind sector workforce was employed elsewhere. The Danish Economic Council concluded in a report in 2006: “The wind power expansion in the 1990s is an example of a policy that was unprofitable from society’s point of view, even taking the economic advantages that the wind business enjoyed into consideration.” The Centre for Policy Studies study concludes: “Denmark needs a proper debate and a thorough reappraisal of the technologies that need to be invented, developed, and costed before forcing the country into a venture that shows a high risk of turning into an economic black hole.”

h/t Manotick

With just five words quietly slipped into legislation…

Illinois lawmakers are moving to include tire burning in the state’s definition of renewable energy…

Wait for the howler…

“This is the sort of cynical legislative maneuvering that makes people question the credibility of our elected officials…

Via Tim Blair.

Not just synonyms anymore!

Europe’s emissions trading system was in uproar yesterday amid a mounting scandal over “recycled” carbon permits.
Two carbon exchanges were forced to suspend trading as panic hit investors fearful that they had bought invalid permits.
BlueNext and Nord Pool, the French and Nordic exchanges, suspended trading in certificates of emission reduction (CERs) when it emerged that some had been illegally reused.
[…]
The double counting is threatening confidence in the ETS, according to staff at one energy consultancy. Icis Heren said: “For companies obliged by law to buy carbon credits … government-led carbon credit recycling means they risk buying a worthless asset.”

More…

The question seems to be whether it is the solar collectors that are saving the environment from natural gas or the natural gas that is saving the environment from being blanketed with hundreds of acres of solar collectors.

Chicago Boyz;

Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.
Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization.

It’s the math, stupid.

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
CNN, November 2008 – “There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses,” Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.
Washington Examiner, February 2010 – Electric vehicle maker used private jet to lobby in D.C. a dozen times

The only real problem with wind turbines isn’t their performance record.

Northern New Brunswick’s cold, icy weather is causing wind turbines to freeze and stop producing power at the Caribou Wind Park near Bathurst.

The problem is that people still can’t tell the difference between stuff built to generate power….

Official data recording the performance of half the UK’s onshore turbines revealed the problems caused by a lack of wind during the cold snap. On the coldest day – January 7 – they produced just 5 per cent of their maximum output. On January 9 they produced just 9 per cent, and on two other days the figure was only 10 per cent.

… and stuff built to generate tax subsidies.

“If people see a water tower, they expect it to stand still,” said Wally Wysopal, the city manager of North St. Paul. “If there’s a turbine, they want it to turn.”

h/t Manotick and J.A.

John Kenneth Galbraith:

The affluent…
…A reassement by Theodore Dalrymple…
….When I was young I found him so persuasive. Sure helps to write well.

If we’re the ones doing all the polluting…

Taken near Swanson, SK Feb.7

…how come Toronto has all of the smog?

The Minnesota Municipal Power Association bought 11 turbines for $300,000 apiece.
Each produces enough power for 35 homes!
When it’s waaarm….
h/t Niall

“Will? When? How? How?”

You’d think the giant brains running these corporations could use some of those intellectual gigawatts to come up with their own answers.
You’d also think they’d want to avoid appearances of deception.
Domain Name:CLIMATEAD.ORG
Created On:19-Jan-2010 17:10:17 UTC
Registrant Name:Registration Private
Registrant Organization:Domains by Proxy, Inc.
h/t Eric A.

From Norman’s Spectator:

…

–Another great moment in Canadian journalism

CBC, Post team up to share content (Post)…

X-posted.

Poverty, or, the dial-up alternative.