Secret Deals, Carbon Taxes and Electricity Market Manipulation
John's latest report on corruption, waste and greed in the renewables sector.
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Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare.
Listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
So what is the goal of environmental policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.
For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.” Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.
Is America's First Offshore Wind Farm A Real Revolution Or Just Another Green Boondoggle?
Manna From Heaven: How D.E. Shaw and a politically connected attorney persuaded Rhode Island to build America’s first-ever offshore wind farm–and a risk-free money machine.
Deepwater Wind is also free riding on Rhode Island’s ratepayers, who will end up paying vastly more than market rate for their wind power. Grybowski’s real accomplishment here is not the building of the wind farm, but rather that he got Rhode Islanders to pay so much for its output. Under the company’s 20-year agreement with Rhode Island’s regulated utility, National Grid , Deepwater Wind will receive 24.4 cents per kwh for all the power those turbines can generate. That’s more than twice the wholesale price that National Grid pays for electricity now. And a lot even for New Englanders used to paying 17 cents per kwh. The average American pays 10 cents.
Worse, the contract has a built-in price escalator of 3.5% per year. That means by the end of the 20 years National Grid will be paying Deepwater 50 cents for each windy kwh. While Deepwater would not comment on financial projections, FORBES calculates that if G.E. can keep those turbines in working order, the wind farm could generate $900 million for Deepwater Wind and its majority shareholder, D.E. Shaw & Co. Add in about $100 million in federal renewable energy investment tax credits and Deepwater Wind is looking at a juicy, unleveraged pretax return on the order of 7.5%. It is a legally guaranteed, risk-free money machine.
Here is a map of historical hurricane tracks that may affect offshore wind.
DEEP is expected to award projects in the second half of 2016, and Klee will seek input from Connecticut Attorney General, Consumer Counsel, and Procurement Manager.
Contracts also need approval by the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and the solar farm would need approvals from local land-use agencies and the Connecticut siting council.
If all the pieces were to fall into place, the company hopes begin operation by the end of 2018.
Messages left for Deepwater Wind Holdings were not immediately returned.
See more about the RFP process and find each specific proposal at http://cleanenergyrfp.com. Note that many of the details have been “redacted” from public view.
(Image: Redacted Solyndra Loan Guarantee)
Secret 21 Year Clean Energy Deal to be released (2013)
Connecticut's release of its previously secret 21-year, $1 billion clean energy program information is expected as early as Wednesday, but eight of the dozens of companies that participated are working to keep their information from the public, regulatory filings show.
UPDATE RE: Secret 21 Year Deal (Feb. 2016)
A joint procurement by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — the first of its kind for the states — garnered 24 bids from developers and companies for solar, wind, fuel cell and hydro projects, including five offering power that would be generated in Connecticut.
Pricing data was redacted from the bid documents posted online last week. DEEP Deputy Commissioner Katie Scharf Dykes said she couldn't yet comment on the bid pricing or whether the buying-power strategy will work.
6 States Considering Carbon Tax
This page covers emerging developments in U.S. carbon taxing at the state level, with sections on Washington State, Oregon, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.
With a national carbon tax blocked by the denialist Republican majority in Congress, some advocates are heeding Justice Brandeis’s advice and are organizing at the state level — where “retail” politics might help assuage concerns over outside-the-box ideas like carbon taxing, perhaps as occurred in the successful push for marriage equality (the right to same-sex marriage) which began and spread as state-level campaigns.
Moreover, progressive and popular options for distributing carbon tax revenues can be made more tangible at the state level than the federal, a point underscored by a Jan. 2015 study by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy that ranked the 50 states on their tax incidence and established that states are more regressive taxers than the federal government. In particular, sales taxes could be swapped out for carbon taxes, as advocates in Washington State propose.
Republican AGs Slam EPA For Ignoring Supreme Court Ruling
The Republican attorney generals of Texas and West Virginia are demanding the Obama administration stop working on its signature global warming regulation, which they argue violates a Supreme Court order.
“Their efforts and those of your agency to try to make the Power Plan a fait accompli fail to accord proper respect for the Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision to halt the Power Plan—a decision that divests this agency of authority to enforce the rule and calls into serious question the rule’s legality,” AGs Ken Paxton of Texas and Patrick Morrisey of W. Virginia sent in a letter Monday to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Morrisey and Paxton are leading a 27 state coalition suing EPA to derail the CPP. There’s also a group of 17 states backing the EPA, led by New York AG Eric Schneiderman — the same AG who’s leading an investigation into global warming skeptics.
The United States has been committed to cutting its greenhouse emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 in Paris Climate Agreement signed by 175 countries, including the United States, in April.
Imposing a national tax on carbon emission can help Uncle Sam fulfill the goal, but when the U.S. government will take the measure is still "too early" to predict.
Jim Prentice, global fellow in Wilson Center, a think-tank based in Washington.D.C, told Xinhua that "it's extremely important that the three countries (United States, Canada and Mexico) work together," if the United States and North America want to introduce carbon tax in the future.
From 2006 to 2010, Prentice served as a cabinet member of Canadian government.
Schumer: Carbon Tax has Chance if Clinton Wins
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined a path Tuesday for Hillary Clinton to enact a carbon tax if the Democrats prevail in the 2016 elections.
Schumer, the Senate Democrats’ leader-in-waiting, said that a Clinton presidency and the return of his party to the Senate majority in 2017 could pave the way for lawmakers to enact a carbon tax to help fund the government.
Latest on EPA Legal Issues
Secret Deal: Australia Has ETS Carbon Tax, Starts In 5 Weeks
Get ready. The legislation was done on the last day Parliament sat in December. The Coalition government knew it would be popular with the voters who all want “carbon action” so they… buried the news. No cheering. No speeches.
It’s called “Safeguard” — it was safe for politicians and guards them against their failure to meet pointless, symbolic international agreements to slow storms. A Safeguard for politicians but a SneakTax for the people.
(h/t Joanne Nova)
Alberta's carbon tax: What we still don't know
Just eight months before Alberta's new carbon tax takes effect, the provincial government still has to iron out how some key pieces of the new program will work.
The Climate Leadership Plan, which launches January 1, 2017, will create widespread change in the province far beyond having to pay a little extra at the pumps. The recent Alberta budget provided some new details, including who is exempt from the tax and what the financial impact will be for the average Albertan. Still, some significant details are unknown with billions of dollars in the balance. Here are some important parts of the policy and what information we're missing.
The Great Green Carbon Tax Grab
Touted by economists as a wondrous market mechanism that will deliver Canada from the evils of climate change, carbon pricing is emerging out of the political swamps as a regulatory nightmare. It is also shaping up as the Great Canadian Carbon Tax Grab.
Electricity Market Manipulation News
Congress broadly authorized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) to protect consumers of electricity from all forms of manipulation in the electricity markets, but the regulations that FERC passed are not nearly so expansive. As written, FERC’s Anti-Manipulation Rule covers only instances of manipulation involving fraud. This narrow scope is problematic, however, because electricity markets can also be manipulated by nonfraudulent activity. Thus, in order to reach all forms of manipulation, FERC is forced to interpret and apply its Anti-Manipulation Rule in ways that strain the plain language and accepted understanding of the rule and therefore constitute an improper extension of the fraud-based regulations to nonfraudulent activity. This Note argues that FERC ought to fix the current anti-manipulation regulatory regime, both as a matter of sound governmental regulation and to ensure fair notice to the regulated entities. In particular, this Note contends that FERC should redraft its Anti-Manipulation Rule and that, in doing so, it should use the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”)’s rules as a model. By adopting the CFTC’s rules, FERC could design a new anti-manipulation regulation that would properly and flexibly encompass all forms of potential manipulation in the electricity markets—a solution that would allow the law adequately to respond to future attempts at manipulation.
ABSOLUTE MUST READ PAPER that has the latest examples of manipulation and how it can be prevented. From: The Michigan Law Review
Barclays Fights Record Price Fixing In Power Markets
Almost a decade later, that message and other documents are coming back to haunt Barclays in a closely watched civil case that marks the first public test of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s enforcement powers. At stake for Barclays and four associated traders is $488 million in fines and profit disgorgement, the largest penalty ever sought by the agency.
The bank was supposed to get its day in a federal court in California on April 22. Now, though, the judge on his own initiative canceled oral arguments and the two sides are awaiting to learn what the next step will be.
Barclays Bank Stirs Up Colby College
JP Morgan Caught Twice Manipulating Electric Markets
The lawsuit, filed in California federal court on Monday, accuses the firm of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) when it sold power from several gas plants in the state between 2010 and 2012.
"(J.P. Morgan) resorted to illegal market manipulation to turn the inefficient, money-losing generators into cash cows," said the lawsuit, which was brought by three California ratepayers on the behalf of retail power consumers in the state.
The plaintiffs seek damages for California residents who paid higher electricity prices because of J.P. Morgan's alleged actions.
J.P. Morgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
The lawsuit follows J.P. Morgan's settlement of similar allegations by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2013. The company agreed to pay a $285 million civil penalty and to pay back $124 million to California power consumers.
In the FERC settlement agreement, J.P. Morgan did not admit to violating the law.
Energy Market News
The agency in New Hampshire charged with siting energy infrastructure has pushed back its deadline for Eversource Energy’s $1.6 billion Northern Pass transmission project.
A New Hampshire Site Evaluation subcommittee decided this week to postpone the deadline for the agency ruling on Northern Pass until the end of September 2017. That’s nine months later than Hartford-based Eversource Energy had expected it would take to get necessary regulatory approvals for the project.
Earlier this month, Eversource was still saying that it would break ground at the start of 2017 on the 192-mile long transmission line designed to bring hydropower from Quebec to southern New Hampshire.
Eversource officials were quick to respond to the action by the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee.
California ISO (CAISO) You'd think after Enron they'd get it right...
Enforcement
Prohibition of Energy Market Manipulation (FERC)
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