Tag Archives: TCI

This is the Green New Deal Economy. Enjoy.

Posted on March 27, 2020 by | 23 comments

Source: Energy Information Agency.  Click for larger view. LCOE, LACE and Value-Cost Ratio explained below.

By Steve Haner

If all else fails in achieving your green energy dreams, you can always hope for a depression.

In Italy, the COVID-19 depression has already dropped electricity demand by about 18-21%, as reported recently by Utility Dive. The regional transmission organizations around the United States are seeing declines, as well, and I’ve been told (no data, but a reliable source) that PJM’s load is approaching a 10% drop.  Past recessions have included electricity usage declines.  Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation

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Cabinet Officers: Assembly Decides on Carbon Tax

Posted on February 9, 2020 by | 27 comments

Delegate Poindexter

By Steve Haner

Thanks to the persistence of Del. Charles Poindexter, two members of Governor Ralph Northam’s cabinet are now on record stating the General Assembly will decide whether Virginia joins the carbon tax regime called the Transportation and Climate Initiative. In 2018 both of them had signed a letter endorsing the interstate compact to reduce the use of gasoline and diesel fuel for transportation.

The Franklin County Republican was addressed by Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler in a meeting of a House Labor and Commerce Committee subcommittee January 30, and Strickler dismissed Poindexter’s use of the word rationing to describe TCI. “I’m not sure where the idea of rationing comes from. I think that’s pretty hyperbolic language,” he scoffed.  Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Environment, General Assembly, Taxes

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Updates: Electoral College, Carbon Tax, Tax Reform

Posted on February 1, 2020 by | 13 comments

The benches along this sidewalk are still missing, having been removed for the gun rights rally. Can we have them back for next week’s February Thaw?  Please.

By Steve Haner

Catching up on several issues previously discussed, with links to the original posts:

Virginia’s 2020 Electoral Votes Still Ours to Award. Pending legislation to enact the National Popular Vote regime has now failed in both House and Senate committees, although nothing is really dead in this process until final adjournment in March.  The House bill died in House Privileges and Elections Friday, with three Democrats joining nine Republicans to reject. The Senate version was stricken at the request of the patron a few days earlier. The National Popular Vote is an interstate compact of states agreeing to grant their electoral votes to the presidential candidate with the highest national total vote, but it only kicks in once enough states to control the outcome have joined. Perhaps the idea of Virginia’s electoral votes going to Donald J. Trump, without regard to Virginia’s vote, finally occurred to some Democrats. But complaints about the Electoral College persist and so will this idea.

Secretary of Natural Resources on Transportation and Climate Initiative. Twice last week Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler faced questions from Republican legislators about the state’s plans with regard to the proposed interstate compact on fossil fuels used in cars and trucks. Continue reading →

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Posted in Elections, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes

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Analysis: Only Assembly Can Impose Carbon Tax

Posted on January 21, 2020 by | 10 comments

By Steve Haner

It is illegal in Virginia for a petroleum wholesaler to arbitrarily reduce the amount of product it provides to retailers. The General Assembly has intervened in that marketplace, probably for the reasonable public purpose of preventing price gouging. Regulating the sale of fuel for some other purpose should also require action by the General Assembly.

The “other purpose” under scrutiny at this time would be reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. David Schnare of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy was researching whether the governor could impose the Transportation and Climate Initiative on Virginia without General Assembly action. He found and cites the existing state law against rationing gasoline and other legislative oversight of that market in an analysis published today.

Schnare holds both environmental and law doctorates and served 34 years with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. His conclusion is the Governor lacks the authority to act arbitrarily through an executive order or agency decision.  t was the same conclusion reached recently by the Supreme Court in Washington state in reviewing and rejecting a cap-and-trade effort from that state’s governor, Jay Inslee.

Here’s the take on that from the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

Good news: The political panic over climate change doesn’t justify one-man rule. That’s the message the Washington Supreme Court delivered this week to Governor Jay Inslee, who tried to impose his command-and-control agenda by fiat.

Perhaps you heard Mr. Inslee for a millisecond in the presidential race last year declaring that climate change is “the most urgent challenge of our time.” He failed to galvanize the masses, much as he failed to persuade the Washington Legislature in 2015 when it rejected his cap-and-trade proposal.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Taxes

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2020 Assembly May Not Vote on Carbon Car Tax

Posted on January 10, 2020 by | 10 comments

By Steve Haner

It now seems unlikely the 2020 General Assembly will act directly on Virginia’s membership in the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative, an interstate compact to cap, tax and then start to ration fossil fuels that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Virginia would be the southernmost member.

While six pieces of pending legislation (so far) mention the similar Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which caps, taxes and rations CO2 from power plants, the silence continues on TCI. It has been conspicuously absent from gubernatorial pronouncements on these issues. A Virginia Mercury story this week on various environmental proposals cited a December statement from him that “no decisions have been made,” although it wasn’t clear on what.

When organizers of the TCI compact released their draft memorandum of understanding last month, they clearly were pointing to action in the various states in the near future. But the MOU itself is only an outline, with many blanks to fill in. An argument that the issue is not ripe for the legislature could be valid. What is the actual goal or schedule for forced supply reductions?

An argument that it doesn’t need legislative blessing at all, however, would not be valid. Virginians should not be subjected to this tax, cap and ration regime without a recorded vote by their elected representatives.

What people can do now, if they care, is register an opinion with the TCI organizers on their public input portal. Their last round of comments included many who dislike this idea, so they are asking again now that more details are out.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Environment, General Assembly, Taxes, Transportation

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The Wildest Energy Whirlwind Ever is Underway

Posted on January 6, 2020 by | 17 comments

by Steve Haner

If Bacon’s Rebellion at times has been “Dominion Pravda,” providing a window into that corporate giant’s C suite, our friends at the Virginia Mercury sometimes take the opposite role of “Environmental People’s Daily.”

Its story today is a good example, for what it includes and what it does not. The long, detailed and worthwhile summary of energy and environment issues coming to the 2020 General Assembly has a glaring omission. It makes no reference to the Transportation and Climate Initiative. If anybody could get a straight answer out of the Northam Administration, you’d think it would be Virginia Mercury. The silence is deafening and perhaps significant.

At some point soon somebody has to say something, wouldn’t you think? In others states in the proposed interstate compact, governors are being pinned down, actual TCI bills are pending, legislators are taking positions, coalitions are forming. This will have to happen in Virginia soon if the organizers of TCI want their proposed memorandum of understanding signed by enough states to actually impose the carbon caps and taxes by 2022.  Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Taxes

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The Carbon Car Tax Nobody Is Discussing

Posted on December 19, 2019 by | 18 comments

By Steve Haner

So far there appear to be about six schemes before the 2020 General Assembly to save the Earth and its inhabitants from the fiery holocaust of climate catastrophe. The one that is going to cost you the most money in the shortest period of time is still missing in action. Finally we have details, but not from anybody in Richmond.

The organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) met and held a streamed webinar in Washington, D.C. Tuesday, releasing their long-anticipated draft memorandum of understanding and quite a bit more information about the impact of this new carbon car tax. See the slides here. Does a starting bid of 17 cents per gallon on gasoline get your attention? Do not confuse this with the separate proposal from Governor Ralph Northam to add 12 cents onto the existing state excise tax.  Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in Energy, General Assembly, Taxes, Transportation

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Watch Out, Here Comes the Transportation and Climate Initiative

Posted on December 12, 2019 by | 17 comments

Virginia voter priorities. Source: Click to enlarge.

by James A. Bacon

A new poll from a “nonpartisan nonprofit think tank,” MassInc., has found that 60% of Virginians surveyed support the Transportation and Climate Initiative Framework while only 29% oppose it and 11% are unsure of their feelings, reports The Virginia Mercury.

We know right off the bat that the findings are nonsense. The fact is, most Virginians have never heard of the Transportation and Climate Initiative. Those who answered MassInc.’s questions were responding to a description of TCI provided by MassInc.’s pollsters:

Under the plan, companies that sell and distribute gasoline and diesel fuel to gas stations in the region would have to pay for the pollution created by the fuels sold and used there. Each state in the program would get a share of the money collected from those companies, based on how much fuel is used in their state. States could use this money to make transportation in their state better, cleaner, and more resilient to the effects of climate change. They could also use it to help residents with any higher costs the companies try to pass on to them.

That poll is about as loaded as you can get. Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment

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Carbon Tax for Your Car, SUV Takes Shape at TCI

Posted on October 2, 2019 by | 27 comments

 

By Steve Haner

In this politically sensitive moment, they don’t call it “cap and tax” but instead “cap and invest.” Yet, the recently released draft Transportation and Climate Initiative proposal fits a Bacon’s Rebellion prediction in March that next they would be coming to tax your SUV.

Reducing CO2 emissions from electric power plants with a cap and tax scheme is not enough, of course. More of those dread emissions (you and I call it exhaling) come from vehicles, despite rapid improvements in engine efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuel combustion. The Northam Administration has Virginia fully engaged. Legislation to require General Assembly approval for this regional compact was vetoed.

Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Environment, Taxes, Transportation

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