By Chris White
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a 538-page climate plan Tuesday that is designed to eliminate the U.S. economy’s contributions to global warming.
The plan seeks to address climate change through a combination of government mandates, tax incentives and revamped infrastructure, according to the Washington Post. The proposal comes as lawmakers and citizens respond to a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people and thrust the economy into a tailspin.
Pelosi and Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida’s package of legislative proposals include requirements that electrical utilities eliminate all of their greenhouse gasses within the next 20 years and a mandate that automakers produce only electric vehicles by 2035, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The plan also calls for a price on carbon emissions.
“We’re going to press ahead with everything we can do in the near term,” Castor, chair of the House Select Committee on Climate Crisis, told WaPo. “But yes, it will provide a plan that can be taken off the shelf and adopted into law as soon as we are able to reconvene.”
Now is the time to take on climate change, Castor noted after addressing concerns that the pandemic might be a more pressing issue. “People would say, ‘Well, why are you releasing this in the middle of covid and … protests?’ ” Castor said. “We can’t wait. We can’t wait any longer.”
Pelosi pushed the action plan Tuesday on Twitter as well. “Democrats are committed to #SolvingTheClimateCrisis. Tune in as we unveil our action plan,” the California Democrats told her Twitter followers. She included a hashtag designed to promote the legislation.
Democrats are committed to #SolvingTheClimateCrisis. Tune in as we unveil our action plan.
https://t.co/cd83QAgZFr— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) June 30, 2020
Conservatives and energy advocates pushed back against the measure. Democrats should “drop their expensive and radical green energy wish list,” Steve Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com, said in a press release Tuesday.
“Amid an economically devastating pandemic, Democrats want to raise the price of electricity and gasoline with a carbon tax and subsidies for green tech junk like windmills, solar panels and electric vehicles,” Milloy said. “These polices will only intensify financial suffering for Americans” while doing little to stop climate change, he added.
Pelosi and Castor’s decision comes more than three months after city officials around the country began locking down their economies to slow the spread of a coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, China, before spreading to the U.S. where it has reportedly killed 127,000 people.
The U.S. recorded nearly 37,000 new cases of the novel coronavirus on June 25 as the virus continued to spread across southern and western states. That number broke a previous single-day record for new cases set April 24 when 36,739 were confirmed, according to a New York Times database.
The stay-at-home orders resulted in a severe economic calamity.
Nearly 17 million people lost their jobs over the course of three weeks in April, more than the total number of jobs lost in the 2008 recession. The unemployment rate hit 15%, five times higher than the lows recorded by the Trump administration prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Vermont has similar plans, as part of Global Warming “Solutions” Act MANDATING the implementation of the Comprehensive Energy Plan, by 2050, which has goals pulled out of a hat by AIM-HIGH Klein/Shumlin.
EAN, VEIC and VELCO Making a Joint Attack to Gain Their Objectives
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-global-warming-solutions-act-a-decades-long-burden-on-vermont
All three entities want to build out solar from 438.84 MW dc, to at least 1000 MW dc, by 2025, even though solar:
– Is, by far, the most expensive electricity in the portfolio of GMP. See Appendix.
– Imposes the greatest threat to the stability of the grid, due to ever-larger Duck-curves, as have happened in southern Germany and southern California
– Would make the use of EVs and heat pumps prohibitively expensive.
NOTE: The CEP mandated goal is 1000 MW dc, by 2032
1) Self-Serving, Impossible CO2 Reduction Dreams of EAN
“Meeting Paris”: In 2019, EAN made estimates of what it would take to “meet Paris”, i.e., reduce CO2 from 9.76 million metric ton, at end 2016, to 7.46 MMt, at end 2025, or 2.281 MMt. See URL
https://www.eanvt.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EAN-report-2020-fi…
EAN proposed several measures to reduce CO2, including deploying, by end 2025:
– About 90,000 electric vehicles, EVs (18000/y) to reduce CO2 by 0.405 MMt
– About 90,000 air source heat pumps, ASHPs (18000/y) to reduce CO2 by 0.370 MMt.
– Increase solar from 438.84 dc, at end 2019 to at least 1000 MW dc, at end 2025
See Note and pages 3, 4 and 5 of URL
Vermont had deployed, at end 2019:
3541 plug-in vehicles, increasing at about 750 per year
17,717 ASHPs, increasing at about 2850 per year
The totally unrealistic EAN goals would be unattainable, even if the 50% of the cost of EVs and heat pumps were donated by ratepayers, taxpayers, and added to government debt.
See URL and below ASHP and EV articles
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/response-to-energy-acti…
NOTE: All of Europe (550 million people, excl. Russia) is not “meeting Paris”, and neither are China (1.4 billion people), India (1.4 billion people), etc. Why should ultra-light-featherweight Vermont “meet Paris”?
2) Self-Serving, Impossible CO2 Reduction Dreams of VEIC
In 2016, VEIC published a 4-volume, Solar Pathways report, at a cost of about $740,365, paid for by the US Department of Energy
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1434651
In 2020, VEIC published an update of the Solar Pathways report, at a cost of about $50,000, courtesy of private donors.
Currently, only Volume One is available.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-solar-market-pa…
VEIC claims Vermont could reach 20% of electricity consumption from solar by 2025, if solar capacity would increase by about 19%/y, from 438.84 dc, at end 2019, to at least 1000 MW dc, at end 2025, 6 years. VEIC did not provide a capital cost of increasing solar.
3) VELCO Claims Solar Requires Storage to Deal with Duck-Curves
Vermont Electric Power Company, VELCO, estimates the grid would need $900 million of battery and other storage systems, if solar is built-out from 438.84 dc, at end 2019 to at least 1000 MW dc, at end 2025.
NOTE: The Duck-curves in future years would be a lot larger than in 2018.
This is all part of a proposed, $1.2 billion Fortress Vermont program, to be implemented by 2025.
The $1.2 billion is just a down-payment to end 2025, with more required in future years.
About $900 million would be for storage systems
About $300 million would be for curtailment payments to solar system owners for electricity they could have produced, but did not.
This is an “isolationist/Vermont is an island” approach, to be avoided like the plague.
Current capital costs for engineered, turnkey, 4-h duration, battery storage systems in New England are at least $500/kWh, ac to ac basis. These are systems with a life of about 15 years, i.e., most of the capital cost would repeat every 15 years.
There are hopes turnkey capital costs of engineered, turnkey systems may decrease to, say $300/kWh in New England, but those prices likely would not happen anytime soon.
European countries deal with wind/solar variations by interconnecting their grids with HVDC and HVAC lines.
Expensive battery storage, as proposed by VELCO, et al., is not required. See URL.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fortress-vermont-a-mult…
The sooner Pelosi and her ilk become ancient history, the sooner the House can get back to the PEOPLES’ business and propose legislation which makes sense.
If they really wanted to clean up the air on a global scale, all they have to do is ban all imports from countries that don’t have the same standards as the US. — that would probably cause WWIII, but hey, we probably need to some gene pool cleaning based on what these liberals are doing to us.
Solely by the length you can know is cut special carve outs exceptions, favors, etc. Using less energy, promoting a clean environment is not that difficult. It doesn’t need high paying lobbyists to make you believe their lies and sophistry.
There are so many easy, fast, simple effective ways to make things better in Vermont, it should make people wonder, why aren’t we doing those?
Did you know that Vermont has some of the most difficult and adversarial rules and regulations toward transportation that gets in excess of 78 and 100 mpg? Regulations that keep people of modest means from using this transportation? People working to get back a license for example? Mopeds…..require a valid license and a valid motorcycle license. Seriously?????? I could see perhaps being 16 years of age. Changing some simple laws to allow people to use 50 cc or even 80cc transportation, without a motorcycle license or without a current license would allow people to function who say have a suspended license at little or no risk. It helps others help the environment.
Vermont is very expensive. When you fall down and have to pick yourself up, our regulations will kick you down and keep you down. We could be kinder to our fellow man and our environment.
Without 500 pluse page bills that take your money and give it to somebody else in the name of environmental forgiveness.
Wow – so they’re going to fix it for us? Gollllieeee thanks. How lucky are we to have these guys taking care of us?? Just wondering…Did we ask for this? Is this what we had in mind when we elected these folks? Would it be prudent to just stop these folks for all their silliness…disenfranchise them, send them home?
HI I’m from the government and I’m here to help you. What a load of BS!!!
of your money….:)
Fanatic adherents demanding mandatory sacrifice to a dogmatic doomsday religion should definitely NOT be allowed even to come in sight of making national socioeconomic policy decisions. What they are demanding is human sacrifice, the modern analogue of Aztec Climate Control. When they say “it will Create Jobs,” the jobs will be doing things unnecessary save for their programs. When they say it will “Save Money!” remember Obamacare. Irrational sacrifices didn’t save the Aztecs, either and electric automobiles will take over when the market wants them, just like cars displaced horses.