Energy Freedom Act

From Renewable Energy Access, an article entitled 'ANWR Drilling Royalties to Fund Renewable Energy?'

Last week, Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare, CA) introduced a bipartisan Bill titled the American-Made Energy Freedom Act, which takes a unique approach to funding alternative energy development. By opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration, and placing the lease and royalty revenues generated into a trust fund, the next generation of homegrown energy would be incubated, says the Congressman.
...

The Bill's proponents say the fund would support the following provisions:

-- Cellulosic Ethanol Tax Credit. Cellulosic Ethanol, the next generation ethanol, is a renewable fuel produced from plants and agriculture waste, which can be found in all 50 states. This can be developed as a primary fuel for cars and trucks to potentially displace our dependence on foreign oil.

-- Coal-to-Liquid Tax Credit. Coal liquefaction can produce a virtually sulfur-free diesel fuel that is cleaner than conventional diesel and can also produce jet fuel. This technology could produce approximately 2.6 million barrels of fuel (109 million gallons) per day by 2025 and meet 10% of projected U.S. oil demand, according to Nunes.

-- Solar and Fuel Cell Investment Tax Credits. Extends the residential and business tax credit through 2012. In California, residential solar installations rose 53% in 2004, thanks to a generous state rebate program. This could be magnified with expanded federal incentives.

-- Fund Emerging Renewable Fuels Development. Allocate funds to the Advanced Biofuel Technologies Program, the Integrated Biorefinery Demonstration and University Biodiesel Programs, the Improved Biomass Use Grant Program. Proposed programs designed to foster the production technology, facility construction, and capacity improvements for renewable fuels.

-- Fund Clean and Advanced Energy Loan Guarantee Program. Provide financial commitment by investing in projects that avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Strategic Energy Fund

Renewable Energy Access recently published an article entitled 'Senator Clinton Calls For Investing In Renewable Energy'. Here is the article:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a stand by introducing legislation to create a "Strategic Energy Fund" to help pay for the clean energy transition. It would raise more than $50 billion to fund research, development and deployment of energy technologies that will reduce America's oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Strategic Energy Fund will move America toward the goal of producing 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 by extending the production tax credit for generating electricity from wind and other renewable sources for 10 years.

It calls for more efficient vehicles on the road by doubling the consumer tax breaks for hybrids, clean diesel, and other advanced vehicles, and creating a tax incentive for fleet owners to purchase more efficient vehicles.

The proposal would speed the development of cellulosic ethanol by providing loan guarantees for the first billion gallons of commercial production capacity, and providing $1 billion for research.

To speed infrastructure conversion, it calls for increasing the availability of "E85" fuel pumps to 50 percent of gas stations by 2015 by providing gas station owners with a 50% tax credit for the cost of installing pumps.

And, by creating a $9 billion "Advanced Research Projects Agency," the legislation seeks to accelerate energy research.

At a speech at the National Press Club last Tuesday, where the Senator called for the "Strategic Energy Fund" to help America reach the goal of reducing oil imports by 50 percent by 2025, she pinpointed the nation's impasse between energy and national security:

"Our present system of energy is weakening our national security, hurting our pocketbooks, violating our common values and threatening our children's future. Right now, instead of national security dictating our energy policy, our failed energy policy dictates our national security," said Senator Clinton.

The proposed legislation also places a temporary fee on major oil company profits that exceed a 2000-2004 profit baseline. The fee would be in place for two years, and companies could offset their fee by investing in refinery capacity, ethanol production, or electricity generation from wind and other renewable sources. In addition, the proposal eliminates oil company tax breaks that the companies have said they don't need, and ensures that oil companies pay their fair share of royalties for drilling on public lands.

Elephant Funeral

This week, The Economist published an article entitled 'Elephant empathy'. If you find this article interesting, I would highly recommend research published in Nature entitled 'Elephant breakdown' by G.A. Bradshaw et al. It discusses in greater detail the complexity of the elephant mind. Here is 'Elephant empathy':

Elephants, proverbially, never forget. This photograph suggests that they may even remember their dead. It comes from a paper about to be published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a Kenyan zoologist, and his colleagues. The question of whether intelligent mammals such as elephants have similar emotional reactions to those of people is much debated in zoological circles. Mr Douglas-Hamilton's researchers were able to observe the reaction of other elephants to the death of Eleanor, the matriarch of a group called the First Ladies. The picture shows an elephant from a neighbouring group pulling at her body. On several occasions before she died, other elephants had tried to help her stand up. Such behaviour is in contrast to that shown by most animals to sick or dead individuals. They just ignore them.

Economic Overview

This week, The Economist published an overview of the previous weeks economic headlines. Here are the overviews:

Economic and financial indicators
Home sales in America fell by 1.3% in June, as inventories rose to their highest levels since 1997. Sales of condominiums were particularly slow. The median price for an existing home was $231,000 in June, a 0.9% increase from a year earlier. Although that was the smallest such increase since May 1995, American consumer confidence rose in July, according to the Conference Board.

Britain's GDP grew by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2006, compared with 0.7% in the first. The growth was mostly in services such as distribution, restaurants and financial services. Strong retail sales continued into the summer. Sales volumes were 2.1% higher between April and June than they had been in the previous three months.

Business sentiment in Germany dimmed a little in July, according to the widely watched Ifo index. But its reading of 105.6, down from 106.8 in June, remains strong by historical standards. In France and Italy meanwhile, business confidence diverged. French sentiment improved more than expected in July, according to the French statistics office, INSEE. Businessmen were enthusiastic about the strength of exports. In Italy, however, confidence declined after 13 monthly rises, according to the ISAE research institute.

Nevertheless, the euro-area economy as a whole remains quite healthy, according to the EuroCOIN indicator, a measure of economic activity compiled by the CEPR. Its reading of 0.633 for June, up from 0.617 in May, suggests the economy is growing faster than its long-run trend rate, which it calculates at about 0.5% a quarter.

Australia's consumer prices rose by 1.6% in the second quarter, exceeding forecasts and lifting the annual inflation rate to 4%. The jump in prices makes it likely that the Reserve Bank of Australia will raise interest rates so as to bring inflation back towards its preferred range of 2-3%. The Australian dollar strengthened in anticipation of the possible rate increase.

Annual inflation in Canada slowed to 2.5% in June, with core inflation falling to 1.7%. The Canadian dollar fell on the assumption that the Bank of Canada need not tighten monetary policy much further.

Emerging Market Indicators
Several central banks turned hawkish this week. The Reserve Bank of India raised its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 6%, because of higher energy prices. Hungary's central bank tightened by half a percentage point to 6.75%, following a quarter-point rise in June.

Strong investment helped South Korea's GDP grow by 5.3% in the year to the second quarter.

Future Of Globalisation

This week, The Economist published an article entitled 'The future of globalisation'. As previously posted, the Doha round of trade talks was an opportunity for political leaders to improve the efficiency and equality of free trade. Unfortunately, the failure of Doha "signals a defeat of the common good by special-interest politics. If the wreck is terminal--and after a five-year stalemate, that seems likely--everyone will be the poorer, perhaps gravely so." Here is the end of the article:

Is Doha's collapse just a failure to advance, rather than a reversal? Probably not. True, the seas of world trade are calm. Trade has been growing much faster than global GDP. High commodity prices and robust growth mean that the call for protection is low. But although the system will not fall apart overnight, with the years, the rust will set in.

Next year, the American president will lose the power that Congress has granted him to negotiate trade deals without them being picked to pieces by the legislature. That will make it hard to revive Doha. Rows about farm trade could be aggravated by next year's American farm bill. The ill will evident this week could spread if American and European manufacturers start to shed lots of jobs in a downturn. Western complaints about the piracy of intellectual property could sharpen rows with developing countries.

What's more, the WTO's crucial trade-disputes procedure could easily come unstuck. After this week's failure, next time the WTO rules against America, Congress will not take the offence kindly. Put all of these together, and it is easy to see how easily the whole trading system, not just one round of talks, could be wrecked.

The Doha round was launched after the attacks of September 11th 2001 as proof that a prosperous and united world could rise above Islamist terrorism. This week, faced once again with violence that they seem powerless to halt, political leaders had it within their scope to make the world better off. They failed.

Britain & California Pact

On July 31st 2006, the Associated Press published an article entitled 'Blair, Arnie 'global warming pact'. Here are some excerpts via CNN:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plan to lay the groundwork for a new trans-Atlantic market in carbon dioxide emissions, The Associated Press has learned.

Such a move could help California cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases scientists blame for warming the planet. President George W. Bush has rejected the idea of ordering such cuts.
...

The aim is to fix a price on carbon pollution, an unwanted byproduct of burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gasoline. The idea is to set overall caps for carbon and reward businesses that find a profitable way to minimize their carbon emissions, thereby encouraging new, greener technologies.

Monday's meeting was being hosted by Steve Howard, CEO of The Climate Group, and John Browne, chairman of British Petroleum. British and American business leaders planned to use it to also discuss other ways of accelerating use of low-carbon technologies.

The world's only mandatory carbon trading program is in Europe. Created in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that took effect last year, it caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in more than two dozen countries. Companies can trade rights to pollute directly with each other or through exchanges located around Europe as long as the cap is met. Canada, one of more than 160 nations that signed Kyoto, plans a similar program.
...

A main target of the agreement between Britain and California is the carbon from cars, trucks and other modes of transportation. Transportation accounts for an estimated 41 percent of California's greenhouse gas emissions and 28 percent of Britain's. Schwarzenegger has called on California to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010. California was the 12th largest source of greenhouse gases in the world last year, bigger than most nations. Blair has called on Britain to reduce carbon emissions to 60 percent of its 1990 levels by 2050. Britain also has been looking at imposing individual limits on carbon pollution. People who accumulate unused carbon allowances -- for example, by driving less, or switching to less polluting vehicles -- could sell them to people who exceed their allowances -- for example by driving more.

Bush has resisted Blair's efforts to make carbon reduction a top international priority. After taking office, Bush reversed a 2000 campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, then withdrew U.S. support from the Kyoto treaty requiring industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels.

The United States is responsible for a quarter of the world's global warming pollution. Bush administration officials argue that requiring cuts in greenhouse gases would cost the U.S. economy 5 million jobs.

Instead, the administration has poured billions of dollars into research aimed at slowing the growth of most greenhouse gases while advocating a global cut on one of them, methane.

Friday vs. Monday Video