Author
Jonathan Lewis
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The Wrong Lessons from China
When President Xi Jinping of China visits Mar-a-Lago this week, it might not surprise him to learn that his host’s advisors see China and its environmental problems as a cautionary tale. He may be puzzled by their reasoning, though. Backing up a week, the night before Donald Trump joined EPA…
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The RFS, the Rebound Effect, and an Additional 431 Million Tons of CO2
There’s a quirk of macroeconomics known as the rebound effect, and it can be a bit of a drag. When the price of a widely used commodity falls, consumers tend to use more of it. In most cases, that’s a good thing. But sometimes the price drop is the unintended…
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Flying Blind: EPA Can’t Start Fixing the RFS Until It Stops Ignoring the Problems
Before we dig into the new report on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to conduct “an objective analysis on the environmental impacts and unintended consequences of U.S. biofuel policy,” or how that report echoes the Clean Air Task Force’s long-held position that EPA has not adequately assessed the negative…
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Render Unto Science: Biomass Carbon Emissions Should Be Determined by Science, Not Congressional Fiat
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s vote to disavow the seemingly indisputable fact that forest biomass-based energy generation emits carbon dioxide is a short-sighted attempt to legislate science. The bill would openly set aside scientific consensus in favor of an edict that the industrial-scale combustion of trees and other biomass is essentially…
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Corn Ethanol Attacks Vermont!
When a Washington-based lobbying outfit started airing television ads in Vermont that attack Rep. Peter Welch because he wants to scale back federal support for corn ethanol, the erstwhile Vermonter in me took offense. It has been a few years since I lived in Vermont, but I’ll probably always consider…
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White House Wisely Rejects the “Categorical Carbon Neutrality” of Biomass—But What Now?
The White House Office of Management and Budget released a Statement of Policy this week detailing the many reasons why President Obama would veto H.R. 2822, a 2016 appropriations bill for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior put together by the Appropriations Committee in the House…
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Why Wait Until 2016 to Reform the RFS?
Will the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) matter in the 2016 elections? Should the next president reform or end the current policy? The National Journal recently posed these questions to its Energy & Environment Expert Insiders.
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First Things First: Capping Corn-Based Biofuel Production
When Congress dramatically expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007, supporters of the revised RFS—which is supposed to push 36 billion gallons of biofuel into the US fuel market by 2022—touted the program as a solution to our overdependence on foreign oil, a cure for flagging rural economies, and a…
