Environmental policy

How Cool is This? Accelerated Geologic Weathering by Creating Rocks from Carbon Dioxide

1 Comment / Environmental policy / By

Geologic weathering is an important, but slow, part of the carbon cycle in which rocks essentially absorb carbon dioxide. A research team in Iceland has invented a method of creating rocks using carbon dioxide, water, and basalt rock. A chemical reaction among them enables the basalt to absorb the carbon dioxide. A Washington Post article …

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Does Bad Regulatory Policy Sow the Seeds of Better Regulatory Policy?

1 Comment / Electricity, Environmental policy, Regulation, Uncategorized / By

Severin Borenstein asks whether growth of distributed energy is mostly an uneconomic response to regulatory dysfunction, and raises the question of whether uneconomic responses might lead to regulatory improvements. He doesn’t quite frame the issues quite like that, his post is somewhat exploratory in form, but I think this is the question he is aiming at. …

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The Federal Government Wants to Help Trucking Companies Save Money

Environmental policy, Regulation, Transportation / By

The EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation think trucking companies in the United States are not smart enough to understand that fuel expenses are worth managing carefully. Despite industry analysis identifying fuel costs ranging from 30 to 40 percent of variable costs per mile, so it is no secret in the trucking business, the federal …

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My R Street Policy Study: Electricity Market Alternatives to Regulatory Net Metering

2 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Environmental policy, Regulation / By

Institutional persistence creates some of the thorniest problems in public policy, including electricity policy. Institutions change more slowly than technology and markets, because of both  design and status quo bias, which means that dynamic processes of economic and technological change can make regulatory institutions outdated. This mismatch is showing up right now in the electricity …

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Texas Terminates Agreement with Oil Industry-backed Lizard Conservation Group

1 Comment / Environmental policy, Regulation / By

A few years ago the state of Texas helped fight calls to list the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered by supporting an oil industry-backed foundation to oversee lizard habitat and promote habitat conservation efforts. Conservation groups were loudly skeptical of the Texas Habitat Conservation Foundation (THCF) due to its close ties to the oil industry. …

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Social Costs of Oil and Gas Leasing on Federal Lands, Carefully Considered

2 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy, Regulation / By

OVERVIEW: A report filed with the US Department of the Interior recommended that terms governing the leasing of federal land for oil and gas development be updated to reflect social costs associated with such development. While such costs may be policy relevant, I suggest social costs are smaller than the report indicates and the recommended policy …

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Government Failure and the California Drought

5 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy / By

Yesterday the New York Times had a story about California’s four-year drought, complete with apocalyptic imagery and despair over whether conservation would succeed. Alex Tabarrok used that article as a springboard for a very informative and link-filled post at Marginal Revolution digging into the ongoing California drought, including some useful data and comment participation from …

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The “Utility Death Spiral”: The Utility As a Regulatory Creation

7 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Environmental policy, Regulation, Technology / By

Unless you follow the electricity industry you may not be aware of the past year’s discussion of the impending “utility death spiral”, ably summarized in this Clean Energy Group post: There have been several reports out recently predicting that solar + storage systems will soon reach cost parity with grid-purchased electricity, thus presenting the first …

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