Environmental policy – Page 44

The Supply and Demand for Socially Conscious Investments

35 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson The Washington Post has a story on “socially responsible investing,” which puzzles over the below average returns that such investment funds seem to offer: [I]nvestors often pay a price when they add social considerations to the mix. Socially responsible investing funds, including expenses, generally trail traditional competitors, according to Morningstar data. For the …

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Innovation: Using Animal Fat to Produce Biodiesel

5 Comments / Economics, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Conoco Phillips and Tyson Foods are going to announce a new joint venture today. They: … will announce a strategic alliance … to produce and market the next generation of renewable diesel fuel, which will help supplement the traditional petroleum-based diesel fuel supply. The alliance plans to use beef, pork and poultry by-product …

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Go Read Wsj’s Energy Roundup Blog

1 Comment / Economics, Electricity, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling I’ve been so head-down-focus-focus-focus for the past couple of weeks that I have neglected to link approvingly to the Wall Street Journal’s Energy Roundup blog, which is consistently chock full of good stuff. Take, for example, Mark Gongloff’s post about global-warming-adaptive investment strategies, arising from Charles Easterbrook’s April Atlantic Monthly article on the …

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Supreme Court Mass. Vs. Epa Decision

1 Comment / Economics, Electricity, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling For those of you interested in intelligent legal analysis of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in the Massachusetts vs. EPA case, see Jonathan Adler’s post and the links he provides at Volokh. See also this thread of his earlier comments on the decision, and this extensive Google News search of articles on the decision. …

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Ethanol and Corn Markets: The Unintended Consequences Are Starting to Show Up

5 Comments / Economics, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Back when the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed, many analysts (including myself) argued that in addition to ethanol’s dubious claim to be more “environmentally friendly” than fossil fuels, subsidizing and otherwise favoring the production of ethanol would distort agricultural commodity markets. (If you just read that sentence and thought to yourself …

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Fundamentals of Spring Gasoline Price Increases

4 Comments / Economics, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling The following is a post I wrote in March 2004 about the regular, annual, seasonal rise in gasoline prices that always occurs at this time of year. I am reposting it here because it generally still applies, and I am inserting some updated comments in bold below. Being systematic, here are the primary …

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Ethanol for Grown-ups

2 Comments / Energy markets, Environmental policy, Politics / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson For a long time in the United States, ethanol has been a fringe act, a political plaything, a way for Congress to subsidize the income of well-connected agribusinesses without thinking too hard. Now, ethanol has become a member of a small cluster of “ideas” that are supposed to help us get on down …

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Txu Going Private: Private Equity Buys Into Competitive Power Markets

7 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling TXU is going private. KKR and other private investors will acquire TXU and take it private. This is fascinating. Note from the press release two important things: the focus on environmental attributes of the deal, and $400 million planned for “demand side management”: Planned Coal Units Reduced from Eleven to Three, Preventing 56 …

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Futurepundit on Co2 Emissions Reductions

6 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling I’m late to the party, but check out this post from Randall Parker at FuturePundit about using nuclear and wind power to meet most of our electricity demand: Most drastically, we could halt all carbon dioxide emissions from electric generation (cutting out a third of US CO2 emissions) by switching to only non-fossil …

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Personal Carbon Offsetting

5 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about voluntary purchases of carbon offsets and their efficacy. Importantly, this article points out that private options exist for those who want to negate the carbon effects of their behavior. The couple highlighted in the story used Climate Care. Other organizations that provide carbon offset purchase …

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