The feds (Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) are designing new fuel economy labels for cars, for the first time in 30 years, and they want you to help them with the design. (My two-cents worth, elaborated below, is cross-posted on Legal Planet.) The draft design includes the following elements: A big prominent letter grade for fuel economy and emissions performance, on a scale of A+ to D (with B- being more-or-less average) Five-year savings relative to an "average" vehicle (whatever that is) Fuel consumption and fuel economy (city and highway mpg; gallons per 100 miles) Emissions …

This (censored) commentary appeared today on Joe Romm's blog: Ken Johnson says:January 31, 2010 at 9:39 pm Regarding Fred Krupp's comment about China's "centralized industrial policy that we can't match and don't want in the United States ...," that sounds to me a lot like a top-down, economy-wide cap-and-trade system in which central planners set production targets and allocate quotas. [JR: It may sound a lot like that to you -- but not to anyone else. It is the opposite of central planning and it is Orwellian to say otherwise.] [snip] ******** Here is the original, uncensored post:   Regarding …

According to Sen. John Kerry, no. There has been a lively discussion of this topic on James Handley's blog at carbontax.org. My last comment, responding to Dan's 11/19/2009 comment, was blocked, but is replicated below: Dan, Thank you for the calculations. This is excellent. One point of clarification, re "As I understand, Ken would have the entire cost of wind power subsidized from the carbon fee revenue." If $100/MWh wind power is competing against $50/MWh fossil fuels, then wind would only need a $50/MWh subsidy (not $100/MWh) to be cost competitive. So the $10/MWh carbon fee could actually support 0.46 …

Paul Krugman concludes in "It's easy being green" (NY Times Opinion, 9/24/2009) that "the claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax." Indeed, but the notion that the Waxman-Markey legislation is about "saving the planet" (Krugman's words) is equally inscrutable. Even Joe Romm's Climate Progress blog, one of the most ardently supportive voices in favor of Waxman-Markey, asserted in May that if the law is enacted there would only be a "10% to 20% chance of averting catastrophe." Are those the best odds that Waxman-Markey's cheap emission …

The following comment, submitted climateprogress.org in response to Romm's July 9 story about Hansen, was censored: July 9, 2009 at 11:25 pm For all of Waxman-Markey's faults, I think it gets two things right: (1) allowance set-asides to fund tropical forest conservation, and (2) a meaningful price floor. These measures move U.S. policy closer to the rational and pragmatic goal of minimizing emissions within limits of cost acceptability. However, they leave W-M with no coherent policy foundation, because its other regulatory mechanisms -- the cap, trading, economy-wide linkage, banking, borrowing, and offsets -- all operate to achieve the converse objective …

[9/08/2010] I am a California resident and climate policy activist with a particular interest in legislative policy related to climate change. Recent writings: "Going Beyond CAFE Standards: Feebate Financing Incentives for Fuel Economy" (September 3, 2010)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1624672 "A Decarbonization Strategy for the Electricity Sector: New-Source Subsidies" (January 13, 2010)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1427106 Circumventing the Weight-Versus-Footprint Tradeoffs in Vehicle Fuel Economy Regulation (December 14, 2009)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1523398 "Preserving Additionality of Complementary GHG-Reduction Actions Under Waxman-Markey" (June 16, 2009)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1421947 "The Role of Policy Logic in U.S. Climate Legislation" (July 23, 2009)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1437741 I have provided comments, testimony, and technical analysis for the following groups and activities (search for "Johnson"): …

Re "U.S. to Issue Tougher Fuel Standards for Automobiles" (NY Times, 5/18/2009) "President Obama will announce as early as Tuesday that he will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard ..." Four questions: (1) Which will it be: an emission standard or a fuel-economy standard? (California scrupulously avoided structuring its Pavley regulations as a fuel-economy standard, to avoid conflict with federal preemption rules.) (2) Will the new federal standard preempt California's even tougher "Pavley II" regulations under AB 32? (3) California's standard was based on the …

For an $80 billion program, President Barack Obama's cap-and-trade proposal is very short on specifics. His budget plan [PDF] provides only the briefest policy rationale for cap-and-trade, describing it as "a policy approach that dramatically reduced acid rain at much lower costs than the traditional government regulations and mandates of the past." The acid-rain program's regulatory costs were indeed low, partly because emission allowances were freely allocated to industry. But Obama's plan calls for 100 percent auctioning of allowances, which erases the perceived cost advantage and puts cap-and-trade on par with carbon taxes in terms of political viability. To ameliorate …

Are emission targets ever really 'science-based'? Or are we playing a dangerous game of self-deception? Last month, Senator Barbara Boxer proposed six principles for climate legislation, the first of which was: 1. Reduce emissions to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming. The National Call to Action on Global Warming, announced last week by a coalition of fifty environmental and public-interest groups, is more specific. Its first stated objective is the following: Establish Science-Based Pollution Reduction Targets. Cut total, economy-wide global warming emissions by at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by at least 80 …

This post makes a point that I already made last Monday, but it bears repeating -- this time in the context of cap-and-trade. Chaz Teplin gave some approximate numbers for how much Obama's cap-and-trade plan would raise energy prices (based on a $14.30/MT carbon price): Effect of the Obama carbon price Petroleum fuel: adds 15¢/gallon Electricity: adds 0.8¢/kWh (compare to 7-10¢/kWh residential rates) Natural gas: adds 8¢/therm (compare to 85¢/therm residential rates)   The conclusion: "... energy prices would increase by about 10 percent. It's a start, but a very slow one." But that's not the whole story. Suppose the …