TOM PYLE: You May Have Missed This, But California Taxpayers Dodged A Green Bullet … With Trump’s Help

TOM PYLE: You May Have Missed This, But California Taxpayers Dodged A Green Bullet … With Trump’s Help

By Morgan Murphy |

President Donald Trump’s opening week included a flurry of executive orders seeking to make good on his promise to restore America’s energy dominance, sidelined by the Biden administration.

While we should all applaud the president’s vision for a secure energy future, Californians should be especially pleased. Even before taking office, the “Trump effect” helped restore a bit of sanity in the Golden State.

Five days before President Trump’s inauguration, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) rescinded its application for a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency to extend its electric vehicle mandate to freight trains, citing “uncertainty presented by the incoming administration.” The first-of-its-kind regulation would have phased out diesel-fueled switch, industrial, and passenger trains by 2030 and freight trains by 2035 in favor of zero-emission trains.

Though now paused, CARB’s rationale for the rail electrification mandate mirrors broader green energy policies, and California will likely seek to revive it under a future Democratic administration. They shouldn’t.

CARB claimed the rule would be a net economic and environmental benefit, but ignored major costs. A report from my organization highlighted the substantial infrastructure upgrades needed to replace diesel engines with electric or hydrogen models. Further, transitioning to electric trains would have challenged the state’s already strained electricity grid. Lastly, the report shows that the emissions reductions CARB touted were greatly exaggerated.

California already has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S. With more and more devices connecting to the grid, demand is expected to grow by 76% over the next couple of decades.

At the same time, California’s grid has become increasingly unreliable due to policies that force more and more renewables onto the system, exacerbating the risks of continued brownouts and blackouts.

The conversion of rail to zero-emission technologies that rely heavily on electrification would contribute to these problems. The CARB rule assumed the existence of energy infrastructure that simply does not exist.

New transmission and distribution line upgrades and incremental power generation would be necessary to accommodate the load growth necessary to comply with this mandate. Much of that new electricity generation would likely come from natural gas, which already accounts for 39% of the state’s electricity.

CARB’s claim that the switch to electric trains would reduce particulate matter by 7,400 tons, nitrogen oxides by 386,300, and greenhouse gas emissions by 21.6 million metric tons from 2023-2050 is questionable at best. There is no way that power systems, even in California, will be 100% renewable in the timeframe the rule was scheduled to take effect.

And, as already mentioned, new generation capacity would certainly include natural gas.

CARB’s suggested that hydrogen could serve as an alternative to electrification. This switch would also require additional upstream infrastructure, increase costs, and put upward pressure on emissions.

This new hydrogen would not even be “green,” since production from non-conventional resources is nowhere near the scale of hydrogen sourced from natural gas or coal gasification. Developing hydrogen pipelines could also drive emissions and costs higher.

CARB’s locomotive regulation was a high-cost, low-reward gamble. Thanks to President Trump, Californians dodged another disastrous energy policy — before he even took office.

Instead of trying to “Trump-proof” California, Gov. Gavin Newsom should be grateful for the opportunity to scrap more of Sacramento’s costly regulations.

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Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Tom Pyle is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and the President of the Institute for Energy Research.

It’s Time to Fight the EPA’s Attempts to Impose Radical Regulations in Arizona

It’s Time to Fight the EPA’s Attempts to Impose Radical Regulations in Arizona

By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |

The Biden administration and radical environmentalists will do anything they can to enforce their climate change agenda on the American people. And now, they are using ozone control measures to do just that right here in the state of Arizona.

On September 16, 2022, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reclassified Maricopa County as a moderate nonattainment area of ozone limits under the Clean Air Act. This basically means that, according to the EPA, Maricopa County’s ozone levels are too high and therefore our state—including its individual citizens, motorists, and businesses—will be forced to adopt ozone control measures.

So, what exactly caused Arizona’s rise in ozone levels? Was it more cars on the road? A dramatic increase in air travel to our state? Too many cows releasing methane into the air?

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