If you haven’t been oversaturated with the discussions on development of Alaska’s oil resources and the taxing of that resource, then you have a splendid opportunity to learn more from both sides of the argument. Is Alaska’s tax structure on oil too progressive and thus limiting production from old wells? Does the ACES tax structure encourage mostly development from newly discovered wells? There are many questions and it is very difficult to determine where the truth lies.

If the ACES tax is modified, as suggested in HB 110, will the petroleum companies be encouraged to produce and develop more of Alaska’s oil resources? Or will they just take the money and run? One almost needs a ouija board to decipher the discussion. By the way, the State gets 90% of its operating budget funding from oil revenue. What would Alaska do if this revenue stream disappeared? Every person in the state, man, woman and child, would have to ante up more than $14,000 annually to pay for the state’s current spending levels.

The Anchorage Tea Party is hosting “The Future of ACES” on Thursday, January 12 at 6:30pm. The event will be held at 3801 Centerpoint Drive, 1st floor. Talk show host Glen Biegel will moderate the panel which will consist of Senator Bill Wielechowski, Senator Cathy Giessel and Rebecca Logan (AK Industry Support Alliance). So, both sides of the issue will be heard. Following the discussion, there will be a Q&A and an ACES straw poll.

So, bring your ouija boards and help untie this Gordian Knot!

(The Manhattan Institute) The Obama Administration’s energy policy apparently consists of subsidizing so-called “green” energy with taxpayers’ dollars and ending fossil fuel exploration/production. The Energy Department had no problem handing out $529 million in loan guarantees to now-defunct Solyndra in quick fashion. Meanwhile, the Keystone XL pipeline project, from the Canadian border to Houston, TX is held up until after the 2012 elections. It seems as if the Administration is only concerned with the environmental special interests and not creating good paying jobs for middle class Americans. It is clear where the president’s priorities are: appeasing special interests until after the election.

Not only would the Keystone XL project create nearly 20,000 jobs for several years, it would also provide about 700,000 barrels per day of vital energy supply, thus lowering our dependence on countries not friendly to us. Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, states that the Keystone XL project would generate 46% more energy than all of America’s solar and wind energy sources. (read more…)

(National Review) The Fire Island wind energy project has nothing on the Sheperd’s Flat wind project in northern Oregon. This $1.9 billion federally funded project (your tax dollars) will dwarf the Fire Island wind farm in size and taxpayer dollars. The corporate beneficiary of your dollars will be none other than GE!  This is the same GE that pays little or no taxes and whose CEO is Jeffrey Immelt, head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Corporations.

So, in return for GE investing about 11% in the project it receives a return on equity of 30%. A great return compliments of the taxpayer. Not only that, but 35 permanent “green energy” jobs will be created at a cost of $16.3 million each, not counting the Federal loan guarantees. Now that’s what I call corporate welfare. Once again, the government choosing winners and losers just like Fire Island. (read more...)

(National Review) Rich Lowry points out the costs we pay to keep making ethanol fuel out of corn.  These costs include a 45 cent/gallon subsidy and taking food from the poor so we can drive environmentally friendly vehicles. Of course, there just may be a connection to the first presidential primaries in Iowa and ethanol. (Read more…)

(BBC News) The John Muir Trust Fund, a conservation charity, has conclude that UK wind farms operate well below capacity more than half the time. During the highest peak demand time, the farms operate at less than five percent of capacity. So, when you need energy most, it will most likely not be available. Will this be the case for the Fire Island wind farm? (Read more…)

(Forbes)The United States Department of Energy on Monday offered a conditional $2.1 billion loan guarantee to German developer Solar Millennium to finance the first half of a 1,000 megawatt solar thermal power plant to be built in the Southern California desert.The Blythe Solar Power Project is the largest of nine big solar power plants licensed over the past nine months by the California Energy Commission, and it comes with a price tag to match.  (Read more…)

From Ronald Bailey at Reason Magazine: If you’re looking for a place to stash some excess carbon dioxide, forests are your best bet. Trees and plants drink up CO2, believed to be a major contributor to global warming. So the United Nations is trying to hammer out an agreement under which governments would be compensated for managing their countries’ forests to maximize carbon sequestration.

An October article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that this approach is unlikely to be effective because government-owned forests are not well-protected. Authors Ashwini Chhatre, a geographer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Arun Agrawal, a political scientist specializing in environmental policy at the University of Michigan, offer evidence that governments have a habit of licensing destructive logging and that they often fail to prevent resource rustling. In contrast, Chhatre and Agrawal found, forests owned by local communities are managed for the long term and store lots of carbon dioxide.

As Chhatre told New Scientist, “Our findings show that we can increase carbon sequestration simply by transferring ownership of forests from governments to communities.” Chhatre and Agrawal further suggest that locals are better at managing common pastures, coastal fisheries, and water supplies. (More from Ronald Bailey on the Commons…) (Read the article from PNAS…)

(Fast Lane) In his personal blog, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood declared a “sea change” in policy after attending the National Bike Summit: “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized,” he wrote. (NYT blog reports)

Read the article <here>