Friday, March 29, 2019
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
MozCon 2019: The Initial Agenda
Posted by cheryldraper
We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 19 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We've got you covered:
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a "digital PR newsroom" in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google's quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how "fraggles" are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword's Aren't Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn't enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now "king" in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don't Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn't just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
#22: Rob Allerman, of PRT, on energy forecasting
Rob Allerman, the senior director of power analytics at Pattern Recognition Technologies, joins the show to discuss the importance of energy forecasting for producers and the challenges renewable energy sources create for forecasters.
Links:
• More about Pattern Recognition Technologies.
• More from IER on challenges created by renewables.
The post #22: Rob Allerman, of PRT, on energy forecasting appeared first on IER.
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
2019 lab sessions starting soon: Check out new additions to the SEI campus!
Paonia, Colorado is home to Solar Energy International (SEI)’s industry leading solar energy technical training facility. Since the early 2000s, tens of thousands of students have received hands-on experience in installing and commissioning solar systems at our lab yard. SEI offers classes on a variety of critical topics for industry professionals from grid-tied, to battery-based, and more advanced O&M classes. We’re constantly updating our lab yard with the best the industry has to offer to give our students relevant experience on what they will–or are already encountering in the solar industry.
Here are some exciting additions students will experience in the lab yard this year.
New Grid-tied Carport System to Explore:
PV201L: Solar Training- Solar Electric Lab Week (Grid-Direct) will feature a new station! Thanks to Panasonic’s donation of a pallet of 40 HIT modules installed on a Schletter carport, students will now be able to get their hands on the installation and commissioning of this new carport station.
AC-coupled SMA Sunny Island System:
In 2018 we expanded our battery-based systems in our PV301L: Solar Training- Solar Electric Lab Week (Battery-Based) training by adding a donated BluePlanet lithium ion battery bank to our newly installed Sunny Island system. We also made our Magnum battery-based system compliant with NEC 2017 Rapid Shutdown standards.
Top-Notch Accommodations:
Our BRAND NEW Student Lounge features ethically-sourced (including lots of beetle kill pine) timber-framing. This is the next phase of our Paonia, Colorado campus development and will provide a gathering spot, kitchen, and new bathrooms for students.
Check out our lab-based classes coming up at our headquarters in Paonia, Colorado this spring, summer and fall:
PV201L: Solar Training – Solar Electric Lab Week (Grid-Direct)
Put classroom theory into practice with the ultimate hands-on PV experience available! This five-day lab class offers students the opportunity to work closely with experienced PV professionals and get their hands dirty by fully installing and commissioning a wide variety of system types before testing the system, then de-commissioning and breaking down. You will work with modules, inverters, and racking components from a wide range of manufacturers that are all big players in the PV industry. A low student-to-instructor ratio and the world-class lab facility at SEI’s lab facilities in Paonia, Colorado or Costa Rica combine to make PV201L the perfect environment for your first hands-on PV experience.
PV301L: Solar Training – Solar Electric Lab Week (Battery-Based)
This five-day lab class is an amazing opportunity to get hands-on experience with a wide range of battery-based PV system components and architectures at SEI’s world-class lab facility in Paonia, Colorado. Working in small groups with instructors who live and breathe battery-based PV, students install, test, and commission numerous PV systems with energy storage that address a wide range of applications. The labs in PV301L consist of stand-alone and multimode PV systems, and include AC and DC coupled equipment. Many experienced solar professionals have never worked with batteries – this is your chance to leap to the front of the pack!
PV351L is an intensive, advanced training designed for solar professionals already working in the PV industry who want to take their technical skills to the next level and gain hands-on experience with a wide range of advanced analytical tools and meters. Through a mix of classroom and lab time, theory is immediately applied in the field, with a focus on commissioning, operations and maintenance, troubleshooting, and performance evaluation. Students gain experience using a wide variety of the latest and greatest tools the industry has to offer, including various multimeters, insulation resistance testers, IV curve tracers, and infrared cameras. Learn the advanced skills required to ensure PV systems operate safely and reliably!
The post 2019 lab sessions starting soon: Check out new additions to the SEI campus! appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).
Monday, March 25, 2019
The Mirage of a “Rational Green Deal” Comment on Holman Jenkins Jr.
There are few editorialists that many of us enjoy more than Holman W. Jenkins Jr. His twice-weekly “Business World” columns in the Wall Street Journal speak truth to power, including on the top-tier issue of energy and climate.
His March 16, 2019, piece, Is There a Green Rational Deal?, presents a government-activist alternative to the Green New Deal’s “fantastically expensive plan to fix precisely nothing.” But Jenkins errs in reaching for a silver bullet where, indeed, the fix is unnecessary, speculative, expensive, and not doable. And he defaults on the clear policy winner: free-market, wealth-is-health adaptation.
A New Proposal
Assuming model-driven, high-warming scenarios, Jenkins offers a multi-part government program to mitigate emissions and reverse manmade global warming.
Jenkins’s out-of-the-box proposal is a geoengineering fix whereby particles are injected in the air to reduce the sunlight reaching the earth, estimated to cost billions of dollars annually.
The second part of his “saner, no-regrets approach” to the Green New Deal (GND) starts with greater battery research (to help renewables overcome intermittency) and ending “irrational obstacles to nuclear power.” But the main intervention is a carbon tax. In Jenkins’s words:
Adopt a carbon tax as a pro-growth tax reform and hope the example catches on. Even if it doesn’t, any low-carbon energy technologies that emerge, if they are efficient and competitive, would be adopted by other countries.
Jenkins is proposing, in effect, GND Light with a geoengineering twist. While arguably better than what is on the table from the Progressive Left, his alternative suffers from a raft of problems that make it a clear loser to the real alternative of less government and market adaptation.
Climate Science
The wide range of predicted anthropogenic warming is proof enough that the alleged problem is ill-defined and speculative. There are distinct positives from increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and climate economists such as Robert Mendelsohn have calculated net benefits from the human influence at the lower end of the climate-model-driven IPCC range. The CO2 fertilization effect, and the benefits of moderate warming (natural or manmade), are behind this assessment.
Jenkins should not take high-range warming at face value given the out-the-window evidence of global lukewarming. He should also be aware of the logarithmic (not linear) forcing from greenhouse gas concentrations, meaning that the warming effect grows ever less with additions of CO2.
Jenkins should also examine the statistics of extreme weather events to see whether it indicates worsening climate change—or is just the bad luck of weather. A recent study of the peer-reviewed literature on hurricanes, for example, found little change in frequency and intensity, although warming can be expected to increase associated precipitation and storm surge. The data on droughts and floods are ambiguous too.
Public Policy
Each of Jenkins’s substitute policies for the GND are problematic in their own right.
First, geoengineering is untried and very controversial on both sides of the climate debate. “Playing God with climate” not only applies to anthropogenic warming but also anthropogenic cooling. Certain areas would be helped and others hurt within any aggregate temperature shift.
Second, making nuclear or batteries competitive has proven to be a mirage after much entrepreneurial (and governmental) effort. And presumably, a carbon tax is preferred to such micro-government policies aiming to reduce demand or lower the carbon intensity of supply.
Third, the carbon tax—along with its necessary equity adjustments and international trade barriers—is an intellectual loser and political unsalable.
Overall, Jenkins makes the common mistake of assuming market failure but neglecting analytic failure and government failure. Even assuming clear net societal costs from the anthropogenic warming, optimal public policy must avoid both over and under correction. Yet with uncertain science and debated economic impacts, perfect-knowledge solutions cannot come from even a well-intentioned intelligentsia.
Then comes politics. Can U.S. lawmakers do the “right” thing out of the gate, much less over time? And what about the other 190 political jurisdictions around the world? The failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the listing Paris climate accord makes any U.S.-side strategy ineffectual. (The U.S. accounts for only 15 percent of global emissions.)
Free Market, Anyone?
The Green New Deal and Green New Deal Light are solutions looking for problems and certainly worse than the alleged disease. In place of a non-solution for an undefined problem, the best policy is reduced, not increased, government intervention in the U.S. economy.
The market alternative is a first-do-no-harm policy, what I have elsewhere described as a “no regrets” policy. And being a wealth creator, free markets are a self-help, adaptation creator.
Self-interested business practices will help determine whether the foe is weather or climate. Either way, there is clear evidence that adaptation is well underway given the extreme weather events to date. Seen another way, the costs of extreme weather are being internalized.
For example, the family-owned McIlhenny Company has built a $5 million, 20-foot levee around its Tabasco plant on Avery Island off the Louisiana coast to insure against flooding. The man-made barrier also helps preserve the island’s natural defense, the marsh. “For my family, it’s very important that Avery Island is here and we do a lot of work to protect it,” stated the great-great grandson of the company founder.
Conclusion
Climate change policy should not be a road to serfdom, with each government intervention leading to more intervention, reducing societal wealth and narrowing personal freedom. Intervention turns into central planning and authoritarianism where, as F. A. Hayek warned, the worst get on top.
The advantage of the free market is that analytic failure (central planning by an intellectual elite) and government failure (gaming by a political elite) are avoided. The incredible bread machine allows individuals and organizations to plan and protect against the vicissitudes of weather or climate.
The post The Mirage of a “Rational Green Deal” Comment on Holman Jenkins Jr. appeared first on IER.
Saturday, March 23, 2019
Friday, March 22, 2019
Thursday, March 21, 2019
SEI, Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA) and GRID Alternatives team up to host Solar Career Expo
The free Solar Power and Energy Storage Mountain West Expo connects industry employers with prospective clean energy career seekers
The Expo is powered by Solar Ready Colorado, a partnership between Solar Energy International, GRID Alternatives, and the Colorado Solar and Storage Association
AURORA, Colo. — Solar Energy International (SEI), Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA), and GRID Alternatives are teaming up for the third year in a row to bring the Solar Power and Energy Storage Mountain West Expo to the Denver Metro Area. The free event will take place on April 16 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Aurora. The event will once again be co-located with COSSA’s Solar Power Mountain West 2019 Conference, taking place from April 12- April 16.
The Expo is an exploration of different jobs and employers in the solar and renewable energy industry. People interested in learning more about what jobs are available in solar from some of the biggest companies in Colorado are invited to attend to learn about the industry and network with industry employers.
The event is slated to have representation from around 20 Colorado Solar Industry employers including Sunrun, Namaste Solar, Pivot Energy, and more. The event brings together networking and learning opportunities to highlight your potential pathway into the growing solar workforce.
According to a Solar Foundation report released on March 20, Colorado is 8thin the nation for solar jobs, with the industry projected to grow by nearly 8% in 2019.
Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. and attendees are free to tour two rooms full of representation from the Colorado solar industry. The Solar Career Expo is co-located with COSEIA’s Solar Power Mountain West Conference, and is free to attend, even if you aren’t registered for Solar Power Mountain West.
The Expo continues for the third year as a part of the Solar Ready Colorado program. Solar Ready Colorado is a statewide effort through Solar Energy International (SEI) and industry partners to expand the activities of outreach, recruiting, and training to the rapidly growing Colorado solar industry and jobs market. Through industry partnerships and support from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, the program provides a dedicated outreach and recruitment effort as well as technical training through SEI’s long running, non-profit 501(c)(3) technical training program to those interested in entering the Colorado solar industry.
Register for the Career Expo and Solar Power Mountain West: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/solar-power-mountain-west-2019-tickets-52828704076?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&aff=escb&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing
Solar Energy International (SEI)– Solar Energy International (SEI) was founded in 1991 as a nonprofit educational organization. Our mission is to provide industry-leading technical training and expertise in renewable energy to empower people, communities, and businesses worldwide. SEI envisions a world powered by renewable energy.
Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA) formerly known as Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA)– Established in 1989, the Colorado Solar and Storage Association [formerly the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA)] is the award-winning nonprofit association leading Colorado’s solar and storage industries. Our mission is to expand solar and storage markets and to generate jobs and prosperity for the people of Colorado. Together with hundreds of solar and storage business members we work to advance clean energy policies, remove market barriers, highlight emerging trends, and increase solar and storage education.
GRID Alternatives– GRID Alternatives was founded during the 2001 California energy crisis by Erica Mackie, P.E., and Tim Sears, P.E., two engineering professionals who were implementing large-scale renewable energy and energy efficiency projects for the private sector. The vision that drove them was simple: free, clean electricity from the sun should be available to everyone. Through GRID Alternatives, they developed a model to make solar PV technology practical and accessible for low-income communities that need the savings and jobs the most, yet have the least access. By taking a broader approach to solar as not just an environmental good but also a real-world solution to a real-world economic problem in these communities, GRID Alternatives is helping to set the stage for large-scale solar adoption nationwide.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Chris Turek
SEI Director of Marketing and Communications
Solar Energy International (SEI)
www.solarenergy.org
39845 Mathews Lane
Paonia, CO 81428
970-445-8919
chris@solarenergy.org
The post SEI, Colorado Solar and Storage Association (COSSA) and GRID Alternatives team up to host Solar Career Expo appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
#21: Chris Brown, of the CSPR, on the economic impacts of SB-181 in Colorado
The team sits down with Chris Brown, director of policy & research at Common Sense Policy Roundtable, to discuss what the passage of SB-181 could mean for energy producers in Colorado and consumers around the country.
Links:
• More about Common Sense Policy Roundtable
• A comprehensive study on the effects of SB-181
The post #21: Chris Brown, of the CSPR, on the economic impacts of SB-181 in Colorado appeared first on IER.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
The Province of Alberta Shows Dangers of a Carbon Tax “Deal”
The Fraser Institute in Canada recently released my study critiquing the province of Alberta’s approach to carbon pricing. My analysis for Fraser confirms what I’ve been arguing here on the pages of IER for years: in the United States, conservatives and libertarians should run from any “carbon tax deal” that promises to shrink the size of government while battling climate change. No matter their promises, in practice government-imposed “carbon pricing” schemes never live up to the guidelines for “efficiency” laid down by their proponents. In this post I’ll illustrate myth vs. reality in the case of Alberta.
The Climate Leadership Plan (CLP)
As I explain in my Fraser study, the province of Alberta implemented a Climate Leadership Plan (CLP) in November 2015. It included a carbon tax (at CA$30/ton which will increase to $50 by 2022).
Yet the CLP includes more than just a mere “price on carbon.” It allocates a third of the carbon tax revenue to “green” investment projects, designed to promote a transition to a low-emission economy. It also includes specific climate objectives, such as an annual cap (100 megatons) on oil-sands emissions, and phasing out coal-fired electrical generation by 2030.
The CLP Fails on Textbook Carbon Tax Reform
Even if we stipulate the standard argument for a “market-based carbon tax reform,” the CLP fails on several fronts. First, it is not revenue neutral, even though its official website—in a move that would warm George Orwell’s heart—proudly proclaims that it is. To support this claim, they are merely reinventing definitions, such that “revenue neutral” means “the government will spend all the money in some fashion.” Some of the money is rebated to households, but (as I explained in the previous section) a third or so is earmarked for “green” projects. This is of course not what “revenue neutral” means.
A second problem is the specific objectives superimposed on top of the carbon tax. In principle, a carbon tax levied at the correct level is supposed to “internalize the externalities” and correct the “market failure” of greenhouse gas emissions. It is redundant—even on the terms of the carbon taxers—to levy specific mandates on top of this external “price.” In my study, I referred to another Fraser publication that estimates that the cap on oil-sands emissions would reduce emissions at a marginal cost of more than $1,000 per metric ton! That is about 20x the standard estimates of the “social cost of carbon,” which shows these policies have little to do with the “scientific” case for pricing carbon.
The Problem of Leakage
Yet even the basic concept of a carbon tax levied at the provincial level is quite dubious. The problem is what economists in the literature refer to as “leakage,” where businesses and households can (over time) shift their emissions out of regulated jurisdictions into regions where there are lower (or no) government constraints on emissions.
For example, suppose the province of Alberta implemented a draconian $500/ton carbon tax, and enforced it ruthlessly. That would certainly cause measured emissions from Alberta to fall quickly, and after a decade (say) of this new regime, we would expect to see very low emissions from the province.
However, that doesn’t mean global emissions would have fallen the same amount, relative to the original trend. This is because many Alberta residents (or those who had been considering moving there) would avoid the province, because they wouldn’t want to live in a region with such high taxes on gasoline and electricity.
When all was said and done, the effect of a draconian carbon tax levied just in Alberta would be to wreck the Albertan economy, while having little long-run impact on global carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, to the extent that some manufacturing operations relocated out of Alberta and into China, you might see emissions (for those operations) increase, since foreign production is often more carbon-intensive.
The way to incorporate the above reasoning into the standard framework is like this: When computing the “social cost of carbon,” analysts are implicitly considering a globally enforced carbon tax. That’s really the only way to make sense of the number, even on its own terms. But instead when we ask, “What should the ‘optimal’ carbon tax be at the provincial level?” we have an entirely different situation. Even if we stipulate the standard approach that justifies carbon taxes, the actual size is much lower than the “social cost of carbon” when we are talking about small jurisdictions.
Conclusion
If Canadian provinces (or U.S. states) implement a regional carbon tax, they shouldn’t fool themselves that they are “doing the right thing.” Even on their own terms, the most they can argue is that they are sacrificing their own economies through a symbolic gesture that by itself isn’t worth the cost, but which might encourage others to follow suit. Yet if framed that way, most of the public would run for the hills.
In this post I have focused on Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan (CLP) and shown how it fails to live up to the promises of those selling a “carbon tax reform” package. In practice, a carbon tax will not be revenue neutral, and it won’t be set at the “correct” level as determined by academics. Households and businesses will suffer from higher energy prices and slower economic growth, with very little to show for it in terms of environmental benefits—even stipulating the basic framework of human-caused climate change.
The post The Province of Alberta Shows Dangers of a Carbon Tax “Deal” appeared first on IER.
Friday, March 15, 2019
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Monday, March 11, 2019
Friday, March 8, 2019
Thursday, March 7, 2019
#20: Allen Gilmer, of Drillinginfo, on how data impacts oil & gas development
Allen Gilmer, founder and executive chairman of Drillinginfo, joined the show to discuss why and how he created the service and the important role that data serves in oil and gas development.
Links:
• More about the Drillinginfo.
• IER’s latest on growth in oil and gas production.
The post #20: Allen Gilmer, of Drillinginfo, on how data impacts oil & gas development appeared first on IER.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Monday, March 4, 2019
Responding to the Green New Deal: Don’t Stop Short
In the forthcoming cover story of National Review magazine, Travis Kavulla, energy director of the R Street Institute, offers advice to Republicans on how to respond to the Green New Deal. “What is the Green New Deal” is interesting for what is said and not said given R Street’s controversial mission to foist a carbon tax on the U.S. economy.
Most of his 1,900-word article is what a conservative or libertarian should say about the 10-year forced energy transformation, social justice scheme. It is extremely unrealistic (“outlandish,” says Kavulla), invites rank cronyism (Solyndra is mentioned), and is a vehicle for remaking society, not only the energy economy.
Kavulla also notes the civil war within the Democrat Party on climate/energy policy—one that, he should have added, calls the alarmists’ bluff of now-or-never forced energy transformation for a livable climate.
Public Utility Regulation Perverted
A public utility expert, Kavulla recognizes the debasing of state regulation of electricity where consumer-minded “just and reasonable” ratemaking has been usurped by the climate issue.
“[T]he energy marketplace consists mostly of local monopolies and other very large companies,” he begins. “They await any policy proposal, not scared of the prospect of new programs and regulations so much as they are eager to co-opt them.” Kavulla continues:
They have captive customers, so they have no great reason to worry about the price effect of government policies. Indeed, many of the most lucrative utilities have seen mini–Green New Deals emerge in states where they operate.
Politicization is rampant:
A green coalition emerges demanding more clean energy and less coal- and natural-gas-fired electricity generation. Politicians endorse it. The bumper-sticker message — e.g., “80 percent renewables by 2040” — polls well enough that the utilities think it will pass.
Rent-seekers win:
[Utilities] bargain with environmentalist groups to present a legislative package to retire fossil-fuel assets and embark on a renewables spending bonanza, usually financed by surcharges on customer bills. This core bargain then becomes a platform for all comers to insert their asks: labor unions, electric-vehicle advocates, technology-development firms looking for a carve-out, and local governments that want investments earmarked to them. The price tag grows, and all of the costs end up flowing through the rates that government regulators permit utilities to charge their customers.
Sad, indeed. And for Kavulla’s analysis, so far so good, twelve hundred words in.
Getting Off Track
Kavulla then calls for Republicans to come up with an alternative to a federal Green New Deal—but not before he gets in some sharp digs at National Review’s conservative audience. He singles out the Republican “skeptical camp,” for “all too often it traffics in an explicitly anti-clean-energy message, raving about climate science, the shadow flicker of wind farms, and the electromagnetic field of smart meters.”
This is unfair on all four counts—and at odds with R Street’s stated “mission to engage in policy research and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government.” In fact, the case against climate alarmism and CO2 rationing is much more sophisticated.
- The “anti-clean-energy message” is really about the pronounced negative effects of industrial wind turbines and industrial-scale solar installations versus dense mineral energies with a far less ecological footprint.
- “Raving about climate science” is the quite justified calling-out of climate alarmism for its falsified exaggerations and neglect of natural forcing (reference Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.). Global lukewarming is the middle ground in this debate.
- The “shadow flicker of wind farms” is a nuisance, but noise issues are the elephant in the room. There is traditional noise (watch this video from the Texas Public Policy Foundation) as well as the more subtle infra- and low-frequency noise that have prompted new guidelines from the World Health Organization for turbine siting.
- The “the electromagnetic field of smart meters” is an obscure argument. Penny wise and pound foolish “smart” meters are imposed on captives by utilities as new rate base upon which profit margins apply.
To rebut conservatives’ alleged “raving about climate science,” Kavulla resorts to a non-sequitur:
The atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has not been higher since the dawn of human civilization than it is today. No debate about the niceties of climate science can eclipse this basic fact. It is prudent to encourage the development of power plants that emit no greenhouse gases, or less of them.
He does not use the word carbon dioxide, which is not a criteria pollutant but a greening agent with known benefits, as meticulously documented by the CO2 Coalition. The fact that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are historically high (thank you, industrialization!) does not translate into a need for government mitigation policy. If anything, climate change (natural or anthropogenic) is an argument for no-regrets free-market adaptation in a fossil-fuel world.
Customer Empowerment Act
The good news is that Kavulla does not advocate, or even mention, a carbon tax as an alternative to a Green New Deal. Instead, he pitches “a more persuasive and elegant response to the Green New Dealers than what many Republicans have been pitching”—retail customer choice based on mandatory open access (MOA), wholly available in 13 states and partly so in 12 states. In his words:
Democrats have said that consumers are demanding clean energy. They then have demanded massive government programs to invest in it — or to co-opt monopolies to do it for them. Why not instead, if consumers are demanding clean energy, adopt policies that would make it easier for them to get it through their own choices?
Kavulla’s Customer Empowerment Act would universalize MOA. In fact, this is exactly what Enron was pushing in the 1990s as an alternative to the utilities’ “green pricing” programs: Let environmentally minded customers choose to pay a higher rate for more expensive, upgraded (intermittent) renewable energy.
Kavulla’s proposal can be censured by property rights advocates as infrastructure socialism. But assuming MOA, the outsized subsidies to wind and solar should be removed to level the playing field, for starters. Facing real rates, corporations and other buyers would change their minds in some if not many cases. And if these decision-makers actually visited a wind turbine and spoke to local residents, the “greenness” of industrial wind might go away completely. Solar has its own issues. Michael Shellenberger’s “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet” should be required reading for policy makers and business leaders interested in the energy/climate debate.
Conclusion
The subtitle of Kavulla’s essay is, “Consumers should come first in the GOP’s climate policies.” They should, which rules out a carbon tax and the international tariffs that would come with it. Special subsidies to wind, solar, nuclear, ethanol, and electric vehicles should be ended as well to create a taxpayer-neutral playing field.
But more than this, “free market” R Street should question the premises behind the Green New Deal, including exaggerated claims about future climate change. Motivations, not only coercive energy proposals, are in play.
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