Energy

Free Market Groups Back Bill Nixing Obama’s ‘Wholly Arbitrary’ Enviro Regs

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A Washington, D.C.-based energy group and a slew of free market organizations announced Tuesday support for a piece of legislation halting what they call President Barack Obama’s “arbitrary” rules regulating methane and carbon emissions.

Energy industry group American Energy Alliance and conservative and libertarian groups Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heritage Action for America praised Republican legislation seeking to stop the “social cost of carbon” (SCC) and the “social cost of methane” (SCM) rules.

SCC and SCM are products of a group of designees from Obama’s administration collectively called the Interagency Working Group (IWG).

“The problems with these calculations are many, but the most important are that these calculations are ‘wholly arbitrary,’ that the IWG refuses to follow OMB’s guidelines for economic analysis, and that these are economic models which are calibrated to follow climate model projections, not actual, real-world data,” the groups wrote in a letter to Republican Rep. Evan Jenkins of West Virginia, who presented the legislation Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act of 2016 (THERA).

Criticisms against the methane rules are coming mainly from states that rely heavily on natural gas development.

North Dakota, for instance, filed a lawsuit Monday against the Environmental Protection Agency over methane emission rules the state called the regulations “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.”

The lawsuit, filed in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, argues the arbitrary nature of the rules will significantly affect North Dakota’s large shale oil operations. The rule was made in May and requires natural gas producers dramatically reduce methane leaks at drilling sites.

The rule is part and parcel to Obama’s mission to reduce methane emissions 40 to 45 percent by 2025.

The SCC and SCM model are used to inflate the climate model numbers, thereby adding to the arbitrary nature of the rules, the letter states.

“If the calculations are re-run using empirical data, according to one SCC model the numbers should be 30 to 50 percent lower and according to another SCC model, the SCC should be over 80 percent lower,” according to the group. “In fact, if the IWG only used this second model, there is a 40 percent chance that the SCC would be negative, i.e., carbon dioxide actually turns out to be a benefit to the economy.”

The letter notes that the numbers are inflated to justify the existence of the rules and the government agencies administering them.

“Your bill recognizes that the government has been playing ‘fast and loose’ with the SCC and SCM,” the group concluded, “in what can fairly be described as an attempt to generate numbers that justify their administrative actions in pursuit of their political.”

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