ITC for solar energy being dramatically reduced

From an Article by Ari Natter, Bloomberg News, February 5, 2020

The Trump administration is withholding nearly a billion dollars for a clean energy program it has unsuccessfully tried to cut, congressional Democrats said Wednesday, raising the specter of political interference.

The unspent funds now amount to $823 million in the Energy Department’s office that provides grants and other financial assistance for alternative energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency, according to Democrats on the House Science Committee, which is holding a joint subcommittee hearing on the topic.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which has a $2.85 billion budget, was targeted for 80% cuts in the last White House budget request — only to see Congress increase its funding instead. The office has also recently canceled funding of proposed projects and left scores of staffing positions unfilled, said Illinois Democrat Bill Foster.

“When Congress passes a budget, we expect that budget to be followed,” said Foster, chairman of the panel’s Investigations and Oversight subcommittee. “It’s unclear to many of us there has been a completely good-faith effort.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement that the delayed-funding was yet another example of “ideologically driven efforts that thwart action to combat climate” change. The Trump administration has moved to ease Obama-era rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants, while also pulling the country out of the Paris climate accord.

“The agency is flouting congressional intent,” said Arjun Krishnaswami, an analyst with the environmental group’s climate and clean energy program.

Republicans on the committee said so-called carry-over funding within the office was normal. “It’s business as usual,” said Representative Ralph Norman, of South Carolina.

And Daniel Simmons, assistant secretary for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said the agency fully intends to spend its appropriated funding “consistent with both congressional guidance and administration priorities.” The office is in the process of hiring more staff, Simmons said.

He pointed to $126 million in funding for solar technologies announced by the Energy Department just as the hearing began Wednesday. ”This has been a very good faith effort,” Simmons testified.“We are trying to be good stewards of tax payer dollars.”

Planning underway by Clean Energy States Alliance, May 9, 2019

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which grew under Obama, has financed research into technologies ranging from electric vehicles to energy projects powered by ocean waves. It has been credited with financing research to help make the cost of wind power competitive with coal-fired electricity, and cutting the costs of LED lighting.

Fooling the public for the bottom line

From an Article by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, August 23, 2017

Researchers from Harvard studied nearly 200 ExxonMobil communications and concluded that the company actively misled the public about climate change, contradicting findings by even their own scientists.

A peer-reviewed study has confirmed  ”a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public.”

“Even while ExxonMobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale” says Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, Harvard researchers

“ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it,” wrote Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in their study, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters.

“Even while ExxonMobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale,” they concluded in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday.

“Exxon has officially run out of excuses,” said Greenpeace USA climate liability campaigner Naomi Ages. “This peer-reviewed study from Harvard is just the latest piece of evidence indicating that the largest oil company in the world knew about the risks of climate change, but concealed them from the public and shareholders.”

The study confirmed findings from 2015 reports by InsideClimate News and The Los Angeles Times, which claimed the company had long known about the risks of climate change but publicly denied them, and triggered probes by the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In their New York Times op-ed, the researchers note that they were pushed to undertake their study by ExxonMobil’s response to the 2015 reports:

>>> The company responded that the allegations were false and “deliberately cherry-picked,” and that anyone who looked into the matter would see that. “Read the documents,” the company said, “and make up your own mind.” A year ago we took up this challenge. We have read all of the documents, analyzed them according to established social science methods, and made up our minds…. Our findings are clear: Exxon Mobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications.

>>> Exxon Challenged Us to “Read All The Documents.” We did.

Supran and Oreskes examined 187 climate change-related communications from ExxonMobil between 1977 and 2014, including peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal communications, as well as paid, editorial-style advertisements, or “advertorials,” published by the New York Times.

They observed that ExxonMobil’s Times advertorials “included several instances of explicit factual misrepresentation,” and “overwhelmingly emphasized only the uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most climate scientists, including ExxonMobil’s own.”

After Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote about the study, ExxonMobil emailed him comment, calling its findings “inaccurate and preposterous.”

“ExxonMobil acknowledges the risk of climate change is clear and warrants action,” the statement said, asserting that the study “was paid for, written and published by activists leading a five-year campaign against the company.”

Supran and Oreskes note in the study’s acknowledgments their research was paid for by the Harvard University Faculty Development Funds and the Rockefeller Family Fund, and state they “have no other relevant financial ties and declare no conflicts of interest.”

Oreskes further told Mother Jones that ExxonMobil’s messaging adapts as its past positions become discredited, but that the company still sticks to its old habits of sowing doubt among members of the public.

“They are promoting a different kind of doubt,” she said. “It’s a doubt that says, ‘There’s climate change, but we have to still use fossil fuels because there’s no alternative,’” Oreskes explained, stressing that there are alternatives (as outlined in Bill McKibben’s recent In These Times cover story).

Climate activists, politicians, and journalists praised the study online, and called for the company—and its former CEO, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to be held accountable.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net