Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Deceptive jobs rhetoric and auto regulation

Last week, President Trump worked long-time big-business lobbying scripts about "job-killing regulations" into his populist speech here in Michigan. The setting was the Willow Run facility in Ypsilanti and the props included a crowd of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors auto workers bussed in by the former Big Three to cheer for the Donald.

In reality, environmental regulations do not kill jobs. Read a rebuttal to the speech in my article on the "The ‘Job-Killing’ Fiction Behind Trump’s Retreat on Fuel Economy Standards" at Yale's e360 online magazine.

Friday, March 3, 2017

Clean fuels and climate leadership.

The past few days found me at this year's Climate Leadership Conference in Chicago, where I moderated a panel session entitled "Employing The Next Generation of Clean Fuels." This annual event brings together a diverse set of private companies who are pursuing strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with partners in nonprofit and government sectors.

The clean fuels panel was framed around the fact that transportation is now the nation's highest emitting sector in terms of greenhouse gases. It addressed how adopting alternative fuels or expanded electrification can reduce the GHG emissions stemming from personal and business travel. The other panelists were Rebecca Boudreaux of Oberon Fuels, a company that produces dimethyl ether (DME); Jon Coleman of Ford Motor Company; Angela Foster-Rice of United Airlines; and Ed Harte of Southern California Gas.

Most panelists focused on the opportunities and challenges associated with the particular fuel options they are pursuing. Both natural gas and DME are being targeted to replace petroleum-based diesel fuel in commercial vehicles. Airlines such as United have been testing biofuels, which have a significant role in the industry's international plan to avoid further growth in GHG emissions from air travel after the year 2020. As a manufacturer of vehicles for utilizing all of the major alternative fuels, Ford highlighted the need to carefully analyze the many factors that influence whether and to what extent a given alternative fuel might be adopted.

Not surprisingly, I sounded a note of caution about clean fuels and climate.