The Federal government is continuing its ethanol mandates in its misguided effort to clean up the fuel our cars burn as we get about our business.  In an op-ed earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal rightly decried the artificial, government-created and -propped up market in RINs, which oil refineries can trade around in order to get credit for ethanol that they’re unable to obtain and blend into the fuel they produce.  As the WSJ noted, one of several outcomes of this artificial market is this.

The core problem is that the federal government has distorted the energy market by using subsidies and mandates to support biofuels.

The Federal government has distorted far more than that. By diverting so much corn to ethanol production, the Feds have very greatly driven up the price of food—corn and corn products, meat animals fed on corn, other food crops that are corn substitutes—wheat, beans, etc—and on and on.

The solution is to end this political favoritism.

The favoritism here is in acceding to the wishes three Senators from corn-producing States: Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst (both R, IA) and Deb Fischer (R, NE).

The more direct solution is for the Feds to end the ethanol mandates and to get out of the energy and food markets altogether (the latter which also requires eliminating farm support subsidies, a much more politically difficult proposition even though the subsidies also markedly drive up the cost of food). A large side effect of that would be to strike a blow against political favoritism.

The Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management is moving to rescind and replace an Obama administration regulation that would drastically limit methane gas emissions by companies drilling for hydrocarbons on Federal land.

While the move is salutary—the Obama regulation would have imposed too much cost, would have stunted energy innovation, and would have limited energy supply with resulting higher prices to us consumers—there’s one tidbit in the Wall Street Journal article carrying that news that needs emphasis.

Environmentalists rejected that claim [of impeding energy development] and decried the decision, pointing out that several companies had already moved on their own to start cutting methane emissions.

Because some in private industry think a move is a good idea, Government, says the Left, must get involved and require everyone to do the same thing.

And

Many oil-and-gas companies—including some of the world’s biggest—have been anticipating further rules to slow climate change and have decided to invest in better methane-capturing technology. They can recoup some of the investment and potentially add to profits by capturing more stray gas and selling it with the rest of their output.

Of course, they still will be able to with the new regulation in place.  Methane gas produced as a side effect of oil drilling or fracking still will be a marketable product, still will be competitive with coal, still will produce profit for the drillers and frackers.  This is innovation in a free market, something the Left and their environmentalists.

From AEIdeas comes one indication:

AEIdeas summarized the circled section:

In 18 of the last 19 months starting in December 2015, the energy share of consumer spending has been below 4% marking a historic period of the most affordable energy in US history (annual data on energy spending back to 1929 confirms this).

That’s evil oil and gas for you—making our lives easier and making that ease cheaper.

…of the failure of government intervention in “green” energy.  And of the lack of understanding of the problem by the participants.  This four minute video via Deutsche Welle tells the tale.

A group of Spanish farmers, in order to “improve their pensions and to do something for the environment,” banded together to build a solar farm, Spain’s biggest cooperative solar park, an operation of solar cell collectors at roughly €90,000 per module.

The central takeaway:

[T]he modern facility is currently losing money because the conservative government has drastically cut the subsidies for solar power.

The solar farm is not economic viable, it cannot compete in the market place, without those subsidies, without OPM.  The thing simply is not market ready.

The lack of understanding is in the plaints that this is someone else’s fault; it can’t possibly be a poor business decision to rely on a technology that can’t compete and that isn’t ready for prime time.

I feel swindled by my own government, by the politicians we Spaniards voted into office.

And

The big energy companies regard us small investors as enemies because we threaten their monopoly on the market.

Except that these “small investors” don’t have anything with which to challenge them without all that OPM to prop you up.  Their enemy—and the small investors’—is that government subsidy.

One bit of slanting by DW: there is a vague reference to a tax on solar cell installations on private homes in that region of Spain.  However, DW chose to provide no context for that reference: what the tax is for, how much it is, what is actually being taxed, and so on.