California Manufacturing and Technology Association

1115 11th Street Sacramento, CA 95814

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wspa astro
ab 32 implementation gp, califirnians for energy indep; care, alliance for ca biz, tank the tax, ca drivers alliance; ca mfg and tehnol assoc; californians aginst higher taxes; fed up at the pump; califirnians against higher oil taxes; fueling ca
cmta calif mfg technol assocab 32 implementation:Status: DormantSpawned: 2006Info: The ironically named group works to kill AB 32. It’s a c4, meaning they don’t have to reveal their funding, but the principle organizations running AB32IG are the California Chamber of Commerce, CMTA and WSPA.Contact: @AB32_IGstop fooling ca<a href="http://www.calitics.com/tag/valero">http://www.calitics.com/tag/valero</a><table width="100%" style="background-color: rgb(252, 251, 225);"><tbody><tr><td><h3 class="diaryTimestamp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Tue Mar 23, 2010</h3></td></tr><tr><td>Down in the Lone Star State, they like to say that everything is bigger in Texas. I am not sure they were talking about the lies Texas companies like to try and sell the good people of California, but they should have been. In fact, with April 1st just around the corner, it seems that Texas Oil Companies bankrolling the initiative to suspend AB 32 are counting on Californians to be willing to be fooled again (remember what Enron did to Golden State anyone?)Anti-AB 32 groups first relied on the now completely debunked "Varshney Study" to "prove" that passing this legislation would be the ultimate job killer and lead to skyrocketing consumer costs. But now that the Legislative Analyst's Office has <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/18/BAPS1CI26G.DTL#ixzz0ivtVVQN1" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">torn the research to shreds</a>, calling it "unreliable" and "essentially useless", the anti-AB32 force is focusing on some new junk science to stand in as a replacement.The California Manufacturers and Technology Association (CMTA) is using an <a href="http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=4202&ptid=9" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">oil industry-funded study</a> conducted by the Pacific Research Institute to support its argument of the negative impacts of clean energy legislation. And it's no surprise that CMTA is the voice promoting this study, since the group has already announced its support for "AB 32 Suspension" in a <a href="http://www.cmta.net/press_releases.php?release_id=147" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">recent press release</a> as well as shelling out big bucks as one of the <a href="http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=4175&ptid=9" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">main sources funding</a>the "AB 32 Implementation Group" (which contrary to the title, is code for the force working to suspend AB 32).But like we saw with the Varshney Study, just because you paid a scientist to create it doesn't make it true. So before you buy into the "facts", make sure you are aware of the variables that are manipulating the data behind the scenes:<ul><li class="first" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em;">The oil industry: Valero is a leading member of CMTA, <a href="http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_14705239" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">contributing over $500,000</a> to help suspend AB32. Also, <a href="http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Lobbying/Employers/Detail.aspx?id=1237027&session=2009" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">Valero lobbyist</a> Michael Carpenter happens to be one of the <a href="http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Pacific_Research_Institute" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">board members</a> of the Pacific Research Institute, which has funded the study.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.5em;">The author of the study Thomas Tanton: consultant to the oil and gas industry and <a href="http://www.pacificresearch.org/keypeople/thomas-tanton" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">Senior Research Fellow</a> with the Pacific Research institute where a Valero lobbyist sits on his board. He is also a former VP at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-tanton" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">an organization funded by oil and gas interests</a>, which has received over $200,000 of funding from ExxonMobil.</li><li class="last" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em;">CMTA's VP of Government Relations, Dorothy Rothrock: was an <a href="http://www.cmta.net/bio.php?people_id=rothrock_dorothy&popup=1" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">industry energy consultant</a> for years before joining CMTA. From the moment AB 32 was signed into law <a href="http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&aid=4202&ptid=9" target="_hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">Rothrock criticized it</a> - even though unemployment was 4.8% at the time - which makes her support for enacting the initiative when unemployment levels reach that low again very doubtful.</li></ul>Now that this report is in the same trashcan as the Varshney Study, we're sure that another one is on the way. Wouldn't it be better if the oil companies just stood up and said, look, we don't want progress on clean energy because we will lose in billions in dollars in profits? Wouldn't that be more honest? We doubt that will happen but in the meantime, don't be a fool this April.AB 32 is a proven job creator and will continue to drive innovation and success for California. It's bad news for big oil companies, and we don't need to create a fake study to know that.</td></tr></tbody></table>

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edf:

<h1 class="entry-title" style="margin: 10px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 7px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; clear: both; line-height: 39px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Spinning Facts to Suit Industry Interests: New California Manufacturers & Technology Association report is full of hole By <a class="url fn n" href="http://blogs.edf.org/californiadream/author/jfine/" title="View all posts by Jamie Fine" rel="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: transparent;">JAMIE FINE</a> | <a class="url fn n" href="http://www.edf.org/people/james-fine" title="Bio" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: transparent;">BIO</a> | Published: <abbr class="published" title="2012-07-11T05:40:23+0000" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: text; letter-spacing: 0.05em; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: transparent;">JULY 11, 2012</abbr></h1>

By Jamie Fine, PhD and Ruiwen Lee

Jamie Fine is EDF’s Senior Energy economist, and a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Energy Resources Group; Ruiwen Lee is an economics fellow and graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

California’s energy and climate change policies have saved the state over one hundred billion dollars and dramatically reduced levels of environmental pollution <a href="http://docs.nrdc.org/energy/files/ene_10030901a.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">since the early 1970’s</a>. Yet these policies have been in the crosshairs of industry for decades, despite their demonstrated success. It’s not surprising that the latest study sponsored by the state’s main manufacturing lobbying group, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association (“CMTA”), ignores the achievements of these landmark policies while attempting to downplay the benefits of new laws that protect human health and the environment.

EDF’s team of economists looked behind the curtain of CMTA’s most recent tirade against clean air laws and found cherry-picked assumptions, secret modeling calculations, and confusion over basic economic principles. Accordingly, while CMTA’s new report maintains that it modeled the impacts of California energy and climate policies on the state’s economy, the results more closely resemble CMTA members’ manufactured products than actual economic analysis.

Cherry-picked data – CMTA’s report is based on the impact of seven different policies currently underway in California:  The 1) Low Carbon Fuel Standard (“LCFS”), 2) Pavley II car standards, 3) SB 375, 4) the Renewable Portfolio Standard (“RPS”), 5) Combined Heat and Power (“CHP”) standards, 6) new efficiency measures, and 7) the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (“AB32”).

Though these policies have been carefully designed and the economic impacts studied, modeled, re-studied, re-modeled, and peer reviewed, the report’s analysis assumes significantly lower benefits and higher costs than nearly every other peer-reviewed analysis that currently exists.  With these new assumptions, each described in a mere sentence or two, the goal seems to have been to engineer a flimsy model that puts AB32 into a bad light.

Even more subtle assumptions are not immediately obvious at first glance. For example, in the electricity model, the report uses a simplistic “average change in electricity demand”, based on the ten-year historical decline in electricity use per unit of state output, to project future electricity demand.  However, this model does not consider the reduction in electricity demand from the energy efficiency measures that have only recently been implemented, or yet to be imagined by innovators – meaning the modeling output undercounts savings from day one.

In addition, this model is posing extremely pessimistic assumptions about new transportation fuels and the California LCFS.  These same assumptions are at the heart of a recent oil industry report, and fail to take into account policy-inspired innovation that will lead to newer transportation fuels in adequate supply.  As previously discussed here,  <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tqsQJsTPrM&feature=plcp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">here</a> and <a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dpettit/thank_you_your_honor_i_do_have.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">here</a>, these pessimistic assumptions aren’t grounded in the reality of market incentives for innovation, making the CMTA report eerily similar to other oil industry “sky-is-falling” reports – this one just has a different cover.

Finally, like other faulty <a href="http://www.ca-greenbusinessalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/experts-discredit_5_11.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">anti-AB 32 analyses that have been debunked</a>, this newest CMTA piece fails to take into account the full range of benefits that can be achieved by implementation of California’s regulations.  For example, the analysis only calculates the costs to carbon-intensive commodities, ignoring the positive demand impacts on clean products and services.

Secret modeling calculations – The output presented in this new paper is based on an internally designed model that claims to weave together “24 interacting models that measure the combined impacts of AB 32.”  However, nothing more is presented than a few spreadsheets of model output and some graphs.  This amounts to a clear admission that the model simulated the operations of an entire economy and then offered the output as fact, without any discussion of range or uncertainty.  Simply put, CMTA’s new report says, “trust me” even though the findings are vastly different from prior, peer-reviewed scholars.

For example, in the description of their direct cost estimation model for electricity, the report wrongly concludes that, “the cost of electricity is decreased by efficiency measures, which drives up demand.” In fact, it is the other way around – efficiency measures shift the demand curve down (given any electricity price, consumers use less electricity than before efficiency measures are implemented), so the cost of electricity is decreased, even as the quantity of electricity consumed is further reduced.

Model inconsistencies – In another area of the report, where it separately modeled electricity and natural gas price and demand impacts, it appears there is double counting and inconsistent assumptions due to confusion over the linkages between commodities markets. For example, even as the report predicts electricity generation from natural gas will decrease by 40% from 2012 to 2020 (Appendix D-6), overall natural gas demand will increase by 6% over the same period (Appendix E-1).  A simple question underpins the potential error of these inputs: when so much electricity is currently made using natural gas, how can the state reduce its use in the power sector by 40% while using so much more in the aggregate?

In yet another example, the report purportedly uses a simple summation of impacts (Appendix C-2) from modeling outputs to calculate policy “costs”.  However, since at least some of the commodity markets that have been analyzed are substitutes for one another, a simple summation method will almost certainly result in double counting. The report doesn’t make clear which commodity markets were modeled based on direct cost estimations, and which were separately modeled based on aggregated data – a wholly separate problem from the one described above.

The bottom line is, this report is deeply flawed in its analysis and its presumptions. If your summer reading list includes fiction, then by all means take the time to read it. But if you are looking for a well-documented and peer-reviewed examination of California’s anti-pollution laws, this report doesn’t make the grade.

For more information on modeling AB 32 policy and the overall benefits of AB 32 implementation, read <a href="http://www.usclimatepartnership.org/documents/EDFStudyonAB32EconModeling.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">here</a> and <a href="http://www.resource-solutions.org/pub_pdfs/Climate%20Policy%20and%20Economic%20Growth%20in%20California.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in 0s;">here</a>.

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<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 17px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); float: none; display: inline !important;">- See more at: <a href="http://blogs.edf.org/californiadream/2012/07/11/spinning-facts-to-suit-industry-interests-new-california-manufacturers-technology-association-report-is-full-of-holes/#sthash.oKdiEm1O.dpuf">http://blogs.edf.org/californiadream/2012/07/11/spinning-facts-to-suit-industry-interests-new-california-manufacturers-technology-association-report-is-full-of-holes/#sthash.oKdiEm1O.dpuf</a>

<h4 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.25;">Description</h4>

The California Manufacturers & Technology Association (formerly the California Manufacturers Association) works to improve and enhance a strong business climate for California's 30,000 manufacturing, processing and technology based companies. Since 1918, CMTA has worked with state government to develop balanced laws, effective regulations and sound public policies to stimulate economic growth and create new jobs while safeguarding the state's environmental resources. CMTA represents businesses from the entire manufacturing community -- an economic sector that generates more than $250 billion every year and employs more than 1.5 million Californians.

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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/6617" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2012 Positions</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/6058" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2011 Positions</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/5618" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2010 Positions</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/4301" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2008 Positions on Manufacturers Advocacy</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/3863" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2007 Positions on Manufacturers Advocacy</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/3713" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2006 Positions on Manufacturers Advocacy</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/3351" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2005-2006 Positions</a></li>

<li style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://votesmart.org/interest-group/476/rating/3222" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px;">2003-2004 Positions</a></li>

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