dan simmons bak

see main

NO MERRI

FR RANDY KILLED BEARS EARS

incubator?

He is a graduate of Utah State University and George Mason University School of Law.scalia?

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GGL 6 26

ONLY 2?

The Charles G. Koch Professor is an endowed academic chair established at various universities through grants from the Charles Koch Foundation. These professorships are typically dedicated to the study of free-market economics, political economy, and the principles of a free society. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The position is most prominently held by:

• Dr. Daniel Sutter: Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics at Troy University, where he also serves at the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy.

• Dr. Randy Simmons: Served as the Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy at Utah State University from 2008 through 2013. [1, 2, 3, 4]

If you are interested, I can provide more details on:

• The specific research and focus areas of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy.

• Biographical information and publications regarding Dr. Daniel Sutter. [1, 2]

[### Daniel Sutter - Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics at ...

LinkedIn · Daniel Sutter

580+ followers](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-sutter-13b41a56)

Troy, Alabama, United States · Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics · The Sorrell College of Business at Troy University

Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics at Troy University · Experience: The Sorrell College of Business at Troy University · Education: George Mason ...

People also ask

What degree does Charles Koch have?

What was Charles Koch's ideology?

[### Daniel Sutter - Troy Today

Troy University

https://today.troy.edu › authors › daniel-sutter](https://today.troy.edu/authors/daniel-sutter/)

Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics and the Director of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University.Read more

[### Utah State University's Institute of Political Economy / Strata

Energy and Policy Institute

https://energyandpolicy.org › utah-state-university-instit...](https://energyandpolicy.org/utah-state-university-institute-of-political-economy/)

Randy Simmons. Simmons was the “Charles G. Koch Professor of political economy” at USU from 2008 through 2013, and is the President and Director of Research for ...

[### Daniel Sutter

Mises Institute

https://mises.org › profile › daniel-sutter](https://mises.org/profile/daniel-sutter)

Daniel Sutter is Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics at the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy, Troy University, Troy, Alabama.

[### Daniel Sutter

Mercatus Center

https://www.mercatus.org › students › scholars › daniel-...](https://www.mercatus.org/students/scholars/daniel-sutter)

Daniel Sutter was a Senior Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center. He's the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics at the Manuel H. Johnson Center for ...Read more

[### Koch-Funded Professor Strikes Out on Wind Energy

Advanced Power Alliance

https://poweralliance.org › 2015/04/13 › koch-funded-...](https://poweralliance.org/2015/04/13/koch-funded-professor-strikes-wind-energy/)

... Charles G. Koch Professor” at Utah State University. Newsweek also failed to disclose that Simmons is a major recipient of funding from the fossil fuel ...

[### Daniel Sutter, Author at The James G. ...

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

https://jamesgmartin.center › author › daniel-sutter](https://jamesgmartin.center/author/daniel-sutter/)

Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and is a Ph.D ...Read more

[### Charles Koch Distorts the Facts: Here Are The Ways His Money ...

Republic Report

https://www.republicreport.org › charles-koch-distorts-t...](https://www.republicreport.org/2015/charles-koch-distorts-the-facts-his-money-prevent-clean-energy-businesses-from-succeeding/)

... Charles G. Koch Professor of political economy). The two organizations have produced flawed reports (see here and here) in attempts to justify efforts to ...

[### Daniel Sutter

Econ Journal Watch

https://econjwatch.org › authors › daniel-sutter](https://econjwatch.org/authors/daniel-sutter)

Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University.Read more

[### USU Receives $690000 Donation from Koch Foundation

Utah State University

https://www.usu.edu › today › story › usu-receives-6900...](https://www.usu.edu/today/story/usu-receives-690000-donation-from-koch-foundation)

Koch foundation supporting USU students,” said Randy Simmons, who was named the Charles G. Koch professor of economics. “Our emphasis is on students, and ...

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EPI

Strata Policy

Strata Policy was a 501(c)(3) non-profit research organization for environmental, energy, and public land issues located in Logan, Utah. The organization received money from the Charles Koch Institute.

The organization was connected to the Utah State University’s Institute of Political Economy through Dr. Randy Simmons. Simmons was the “Charles G. Koch Professor of political economy” at Utah State from 2008 through 2013 and was the President and Director of Research for Strata. In addition to serving as the Koch Professor at Utah State, Simmons also runs the “Koch Scholars” Program, which receives an annual grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.

In 2016, the Charles Koch Institute contributed $1,677,500 to Strata. In 2015, the Charles Koch Institute contributed $25,000 while the Charles Koch Foundation contributed $310,000. And in 2014, Strata received a single $1.1 million contribution from the Charles Koch Foundation in addition to receiving $26,600 from the Charles Koch Institute.

Utah State University, which housed Strata research and publications, also had received funding from both Charles and David Koch –at least $1.6 million. This funding made Utah State a top recipient of money from Koch-linked foundations among all colleges.

In 2015, Strata was awarded a contract by the Utah state government to help with “public relations work” around the state’s attempt to seize 31 acres of America’s public lands to the state.

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2 25 ymail exxonknews

Nearly five years ago, the United States Department of Energy, or DOE, began an unusual partnership with the country’s largest lobbying group for the plastics industry.

In a memorandum of understanding with a plastics industry trade association called the American Chemistry Council, or ACC, the Energy Department pledged to “collaborate on the development of innovative plastics recycling technologies and strengthen the domestic plastics supply chain.”

According to a press release, the collaboration would involve research into “novel collection technologies” to keep plastics out of waterways, as well as new types of plastic that are “inherently designed for recycling.” But perhaps the most significant part of the agreement referred to research on so-called “advanced recycling” — a suite of technologies also known as “chemical recycling” that are favored by the ACC and other industry groups, and intensely scrutinized by environmental advocates.

Chemical recycling refers to processes that use high heat, pressure, or solvents to break plastics into their constituent building blocks, so they can — in theory — be turned into new plastic products again and again. This differs from conventional “mechanical” recycling, in which plastics are shredded or melted before being turned into new products. Under fire for the failure of conventional recycling to mitigate the plastic pollution crisis, the petrochemical industry has turned to chemical recycling, heavily promoting it in public communications and to state legislators despite difficulties getting it to work at a large scale. Environmental groups and many scientists say the technology will never work, and that it’s a diversion from calls to reduce the production of plastic, which is made out of oil and gas.

The agreement’s initial five-year term is scheduled to expire early this month, just days into President Trump’s second term.

According to Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the ACC’s plastics division, the agreement never amounted to much. “The onset of COVID-19 postponed discussions, and with the subsequent change in administration, no work was conducted” under the memorandum of understanding, Eisenberg said.

But public records indicate the Department of Energy has collaborated with the plastics industry to fund and promote chemical recycling research and projects in the years since the agreement was signed. Scientists and environmental advocates say that the department’s partnerships with the industry lack transparency and represent a conflict of interest. The ACC, whose members include dozens of petrochemical companies that stand to benefit from the rapidly increasing production of plastics, has continued to lobby the department — which has a responsibility to work on behalf of the public — every year since the memorandum was announced.

The ACC sought “to influence the policy agenda of the DOE and move it toward funding chemical recycling research and policy development as a priority over other issues,” said Lee Bell, a policy adviser for the nonprofit International Pollutants Elimination Network. “It is clearly not an appropriate relationship for an industry lobby group to have with a department charged with the expenditure of millions in public funds.”

The DOE’s chemical recycling initiatives are part of a long series of government attempts to deal with the overwhelming amount of plastic waste the country generates — and fails to recycle. As of 2019, the U.S. produced 44 million metric tons of plastic waste and recycled only 5 percent of it, according to the Energy Department. The rest was sent to landfills or incinerators, or wound up as litter in the environment. In a July 2024 report, the Biden administration said plastic pollution was “one of the most pressing and consequential environmental problems in the U.S. and around the globe.”

The Energy Department’s role in U.S. plastics strategy has mainly been to support research, much of it on recycling and the cleanup of existing plastic waste. In 2019, it launched a "Plastics Innovation Challenge” to “accelerate energy efficient technologies that reduce plastic waste in oceans and landfills.” A month later, the department held a workshop to discuss “Plastics for a Circular Economy” — including a review of the challenges and possibilities of chemical recycling. Workshop attendees included representatives of various members of the ACC, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and Dow — but no environmental organizations or citizen groups.

According to the ACC’s Eisenberg, after the Plastics Innovation Challenge was announced, “American Chemistry Council members spoke with DOE to explore ways to support the initiative from a technology perspective, leading to the development of a memorandum of understanding in February 2020.” The agency’s partnership with the ACC was described in a 2020 press release as an opportunity to “position the U.S. for global leadership in advanced recycling technologies, including plastic-to-energy conversion” — meaning the conversion of plastic waste back into fuel instead of new plastic products.

Daniel Simmons, then the DOE’s assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, praised the industry and its products during the memo’s public signing. “What does energy efficiency and renewable energy have to do with plastics recycling? It’s one: because plastics are awesome,” he said at the time. “Obviously plastics can result in greater energy efficiency, food efficiency, a whole number of wonderful things. … The problem with plastics is not that they are bad, but because they are so good, and how do we make them better for the future?”

Environmental groups were immediately skeptical. Judith Enck, president of the nonprofit Beyond Plastics and a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said she had “never seen this before,” referring to a multi-year agreement between a government agency and what is essentially an “advocacy lobbying group.” More typically, she said, if the government is interested in supporting a particular type of research it can funnel money to state agencies or conduct independent research through its network of national laboratories.

Nearly a year after the agreement was announced, the memo had still not been posted publicly. In 2021, the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, filed a public records request for the memo and other communications between the DOE, ACC, and any other outside parties relating to chemical recycling and the department’s “Plastics Innovation Challenge.” The request was filed under the Freedom of Information Act, which entitles the public to access any federal agency records unless they are specifically exempt from public view.

Daniel Rosenberg, director of federal toxics policy at the NRDC and the author of that request, said the group is still seeking answers about how the Department of Energy’s focus on chemical recycling came about — and the role industry players continue to have in shaping the department’s approach to managing plastic pollution.

“There’s no transparency on how DOE is developing their policies around plastic waste,” said Rosenberg. “They seem very much in line with the industry agenda that’s clearly formalized in the memorandum of understanding.”

It wasn’t until six months later that the DOE sent the NRDC the official memo — but not any related documents answering the group’s other questions. Last year, the NRDC sued the Energy Department for failing to respond to its requests and repeated outreach. “They’ve done a pretty good job over the last five years of keeping public scrutiny at bay,” said Rosenberg, who has since filed a second freedom of information request with the agency. “What DOE does on plastic, how they spend their research money, the solutions they’re promoting, all of which is consequential — we’re just trying to get to the bottom of how it all came about and how it’s continued to develop.”

The lawsuit is ongoing, but the DOE has agreed to process hundreds of documents per month regarding the original records request and deliver relevant documents to the NRDC. Though a January status report to the court shows the department has delivered more than 200 pages of documents to the NRDC since the lawsuit began, Rosenberg said he’s so far received a “small fraction” of the communications he’s sought. A public records request filed on behalf of ExxonKnews and Grist in October has not yet yielded any documents.

Even if the formal agreement between the DOE and the ACC never got off the ground, as the lobbying group claims, the Energy Department’s backing of chemical recycling research suggests that the agency has embraced the industry’s characterization of the plastic waste problem as an issue that can be solved through innovation. By January 2026, the department is set to have spent $10 million funding the “Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics,” a center for chemical recycling research and academic collaboration that includes 20 industrial partners, including ACC member companies and another plastic industry trade group that sits on the center’s “industrial advisory board.” The DOE’s latest “Strategies for Plastic Innovation” report calls for more research into chemical recycling, deeming the technologies “crucial to begin addressing the global plastic crisis.”

Last year, as part of an initiative by the Biden administration to “decarbonize energy-intensive industries,” the DOE awarded a grant of up to $375 million to a controversial chemical recycling project from the Eastman Chemical Company, an ACC member. Eastman has since asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to permit the release of an additional 114 tons of annual air pollution at its facility in Longview, Texas, where the new project is being built.

“These are extraordinary amounts that are going to high-priority serial violators of the Clean Air Act,” said Cynthia Palmer, senior analyst for petrochemicals at the nonprofit Moms Clean Air Force. At its Kingsport, Tennessee, petrochemical refinery, where Eastman’s other chemical recycling facility is housed, the EPA documented high-priority violations of the Clean Air Act every quarter of the past three years.

Working with the Energy Department was just one prong in the ACC’s campaign to legitimize chemical recycling. In the U.S., the group has also spent years lobbying state legislatures to reclassify chemical recycling as a manufacturing process, rather than waste disposal. Two dozen states have passed such reclassification bills, as of last year.

The ACC has also promoted the inclusion of chemical recycling in the United Nations’ global plastics treaty, which was scheduled to be completed last December but has been stalled by disagreements over its scope. Provisions for chemical recycling haven’t yet been incorporated into the agreement’s draft text, but experts say the compact between the ACC and the Energy Department was part of the industry’s attempt to change that by creating research to demonstrate that chemical recycling is environmentally sound.

Scientists have criticized some of the specific research conducted by the Energy Department’s national laboratories with ACC funding, like a life cycle analysis from the Argonne National Laboratory showing reduced carbon emissions from chemical recycling, compared to other waste management options. The ACC has cited this study in public communications arguing against plastic reduction.

In a 16-page rebuttal to the study shared with ExxonKnews and Grist, Bell, with IPEN, called out the study's use of "nonreproducible data based on 'discussions' with industry.”

Neil Tangri, research and policy director for the nonprofit Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, said the study built in “wildly unrealistic assumptions” about the possibility of substituting pyrolysis oil — a main output from the most popular chemical recycling method — for the current fossil fuel feedstock, naphtha. He also criticized the study for using confidential data that is “not transparent" and “not replicable”: “That is completely inimical to the way science works,” he said.

Palmer, of Moms Clean Air Force, added that such life-cycle analyses don’t take into account significant environmental and public health concerns caused by plastic production or chemical recycling, making them “highly misleading.”

[pix]

“National laboratories should not be aiding and abetting the deceptive practices of the petrochemical industry,” Tangri said.

In recent months, the ACC and several of its member companies were sued by state and local governments and individuals, arguing that the industry deliberately misled the public about the viability of mechanical and chemical recycling despite knowing it would never be able to manage the waste generated by growing plastic production.

Jeffrey Seay, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Kentucky, said the prospects for some sort of chemical recycling breakthrough — the kind industry groups imply is just around the corner — are slim. “I’d love to tell you I’ve seen that research, but I haven’t,” he said. “I think it’s something worthwhile to be looking at, but I’m just not of the opinion that there’s a technology on the horizon that’s going to allow us to consume plastic the way we have always consumed plastic.”

Seay added that, contrary to industry claims, he’s “not aware of a technology where you can just dump a bunch of mixed plastic in there and get clean polymers out on the other side. There’s a lot of research going on in this area … but to commercialize that, you’d be decades away.”

A 2023 peer-reviewed study conducted by DOE also acknowledged that three chemical recycling technologies — glycolysis, hydrolysis, and methanolysis — are “an order of magnitude” more polluting and energy-intensive than conventional recycling.

The Biden administration Energy Department declined to comment on the status of its memorandum of understanding with the ACC, citing “the upcoming administration transition.” The agency did not respond to additional requests for comment after Trump’s inauguration.

As a newer, bolder Trump administration returns to office with fracking executive Chris Wright set to helm the DOE, Enck and other advocates are skeptical — but still hoping — that the Trump DOE will stop propping up the plastic industry altogether.

“If the DOE was really interested in energy savings, they should be putting resources into waste reduction, refill, and reuse,” said Enck, of Beyond Plastics.

Rosenberg, of the NRDC, expressed concerns that the Trump administration could continue working with the industry behind the scenes. Either way, he said, the DOE owes Americans clarity about the nature of its work on chemical recycling.

“Whether it’s the Trump administration or the Biden administration, I don’t really care — the public should have transparency on what this department is doing on this issue, which has such serious implications for pollution and health and environment,” he said. “We’ll just keep pursuing it.”

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-trumps-koch-funded-appointees-stall-clean-energy

huffpo no lnx

pOLITICS

DONALD TRUMP

SUSTAINABILITY

Can Trump’s Koch-Funded Appointees Stall Clean Energy Momentum?

By

Elliott Negin, Contributor

Senior Writer, Union of Concerned Scientists

May. 19, 2017, 09:02 AM EDT | Updated May. 19, 2017

This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry and other Koch-funded appointees in his agency plan to put the squeeze on renewable energy.

When The Washington Post reported earlier this month that President Trump appointed Daniel Simmons to run the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the paper called him a “conservative scholar.”

Conservative scholar? “Fossil fuel industry propagandist” would have been more accurate.

A veteran of Charles and David Koch’s climate science denier network, Simmons has spent much of his career disparaging clean energy.His most recent job was at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), where he served as the think tank’s vice president for policy. Prior to joining IER, he was the Natural Resources Task Force director for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporation-funded lobby group that, like IER, has been trying to repeal state standards that require electric utilities to use more renewable energy. 

And before that, he was a research fellow at the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University.All three organizations have received substantial funding from the Koch brothers, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, who have spent more than $100 million over the last two decades on dozens of think tanks and advocacy groups to spread climate disinformation.

IER and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), are particularly indebted to the Kochs for both funding and staffing. Between 2010 and 2014, they received more than $5 million from Koch-controlled funds. And, like Simmons, top IER-AEA officials are well-entrenched members of the Koch network. IER founder andCEO Robert L. Bradley, Jr., for example, is an adjunct scholar at the Koch-founded and -funded Cato Institute and the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute. He also has been a featured speaker at the Koch-funded Heartland Institute’s annual climate science-bashing conference. IER-AEA President Thomas Pyle, meanwhile, is a former lobbyist for Koch Industriesand the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Pyle oversaw the Trump Energy Department transition team, which included Simmons and Travis Fisher, an IER economist who also is now on the DOE staff.

Given Simmons’ résumé, it’s no surprise that he belittles efforts to address global warming, disingenuously asserting that the “economic damages” of curbing carbon emissions “would be greater than the damage caused by a warming world.” Never mind that if we continue to burn carbon at the same rate, U.S. property losses by 2050 from sea level rise alone would be astronomical, ranging from $66 billion to $106 billion.

Predictably, Simmons also is a staunch opponent of federal support for wind and solar power. He argues that the “government should get out of the business of betting taxpayer dollars on energy projects,” conveniently ignoring the fact that fossil fuels themselves are heavily subsidized.

According to a new analysis by Management Information Services for the Nuclear Energy Institute,fossil fuels have received $666 billion (in 2015 dollars) in federal incentives since 1950, four times what renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, biofuels and biomass, have received. More than 80 percent of that fossil fuel support went to the oil and gas industry, which, according to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, has been receiving an average of $4.86 billion (in 2010 dollars) in federal subsidies every year since 1918.

Perry’s Anti-Renewables Study

Simmons will serve as acting assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy until the Senate confirms someone for the post. He will then settle in as the office’s principal deputy assistant secretary. While it’s too early to find his fingerprints on anything, his former IER colleague, Travis Fisher, has already raised some concerns. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who also has received generous contributions from the Kochs over the years, tapped Fisher to conduct a study to assess if federal support for renewable energy threatens baseload power generators — nuclear and coal plants — and undermines electricity grid reliability.

Seven members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee have questioned the rationale for the study. In a letter to Perry, they complained that the “study, as you have framed it, appears to be intended to blame wind and solar power for the financial difficulties facing coal and nuclear electric generators” and criticized the fact that Fisher, who is clearly biased against renewables, was tasked with leading the study. Historically low natural gas prices are largely responsible for recent nuclear and coal plant closures, the senators pointed out, and several recent studies have found that wind and solar power facilities strengthen grid reliability.

The irony here, of course, is Texas — where Perry served as governor from 2000 until 2015 — is the nation’s leading state for wind energy. Lone Star wind turbines generate enough electricity to power 7 million average U.S. households and provide more than 24,000 jobs. On top of that, 10,000 Texans work in the solar industry and another 70,000 work in the energy efficiency field. By comparison, the coal industry employs only 50,000 workers nationwide.

Regardless, Perry likely plans to use Fisher’s grid reliability study as a pretext for rolling back incentives for wind and solar and boosting coal, one of President Trump’s campaign promises. Likewise, the study could give the Trump administration ammunition to attack state standards requiring utilities to increase their use of renewables.

Clean Energy Progress at the State Level

States are where the action is — and likely will continue to be — given the Trump administration’s aversion to renewable energy and years of gridlock on Capitol Hill.

“There’s a lot of clean energy momentum across the country, including in states where you might not expect it,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and lead author of a recent report rating state-by-state progress. “The federal government has been playing an important role in encouraging renewable energy, efficiency and vehicle electrification—at least until recently—but we found that the states that have shown leadership are already reaping economic and environmental benefits, including new jobs, cleaner air and lower public health risks.”

Indeed, the growth of clean energy across the country has been nothing short of stupendous. Wind power generation, for example, increased more than tenfold over the past decade, according to the UCS report, while its cost dropped by two-thirds over the last six years. Wind farms in 41 states now provide enough electricity to power more than 20 million average U.S. households. Solar power capacity, meanwhile, has jumped more than 900 percent since 2011, while the cost of residential solar electric power fell by more than 50 percent since 2009 and large-scale solar costs declined even more.

The public is, by and large, on board. A new Pew Research Center poll found that 83 percent of Americans say expanding the use of renewable energy is a “top” or “important” national priority. Further, 54 percent of the survey respondents agree that “government regulations are necessary to encourage businesses and consumers to rely more on renewable energy sources.”

Renewable energy’s remarkable track record has encouraged a number of states to up the ante. Just a few years ago, ambitious states set a goal of generating 25 percent to 30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy. Today, six of the 29 states with renewable energy standards are aiming to generate 50 percent or more of their electricity from wind, solar and other clean sources.

That’s the good news. The bad news is Koch surrogates have been targeting these state standards for years, and now two former IER staff members — not to mention their new boss — are in a position to do something about them. Certainly it would be the height of hypocrisy for an administration that extols states’ rights to try to scuttle state renewable energy standards, but for the Trump administration, hypocrisy is the norm. With so much clean energy momentum in blue and red states alike, the open question is just how much damage Trump’s DOE appointees will be able to do.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Fri, 2010-05-28

Brad Johnson over at The WONK ROOM reports:

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative lies that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tour [pictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.

In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House GOP staff.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for the corrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was aResearch Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org.  AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer, is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. [Twitter,2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

Update At Free Advice, Institute for Energy Research economist Bob Murphy writes that Paul Krugman doesn't understand tea party protesters because he doesn't care about checks on government power like they do, and continues:

So, by symmetry, I think people on "our side" should realize that the great masses of Americans who are for health care reform and climate legislation (and it pains me to not put scare quotes around those phrases) aren't actually closet socialists who want to bring America to its knees.

By Brad Johnson at The WONK ROOM.

==

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i dub thee Spats Syndrome

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/26/1845331/-Trump-to-roll-back-Obama-era-lightbulb-standards-will-pollute-more-and-cost-consumers-12-billion

When President Barack Obama took office he announced that, instead of re-inventing the wheel, he would continue to improve upon the national minimum energy efficiency requirements for light bulbs that began under President George W. Bush. The plan is to move away from the over century old technology of incandescent light bulbs into more energy efficient, safer, and cheaper technologies available to us now. Throughout the Obama presidency, new light bulbs were added to the list of bulbs needing higher efficiency standards. Obama’s legacy on this has been pretty successful as more and more Americans have moved towards LED technology(light-emitting diode) for their lighting needs. Seems too good to be true?

The Trump administration’s Department of Energy announced that they plan on rolling back some of the bulbs Obama placed regulations on towards the end of his term. Under Obama, vibration service lamps, rough service lamps, 3-way incandescent lamps, shatter-resistant incandescent, and higher lumen (2,601-3,300 lm) incandescent lamps, would need to reach higher efficiency standard starting Jan. 1, 2020. The NRDC says that the bulbs in question work in over 2.7 billion sockets. The potential costs to consumers in leaving the highly inefficient technology unregulated will be up to $12 billion over the next five years.

Of course, using more energy because of inefficient incandescent and halogen technology is exactly the kind of thing that drives the fossil fuel industry. Critics explain that the more energy needed for light, the more pollution pumped into our atmosphere. But the reality is that LED lighting, which uses 90 percent of its energy to create light (versus incandescent which spends most of its energy creating heat), is the future. It’s a future that even a dummy like George W. Bush knew whether he wanted to admit it or not.

A big part of Obama’s legacy in this department has to do with promoting regulations that allowed new companies promoting cleaner and more efficient light technology a chance to grow into the marketplace. In that he was very successful. The switch over from incandescent to alternative forms has begun to speed up over the past few years as LED technology, found more popularity with consumers because of evolving light quality and cost-savings. LED lights can last up to 12 times longer and save people four times as much on energy costs when compared to their incandescent counterparts. Even more importantly for consumers and the earth is that LED’s individual price points have been dropping consistently over the past couple of years and can now come close to matching incandescent light bulb costs.

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ref regs

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/02/f59/withdrawal-of-gsl-definition-nopr.pdf

... FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ms. Celia Sher, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of the General Counsel, GC-33, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, D.C., 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 287-6122. Email: celia.sher@hq.doe.gov.

...With the removal of the Appropriations Rider in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, DOE is no longer restricted from undertaking analysis and decision making required by the first question presented by Congress, i.e., whether to amend energy conservation standards for general service lamps, including GSILs. Thus, on August 15, 2017, DOE published a notice of data availability and request for information (NODA) seeking data for GSILs and other incandescent lamps. 82 FR 38613. The purpose of this NODA was to assist DOE in making a decision on the first question posed to DOE by Congress; i.e., a determination regarding whether standards for GSILs should be amended. Comments submitted in response to the NODA also led DOE to re-consider the decisions it had already made with respect to the second question presented to DOE; i.e., whether the exemptions for certain incandescent lamps should be maintained or discontinued. As a result of the comments received in response to the NODA, DOE re-assessed the legal interpretations underlying certain decisions made in the January 2017

...

The anti-backsliding provision at 42 U.S.C. 6295(o) precludes DOE from amending an existing energy conservation standard to permit greater energy use or a lesser amount of energy efficiency. This proposed rule cannot possibly constitute the amendment of an existing energy conservation standard to permit greater energy use or a lesser amount of energy efficiency, given that: (1) the proposal is considering withdrawing two final rules that DOE stated explicitly were not energy conservation standards; (2) DOE was previously prohibited by the Appropriations Rider from making a determination regarding the need for amending standards applicable to GSILs; and (3) DOE never finalized its March 2016 proposed rule concerning establishing energy conservation standards for GSLs. Moreover, DOE has not yet made a final determination on whether standards applicable to GSILs should be amended, and, therefore, no backstop energy conservation standard has yet been imposed.4

...

dan'l r simmons

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Daniel Simmons DEPARTED JAN. 15, 2018

Energy (joined: Jan. 20, 2017)

Assistant to the Secretary, Office of the Secretary | Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy | $160,000 | Financial Disclosure »

TASK FORCE MEMBER

Daniel Simmons was vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, a conservative think tank that has opposed efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions and that has received funding from the American Petroleum Institute and the Charles Koch Institute. Prior to that, he was a task force director for the American Legislative Exchange Council, an industry-funded model bill organization, and a research fellow at the Koch-funded conservative think tank Mercatus Center. — ProPublica

Bio, via Department of Education:

Daniel served as the Institute for Energy Research's Vice President for Policy, overseeing its energy and environmental policy work at the state and federal level. He previously served as director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, was a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, and worked as professional staff on the Committee on Resources of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a graduate of Utah State University and George Mason University School of Law.

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• Institute for Energy Research Vice President for Policy

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• Institute for Energy Research VP for Policy - Policy Work

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