Comments on: Navy 2, Congress 0 in Biofuel Cage Match

By: San Diego Loves Green – Another Day, Another Attack On Navy Biofuel

San Diego Loves Green – Another Day, Another Attack On Navy Biofuel — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:50:17 +0000

[…] biofuel vote won’t been the first time that certain members of Congress have attacked the Navy’s ambitious biofuel programs. The main line of attack is that biofuel is currently more expensive than petroleum, so it’s a […]

By: Biofuels: 'Frankenstein' switchgrass good news for the Navy, too : Renew Economy

Biofuels: 'Frankenstein' switchgrass good news for the Navy, too : Renew Economy — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:19:24 +0000

[…] aggressive pushback from anti-biofuel leadership in Congress, it looks like the US Navy is well on the way to getting its biofuel after all. A new […]

By: SAGE defence: A solar powered army of energy managers : Renew Economy

SAGE defence: A solar powered army of energy managers : Renew Economy — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:37:41 +0000

[…] with the program, too, but considering the cold shoulder Republican leaders in Congress gave to the Navy’s biofuel initiatives, don’t count on […]

By: Cl1ffClav3n

Cl1ffClav3n — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Want to translate your doublespeak into plain English? Do you have a problem with the data in a report prepared by the Department of Energy directly for and at the request of Congress? What authoritative report will you cite for your claims? How about we consider the “externalities” supporting US farmers and biofuels hucksters? Double-dipping in refinery money from DOE, loan guarantees and grants from USDA, crop subsidies from USDA, guaranteed markets and prices from EPA, and fuel sales to DOD? This is an epic scam.

By: Navy Tests Biofuels and Energy Efficiency at RIMPAC

Navy Tests Biofuels and Energy Efficiency at RIMPAC — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:24:35 +0000

[…] Unfortunately, instead of cheering for this latest enhancement to our national security, Republican leaders in Congress have spent the months leading up to RIMPAC in an all-out war against the Navy’s biofuel program. […]

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:54:00 +0000

i love the omission of historical subsidies and indirect subsidies through externalities that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars… much easier to leave all that out.

By: Cliff Claven

Cliff Claven — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:07:00 +0000

The $34.7B comprises both loan guarantees and subsidies as I duly stated above. In contrast to your $400 billion fantasy figure, here are the real subsidy numbers for you from the Congressional Research Service (The Federal Excise Tax on Gasoline and the Highway Trust Fund: A Short History. Congressional Research Service, March 9, 2012.) and a Department of Energy report specifically requested by Congress (Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010. Energy Information Agency, July 2011. http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/.)
-Corporate income taxes collected by federal government in 2009 from oil companies: $36B
-gasoline and diesel excise taxes collected from consumers by fed government in 2010: $32.7 billion (~$6 per barrel of oil refined)
-Federal subsidies and tax breaks paid to oil companies in 2010: $2.8B = 27 cents per barrel of oil (less than 1/2 cent per gallon of gasoline & diesel) provided to U.S. economy.
-Federal subsidies and tax breaks given to green energy in 2010: $14.7B
-Federal subsidies to wind energy in 2010: $31.33 per barrel of oil equivalent energy output.
-Federal subsidies to solar energy in 2010: $59.60 per barrel of oil equivalent energy output.
Bottom line: big oil (and informed America) would love for all subsidies to end and for the playing field to be leveled. Biofuels are a huge drag on our economy and make us waste fossil fuels creating them and accommodating them. Ask your power company what
“spinning reserve” is and why they must waste fossil fuel running coal and gas power plants at idle to be able to supplement fluctuations in wind and solar power on the grid. As Mark Twain once remarked, “I sometimes wonder if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on, or by sincere imbeciles.”

By: Zer0Sum

Zer0Sum — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 23:23:00 +0000

They don’t have enough fuel to keep them running. Get it now?

By: U.S. Air Force Gets Solar Power from SolarCity, Continues Clean Energy Push - CleanTechnica

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:32:38 +0000

[…] law, and DoD has just announced a $420-million public-private partnership to build commercial-scale biorefineries for aviation biofuel and […]

By: Boeing, American Airlines and FAA partner on ecoDemonstrator

Boeing, American Airlines and FAA partner on ecoDemonstrator — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:02:58 +0000

[…] followed by a $420 million, public-private initiative through the Department of Defense to build three biorefineries on a commercial scale.A number of federal agencies are also supporting the newly formed Midwest […]

By: Patrickbec68

Patrickbec68 — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:30:00 +0000

So let me get this right. The US Navy is about to decommission seven Aegis cruisers way before their scheduled end of service dates because of a lack of funds to upgrade them with ballistic missile defense capability ( at a cost of 30 to 50 million per ship) yet can afford to spend over 300 million Dollars for unneeded, uneconomically feasible green fuels. Each of those cruisers would cost 3 billion Dollars to replace, and cost about one billion Dollars when new. The navy will be left with only 14 cruisers in a fleet already crying out for additional surface combatants. The mind simply boggles at this politically correct madness!

By: Cliff Claven

Cliff Claven — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:14:00 +0000

BTW, consider that this $34.7 billion could have paid $50,000 a year unemployment benefits to 694,000 people, or could have subsidized lower gasoline prices, or could have helped low-income people pay for their heating and air-conditioning bills, and would probably would have done more good and less harm to our economy.

By: Cliff Claven

Cliff Claven — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Tina, thanks for bringing up jobs. According to the DOE, $34.7B in taxpayer subsidies and loan guarantees have only produced 60,000 jobs (https://lpo.energy.gov/?page_id=45). That’s $578,000 per job, displaying the usually government efficiency. Digging deeper, it turns out only a handful of these jobs are permanent (less than 4,000 according to the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-green-tech-program-that-backed-solyndra-struggles-to-create-jobs/2011/09/07/gIQA9Zs3SK_story.html).
The actual federal government outlay per permanent green job is between 4 and 10 million dollars! The jobs all go away as soon as the subsidies dry up. Here’s a starter list of major green energy bankruptcies: Verasun, Cello, Range Fuels, Solyndra, Choren, Abound Solar, Pacific Ethanol, Cascade Grain, Renew Energy, Bionol, Clean Burn Fuels, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power, Ener1, Sterling Energy, etc., etc., ad nauseum, with Gevo, Amyris, Solazyme, and more on the way. The hundreds of smaller green enterprise bankruptcies are too numerous to list but can be found easily by Googling “ethanol bankruptcy” or similar search string. The Department of Energy has already spent more than $600 Million on biorefineries since 2010 and now has DOD complicit in funding more while hundreds of failed biorefineries are on the market today for bankruptcy fire sales. We need to stop pouring our children’s future down this bottomless hole. No amount of money can overcome the unflinching laws of thermodynamics which limit biofuels to being negative energy-balance parasites of civilization’s energy supply. They simply cannot deliver the EROI and capacity necessary to power modern civilization. Dead end.

By: Ross

Ross — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 06:27:00 +0000

Sounds like a win-win outcome.