California Extends Cap and Trade By Another Name -- Needs It To Pay For The Bullet Train -- September 14, 2025

Locator: 49104BULLETTRAIN.

Link here.

The bill would make cap-and-trade program adjustments, including renaming the program to "cap-and-invest," and would direct CARB to address affordability. For example, it directs CARB to adjust the program's price containment reserve, or price ceiling, if it determines that is necessary to protect consumers from higher prices for energy and other affected goods, and it would set carbon offset usage for compliance to no more than 6pc starting next year through the end of the program.

SB 840, a separate bill in the climate package that the legislature approved on Saturday, updates how California spends the cap-and-trade auction revenue that goes to the state's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). The bill would direct percentages of the revenue into funds for specific purposes, including clean transportation, wildfire prevention, agriculture and clean energy starting with the 2026-27 fiscal year. The funds would replace the continuous appropriations of program revenue that lawmakers had previously established.

The bill also maintain $1bn/yr for the state's long-delayed high-speed rail project, a priority for Newsom in his cap-and-trade extension proposal from May.

Keystoning And Gaslighting -- Staying The Course -- Renewables In A Time Of Critical Energy Shortage -- June 8, 2022

Updates

June 27, 2022: Biden says no matter how bad inflation gets, he won't deviate from "green energy" initiatives. 

June 26, 2022: Biden meets with offshore wind partnership; announces big meeting with oil firms and then doesn't show up. 

June 15, 2022: I'm still getting correspondence from folks confused by Biden's actions. This might be better articulated:

1. The "green" agenda / renewable energy is where the Biden team is focused. They are quite happy with the strides they are making.

2. They are giving "lip service" to trying to solve high gasoline prices. This really is not their concern. They do not care. It does not affect them at all.

3. The "green" agenda folks in the White House know that Biden is a one-term president. Their goal is to keep moving the "green" agenda forward. Biden will be thrown under the bus after 2024.

4. Biden knows this, too, but he also knows his only legacy now, after putting America into an economic spiral, is his renewable energy legacy.

5. I pay no attention to any article with a headline: "What Biden can do to bring gasoline prices down?" I don't read them; I doubt I will link many of them to the blog.

6. I pay close attention to any article with a headline: "What can Biden do to make things worse for the oil companies?"

7. That's about as simple as I can make it.

Original Post

 I posted this some time ago: there are two factions in the Biden administration, as there are in all administrations: the political faction and the ideological faction.

The political faction: tactical in nature; short-term outlook; one goal: re-election.

The ideological faction: strategic in nature; long-term outlook; okay to lose an election as long as they are winning for the long term. These make the president a "change agent" -- which we've also talked about before.

Has anyone considered that with regard to energy, for the ideological faction in the administration, absolutely everything is right on track? 

I cannot name one thing or one initiative the president has made to bring down the price of gasoline. Releasing the SPR? The best it could do was slow the rise in the price of gasoline and it did not even do that. 

On the other hand, one can name initiative after initiative that seem to come right out of the "Green" party in Germany. 

The most recent Biden initiative, the solyndranization of the US: to use the Defense Production Act to incentivize renewable energy in America but nothing to help with the current gasoline crisis.

This would be like FDR on December 7, 1941, to announce a new aerospace mission to land an American on the moon and completely ignore the war in Europe and the war about to erupt in the Pacific.