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Stop the Natural Gas Streaker!

By: Russ Vought (Diary)  |  May 11th, 2011 at 11:03 AM  | 

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There are a lot of bad policy ideas dreamed up on a daily basis on Capitol Hill, and many get turned into bills by Congressmen. Thankfully, most of these bills go nowhere. But occasionally, a policy streaker comes out of left field and makes a heady gambit for prime-time exposure and a floor vote in either the House or the Senate.

A bill often becomes “a streaker” when the number of its co-sponsors start ramping up rapidly, either because of a political interest back home in various districts, a well-heeled coalition of lobbyists, or the simple fact that members and their staff are not paying sufficient attention to a bill’s merits.

Rep. John Sullivan’s H.R. 1380, the New Alternative Transportation to Give America Solutions Act is a streaker, and it needs to be stopped. It has 179 cosponsors, nearly half of which are Republican. And when a bill begins to get this much bipartisan support, it makes it difficult for House Leadership to keep the bill off the floor.

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has called it the T. Boone Pickens earmark bill. It creates and expands a host of tax credits to subsidize the use of vehicles that run on natural gas, whether it’s the fuel, the purchase of a natural gas vehicle, the production of a natural gas vehicle, the infrastructure needed to fuel a natural gas vehicle, and so on. Of course, such tax incentives distort the market, complicate the tax code, insert the political class into the decision making process over whether natural gas is better than other forms of energy, and create a new class of beneficiaries reliant on the federal government to stay afloat. The bill also includes more than just tax subsidies. Section 401 of the bill directs the Department of Energy “to improve the performance and efficiency and integration of natural gas powered motor vehicles and heavy-duty on-road vehicles” through its current grant programs.

H.R. 1380 is nothing more than good old-fashioned corporate welfare. Members should oppose its passage. Members who have co-sponsored it already should remove their support (great job, Rep. Steve Pearce, for doing just that yesterday!). And overall, conservatives in Congress should be very clear that when they support an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, they mean to allow all-of-the-above energy to be tapped—not subsidized.

Crossposted at Heritage Action for America

COMMENTS

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  • http://redmeatconservative.blogspot.com/ Daniel Horowitz

    Many of the supporters are co-sponsoring the bill under the erroneous premise of supporting an effective energy resource; natural gas. They need to understand that we support opening our lands to natural gas drilling, but not subsidization. We certainly cannot support subsidizing specific products of natural gas.

    It is also important to preclude any comparison to the oil tax credits that the dems are targeting. Those are real tax credits that are enjoyed by all manufactures, i.e. deductions for depreciation. This bill, on the other hand, is nothing more than the market distorting, social engineering interventions that are so endemic in the green energy sector. We cannot extend the corporate cronyism of the ineffective green energy sector even to the more effective fossil fuels.

    • Russ Vought

      Great clarification

  • http://www.centerrightcitizen.com Danny Huddleston

    Pickens is up to his old tricks, back in ’08 he was pushing windmills, he wanted the government to pay for the transmission lines. Here is a quote (since removed) from his old website www.pickensplan.com.

    “Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.

    To get this done, I need your help. Check out the plan. If you think it’s worth fighting for, please join our effort.”

    Today, at that website there is a video where he’s talking about his current plan. In the video Pickens says that $4.00 of natural gas can replace $30.00 worth of diesel. So, why do we need the government involved at all? It seems such a no-brainer that all the trucking outfits in America would be switching right now. Well, I’m not an expert on this but I don’t believe a natural gas powered engine can pull near the load a diesel can and I doubt that we will ever see any natural gas powered vehicle pulling a heavy trailer.

    But it sure is a great soundbite to tell everyone your plan will eliminate all that imported oil.

    • Darin_H

      Well, I

      • http://www.centerrightcitizen.com Danny Huddleston

        You’re right Darin, I should have done a little research before I posted that comment. Cummins makes a truck engine that makes 1000 ft lb of torque. So these engines can do the job but we still have the cost of replacing our entire truck fleet and building a infrastructure to fuel these vehicles. I don’t think Picken’s $5 billion plan is the way to go. We should let the market sort things out.

        • Darin_H

          I’m no expert either. Apparently you can convert your regular internal combustion engine over to NG, I didn’t know that either.

          I don’t know if I’m against this proposal though. Yeah, I’m no fan of government intervention – instead of this, I’d rather open up a lot of areas to oil drilling. But it seems to me a good compromise with the left – cleaner burning vehicles (less pollution for all of us, less global warming BS for them), less reliance on food sources for fuel, and a whole lot of it right here in the US (until the watermelons block all NG drilling). Barring government getting out of the way, which would be preferable, this seems to be at least a logic step in moving toward US energy independence.

          I’m really conflicted on it.

          • juumanistra

            Natural gas has series defects as a transportation fuel, all of which stem from its energy density. Because its principal component, methane, is a gaseous at room temperature and pressure, natural gas possesses far, far less energy content per gallon than gasoline or diesel. This problem is traditionally remedied by compressing the natgas, which improves the energy density, but requires something more sturdy than a plastic gas tank to contain the stuff. And even then, your energy densities will not be ever comparable to traditional fuels that’re liquid at standard temperature and pressure, so you need a fuel tank that is not only heavily reinforced, but one that is rather bulky as well. The loss of trunk and other usable interior space has probably been the biggest complaint thus far from the few CNG vehicles that’ve made it to the road thus far: True, not a major issue for large vehicles, but certainly a major impediment to market penetration beyond commercial trucking and public transit. (LNG is right out, due the engineering demands required and the fact that cryogenic fuels are rather dangerous in settings with real shock hazards.)

            Attempting to shift demand to alternative sources within the transport sector invariably will produce a cure which is worse than the disease. If you thought corn ethanol was bad, just wait until our gas tanks start competing with industrial users and utilities for natural gas. Natgus is one of the primary feedstocks in more or less the entire synthetic material we take for granted in our daily lives. It also, conveniently enough, provides the fuel for a fifth our electricity production. If natgas becomes a major transport sector fuel source, you get the joys of ethanol-induced food inflation across every sector of the economy that’s reliant upon natgas. (Which, wouldn’t you know, are a great many more than those reliant upon corn.) Even exposing ourselves to the risk strikes me as a rather bad idea.

            I think this is where I also point out that energy independence is a horrendous policy lodestar, given that it encourages profoundly bad choices and then provides a WAFFy shield for them to use to justify continuing horrible policy. While I’m averse to government “choosing winners” in energy policy, it’s impossible for the government not to do without a fundamental rethinking of the how the state handles utilities, pollution, and a raft of other things. So if we’re going to muck about, we might as well make sure what we get for our mucking about is worth it: H.R. 1380 doesn’t seem to even be cognizant of the risks of a gas demand spiral, let alone contemplating how to head it off. So…yeah, this one ought to go down in flames.

  • YnotNOW

    Because every subsidy distorts the free market, and creates inefficiencies.
    The better solution is to remove regulatory and environmental roadblocks (beyond a minimum of rational safety rules), and free the market to do what it does best – direct capital to those areas where the CONSUMER determines value and is willing to pay.

    • YnotNOW

      from a loyal Heritage Action member!

    • YnotNOW

      from a loyal Heritage Action member!

      • Russ Vought

        Appreciate it

  • Flagstaff

    I suggested that he oppose this bill because it’s a subsidy–it will be taking money out of our pockets to give to an industry to enable it to have an advantage over its competition; we need to get rid of all subsidies; and while we are trying to cut the budget, the last thing we need is to spend more on a new subsidy.

  • williamjameson

    due to fear from auto accidents and from people saying they want more cargo space.

    I took drafting in high school and the auto shop teacher across the hall converted his chevy truck to nat gas. He had to put an aluminum tank in the bed, it was about the size of a beer keg. the truck worked great and when low on fuel he could switch to unleaded. The range was 210 miles, so a bigger tank is required to satisfy most American drivers these days.

    Most people will never move away from their fears which is one reason why Nitrogen isn’t taking off. I see the money being wasted much like the ethanol subsidies to construct ethanol pumps at gas stations. Corn was a bad idea twice, dems will never learn nor admit mistakes. This time the gop is riding the wave, oh well, I suppose its more of an industry play than a desire to switch fuels.

    Better to use nat gas for electricity generation and heating, after all we’re the Saudi Arabia of nat gas.

    • gunslingr45

      a question. If you have to “convert” over to NG then how can you switch over to unleaded? I only ask because there is mechanical work to do the switching over to NG right?

      • williamjameson

        to flip a switch and burn unleaded after the propane runs out. Sorry I mistakenly said NG it was a CNG aka propane kit. From what I remember the manifold was changed and different spark plugs were used. I don’t remember the name of the company that sold the kits but I’ll look around and post a dairy if I see one.

        During the 80

    • Flagstaff

      hydrogen, not nitrogen.

      • williamjameson

        had this on my hard drive. A lot of energy is required to produce LN2 and its a bomb on wheels once you fill up. Both hydrogen and LN2 require storage space so like nat gas we’ll need longer or wider cars which creates many more problems as you could guess.

        http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/blog2/index.php/competition/liquid-nitrogen-car-threatens-hydrogen-car/

        • Flagstaff

          Still, I don’t think “fear” is holding back nitrogen-based fuel. For one thing, I’d never heard of it (hardly disqualifying that, but I may be typical) and if it’s unknown, it’s un-feared. Which is why I thought you meant hydrogen. Plenty of people are afraid of the explosive power of hydrogen.

          Nitrogen will have many hurdles to overcome, most of which are mentioned in your link.

          The key for me is in the final paragraph there:

          “The more alternative fuel options we have going forward the more likely it will be that one day soon, fossil fuels will be thing of the past and we will have moved on to more environmentally-friendly vehicles.”

          First, I don’t think it’s remotely possible it will be “one day soon.” Still,

          “THE MORE… OPTIONS… THE MORE LIKELY… WE WILL HAVE… MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY VEHICLES.”

          As long as we’re subsidizing one or two or three favored technologies, if the best one is actually the FOURTH one, it will have a tremendous hill to climb before development, and we’ll waste billions of dollars on inferior choices. This is a real-life example of the adage, “the more the better.”

          In general, the answer is to continue to use petroleum as long as it is available–as it’s depleted, it’ll become more expensive and that will automatically encourage the research and development of alternative fuels. We’ve already reached the early stages of that process simply from market forces driving up the price of gas at the pump. Higher true value for source oil automatically makes it more economically feasible to develop new ways to extract it from the Earth, even though those would have been too expensive to make sense at lower values.

          Power generation doesn’t require subsidization–it is self-subsidizing based on demand.

  • Stan(ley) Pruss

    These trucks already exist. Some companies are already changing over their fleets, but the subsidy has been talked about for so long companies are holding off on buying the new trucks since they would feel foolish if it passes a few months after they upgrade their fleet. Many of the early adaptors are delivery trucks that come back to the freight yard every night and fill up there. This would displace a significant amount of diesel and reduce imported oil by a noticeable amount. On the margin, it is a doable good thing. Remember, politics is the art of the possible. I would rather eliminate all subsidies, especially for ethanol, but this could be done now with a sunset clause to produce enough sales to build assembly lines to bring down the differential cost.

  • http://www.markmatter.com maddog4hire

    …AS MUCH AS I THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA and would make the public aware that we have an energy source, that is in greater abundance here in the U.S that exceeds all the oil in ARABIA. This would get the conversion started, energy independence would be achieved in a “green energy” acceptable way. BUT unless energy independence needs to be achieved now for the security of our nation, I CAN NOT ABANDON THE PRINCIPLE THAT IT IS WRONG TO PICK WINNERS in www.markmatter.com matters of commerce, and work against the interests of pre-existing industries. It would be used to beat us up every time THEY wanted to PICK THE WINNER somewhere else.
    Is there a pressing NATIONAL SECURITY reason we must accelerate reaching energy independence? I’d love to have one about now.