CEI Today: EPA court ruling, energy grid report, and DOJ’s anti-trust suit against airline merger

Today in the News

EPA COURT RULING – SAM KAZMAN

The Hill: Another twist in EPA email debate

By Zack Colman

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) might be using secret and personal email addresses “in bad faith” to flout public records laws, a federal judge said Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said conservative law firm Landmark Legal Foundation can investigate whether EPA officials used personal accounts for business and if the agency excluded correspondence from top officials from the law firm’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The Landmark decision generated momentum for groups that have fought for more information about the EPA’s records-keeping techniques, Sam Kazman, general counsel with conservative group the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Hill.

“It demonstrates that the courts are coming to realize something that many of us have long suspected — namely that, when it comes to public disclosure, EPA talks a lot about transparency but its real goal is invisibility,” he said in an email.

 

ENERGY STORAGE? – ANTHONY WARD

Globalwarming.org: Energy Grid Report Clouded By Misleading Data

The White House Council of Economic Advisers and Department of Energy have released a report titled, Economic Benefits Of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to Weather Outages. The report calls for increased public and private spending on infrastructure aimed at hardening power lines from wind damage. In addition, the report argues in favor of increased funding towards the expansion of the nation’s energy storage capacity, and recommends the construction of sensors to monitor power fluctuations.

While some of the suggestions mentioned in the report are positive such as the hardening of existing power lines to protect from storm damage, many of the recommendations raise serious concerns. The Obama Administration claims to want to improve grid resiliency, but their anti-energy agenda and support for renewable subsidies show otherwise.