Energy (Who Can Make Sense of it All?)

This headline about sums up the effects of tax reform on energy policy: weakened incentives for solar and wind development and 1.5mm acres of the Arctic will be opened to new oil and gas development. Because there's, like, a ton of demand. But, even Bob Murray of Murray Energy Corporation isn't happy, alleging that tax reform will lead to more coal bankruptcies. Wait, we thought there was a coal bailout afoot? So confusing. Elsewhere, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management is delaying an Obama administration regulation that restricts harmful methane emissions from oil and gas production on federal lands. This should inure to the benefit of frackers who haven't exactly had an easy time the last few years. The debate over solar tariffs is getting faster and furious-er: NextEra Energy Inc.'s SVP, as just one example, thinks tariffs will decimate new utility-scale solar projects. Yet, curiously, congressional Republicans in Texans are conspicuously absent from the list of opponents to the tariffs, despite Texas being the 7th largest adopter of solar capacity in the US. Wait. They're voting against their constituent's interests? We could swear we've heard that recently in another context too.