The Heartland Institute

Kansans suffer from the highest electricity costs in the U.S. Energy Information Administration's West North Central Region. Renewable power mandates in the Kansas Renewable Standards Act are raising electricity prices and inflicting severe punishment on the Kansas economy and residents throughout the state. Action to repeal or ...

The world’s 14th-largest deposit of known recoverable uranium is in southern Virginia at Coles Hill in Pittsylvania County. It is valued at $7 billion, is economically recoverable, and sits entirely on private property. In 1982 the Virginia General Assembly placed a moratorium on uranium mining until a thorough study could be ...

According to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, topping the list of environmental issues for the 2013 state legislative session is silica or “frac” sand mining. Frac sand has high compressive strength ideal for industrial use, including hydraulic fracturing. Newly usable reserves of natural gas, enough to last the nation for generations ...

It’s a tale of two numbers: $2.9 billion and $9.6 billion. The first number, $2.9 billion, represents the reduction in education funding in the state budget for fiscal 2012-2013. The second number, $9.6 billion, represents the projected value of the annual oil and gas production in the State of Ohio by 2014 as a result of ...

Kansas Renewable Energy Mandate January 9, 2013 Problem In May 2009, House Bill 2369 established a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for the state of Kansas, requiring the state's utilities to generate or purchase a percentage of their electricity from a list of eligible resources including wind, solar, small-scale hydropower, and ...

UPDATE: On March 13, 2013, The Heartland Institute was among 16 conservative think tanks and advocacy groups that signed a letter urging a sense of the Congress resolution opposing a carbon tax. You can read that letter here . On December 12, 2012, 14 conservative think tanks and advocacy groups joined forces to urge Congress ...

A new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), titled Too Late for Two Degrees? Low Carbon Economy Index 2012, claims nations must dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the carbon intensity of their economies to cap global warming at an acceptable level of 2 degrees Celsius above “pre-industrial levels.” The report ...

The official prospectus of The Heartland Institute, 2012. Read to learn more about the organization. ...

As Gov. Andrew Cuomo prepares to decide whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in New York State, extreme environmental activist groups are pressuring him to ban the technique, which they say threatens the public health. Cuomo faces similar but opposite pressure from the state’s unemployed workers, as hydraulic fracturing has already ...

Carbon taxes have regained traction with several prominent Republican lawmakers and political leaders publicly voicing support for a “revenue-neutral” carbon tax in exchange for tax cuts on capital or investments. Most notably, a new political interest campaign led by former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC), the Energy & Enterprise ...

The North Carolina House is considering a bill that would reassess how state agencies extrapolate data on future rates of sea-level rise affecting coastal communities. The bill would give a state agency, the Coastal Resources Commission, the authority to define rates of sea-level rise for regulatory purposes. The commission, along ...

The Heartland Institute submits the following comments in response to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) Proposed Rule titled Standards of Performance for Greenhouse Gas Emissions for New Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units (henceforth, the “Utility MACT”). For the reasons discussed below, it ...

Mining is the process of extracting raw minerals from the earth to be converted into valuable materials used by society. We rely heavily on mining to support our standard of living, because every modern product uses basic minerals obtained through mining. For example, a car consists of 15 separate minerals, and a telephone ...

Despite there being no known natural gas resources in Vermont, Gov. Peter Shumlin recently signed into law the nation’s first state ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Vermont’s ban is little more than symbolic, but Shumlin publicly encouraged other states to impose bans, saying the increased natural gas production is not ...

Following the San Francisco city council’s decision in 2007 to ban the use of plastic bags at grocery stores and chain pharmacies, a number of local governments have implemented similar policies within their jurisdiction. Such polices also have gained traction at the state level, with bills under consideration in several states ...

Sometime in the next few days, Florida Gov. Rick Scott will have to decide whether to sign or veto HB 7117 , a multipronged renewable energy and conservation bill that provides tax credits for renewable energy technology investment and renewable fuel infrastructure. If signed and implemented, the bill would cost taxpayers $16 ...

Catastrophe bonds are insurance-linked securities that offset major costs to taxpayers and insurers caused by natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Cat bonds, as they are known, work differently from other types of bonds. Investors lose their entire principal in the event of a catastrophe that meets the terms ...

On December 12, 2009, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), a subdivision of the California Environmental Protection Agency, published its final rule to reduce diesel exhaust emissions in the state, the “Goods Movement Emission Reduction Plan” (GMERP). The controversial plan set up a draconian, regressive tax, one of the ...

Hydraulic fracturing has enabled profitable extraction of oil and gas in diverse areas of the country. As a result, many states sitting atop the country’s shale formations are reconsidering the way they tax these resources, to fill budget holes. Many of these debates are occurring in states with unconventional deposits and where ...

The recent discovery of vast deposits of oil and natural gas trapped in shale rock formations has revolutionized our nation’s short-term, mid-term, and long-term energy outlook. For example, proven natural gas reserves in the United States rose by 40 percent between 2004 and 2009. At the same time, new technological advancements ...