Sunnova EVP’s Exit: Self-adulation Within a Taxpayer Bubble
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 4, 2025“It is hard to square Meghan Nutting’s parting comments with good, only bad. Her company failed everyone but a few employees, and no one more than founder/CEO John Berger. Her industry has failed its owners and customers too. Her solar journey was a mistake, a mirage, enabled by government.”
Rooftop solar will go down as one of the biggest consumer busts in energy history–and it is just getting started. Sunnova Energy International, with 441,000 rooftop customers, already the subject of mass complaints and lawsuits, can no longer perform on their long-term contracts. So much for promises (still on their website):
25 Years of Protection
Enjoy peace of mind knowing your home solar system and battery are covered by Sunnova Protect®, featuring maintenance, monitoring, repairs, and replacements for 25 years.…
Continue ReadingWhy Regulate Electricity? Two Exchanges (Giberson, Borlick)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 3, 2025
The intellectual and practical case for separating government and electricity is strong. The historical record offers little support for “market failure”–quite the opposite. The laws of physics do not preclude private ownership and control of assets in this area unless you assume mandatory open access–Lynne Kiesling’s Ostrom trick–to make private operation of control areas problematic. [1]
So I labor against faux classical liberals/think tanks that offer suggestion after suggestion to try to make government planned ISO/RTO’s work. But the fix is in with the guilty who refuse to seriously consider a free market in electricity.
Two exchanges with my critics follow. One is with Michael Giberson, a “Right” central planner; the other with Robert Borlick, a Progressive Left central planner.
Michael Giberson Exchange
Giberson posted on his regulatory filing:
… Continue ReadingThe DOJ Anticompetitive Regulations Task Force requested comments on how state and federal regulations act to impair competition.
Carbon Management Demotion (“Big Oil’s” failed political bet)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 2, 2025“Let the lesson be clear. Avoid political bribes intended to get a company to do what consumers do not want done. Respect taxpayer neutrality. Value economic freedom. Pursue good profit, not bad.”
Political capitalism is risky business. And Big Oil, as renewable companies (PPL Corp., Ørsted), is paying the price. Eating at the table of the Climate Industrial Complex, rather than proudly concentrating on its core business of serving consumer demand, has resulted in many federal loan cancellations. Think Exxon Mobil.
Turning to Big Gas, two Calpine grants for carbon capture and storage took a hit: 550-MW gas-fired Sutter power plant in Yuba City, California and 810-MW Baytown power plant in Baytown, Texas.
As reported in a press release last week from the U.S. Department of Energy:
… Continue ReadingU.S.