A Free-Market Energy Blog

Sunnova’s Enronish Ending

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 16, 2025

“’The [Sunnova] summit [last November] was really part of the swindle,’ said Chris Pélissié, chief executive at Senga Solar, which is owed more than $680,000 by Sunnova. ‘None of us dealers knew we were playing chess until it was just too late’…” (below)

Previous posts at MasterResource (below) have chronicled the government-enabled rooftop solar industry, which is now in distress. Bankrupt Sunnova Energy heads the list, with others either bankrupt or struggling.

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Examples of Adaptation and Resilience (Part II)

By Terry Anderson and Donald Leal -- July 15, 2025

Editor’s Note: This concludes a two-part series with real-world examples of anticipating and ameliorating extreme weather events, a challenge throughout human history. Today’s post was originally published at MR on May 21, 2015.

Yesterday’s post explained how market incentives can address environmental issues, including the believed-to-be negatives of climate change. Prices of inputs and outputs, utilizing resources even if they are subject to the tragedy of the commons, incorporate dynamic environmental changes. Markets, in other words, offer the potential for dynamic responses.

If climate change reduces the productivity of land for wheat production, for example, the price of land will be high relative to its productivity. This generates an incentive for wheat farmers to seek new places for wheat production where land prices are lower. Hence, the 2012 Bloomberg news headline, “Corn Belt Shifts North With Climate as Kansas Crop Dies.”…

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The Argument for Adaptation and Resilience (Part I: Theory)

By Terry Anderson and Donald Leal -- July 14, 2025

Editor’s Note: A classic post at MasterResource from a decade ago concerns the most important weather/climate strategy in a new political era. Written by Terry Anderson and Donald Leal of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), this post explains how humankind successfully meets challenges with adaptation rather than top-down government edicts. Part II is tomorrow.

Rather than simply throwing up our hands in despair with respect to what appear to be intractable problems of establishing property rights and encouraging markets in regard to global climate, we turn to a major theme of free-market environmentalism—dynamic markets provide the best hope for human interaction with dynamic environments.

Once we abandon static models of market equilibrium and recognize that people respond to changing environmental conditions (e.g., experiencing rising sea levels), as well as resource prices that reflect those conditions (e.g.,…

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Mining the Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 11, 2025
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NOAA’s 2020 Prediction Bust: “U. S. Winter Outlook: Cooler North, Warmer South”

By -- July 10, 2025
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Power Density: The Key

By Kent Hawkins -- July 9, 2025
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Energy: The Master Resource (by Robert L. Bradley Jr. and Richard W. Fulmer)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 8, 2025
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Energy & Environmental Review: July 7, 2025

By -- July 7, 2025
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Adam Smith’s Insight for Independence Day 2025 (Part II)

By Richard Ebeling -- July 4, 2025
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Adam Smith’s Insight for Independence Day 2025 (Part I)

By Richard Ebeling -- July 3, 2025
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