The Great Texas Blackout Revisited: Market Failure Not

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 14, 2025 2 Comments

Ed. Note: Four years ago, Storm Uri caused Texas’s centrally planned wholesale electricity market (ERCOT) to buckle, vindicating warnings about the state’s wind/solar reliance. The mainstream media implicated natural gas instead, failing to explore the why behind the why. Rather than deregulation, Texas has chosen to add wind, solar, and batteries, while subsidizing natural gas plants to counter intermittency. This duplicated grid is now driving rates up in a state that could have relied on surplus natural gas instead.

It was not so much the story of freak weather triggering a market failure writ large. It was a classic application of the political economy of government intervention: the seen and the unseen, expert/regulatory failure, and unintended consequences.

Don Lavoie, a preeminent thinker in the field of market-versus-government planning, once warned:

If the guiding agency is less knowledgeable than the system it is trying to guide—and even worse, if its actions necessarily result in further undesired consequences in the working of that system—then what is going on is not planning at all but, rather, blind interference by some agents with the plans of others.”

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Sunnova Going Solyndra? (Enron-ex John Berger owes taxpayers a bundle)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 12, 2025 2 Comments

Ed. Note: Just 15 months after receiving a $3.0 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (Jigar Shaw), Sunnova stock price has cratered with the prospect of bankruptcy. Sunnova founder (and Enron-ex) John Berger’s battle cry–“solar is going to rip apart the energy business as we know it”– is an example of the philosophical fraud committed by political capitalists who are tipsy on taxpayer dollars.

I distinctly remember a Starbuck’s meeting at the request of fellow Enron-ex John Berger soon after he founded Sunnova in 2012. John knew I was adamantly opposed to solar’s government play, and he must have thought I was pliable. I was not. [1]

I stated my objections to John, and rather than try to defend his political bet, he flashed his toothy grin at me.…

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Joe Romm’s The Climate Ate My Homework! (re Southern California fires)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 13, 2025 2 Comments

“In a rational and moral world, the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires, fueled in part by climate change, would be one of many climate ‘Pearl Harbors’ that might help wake up the public to the urgent need for climate action.” (- Joe Romm, last week)

“Is it just a coincidence that the worst of the worst happened in California, the Climate State? The Green State? The DEI State? Joe, the mainstream is not buying your ‘Climate Ate My Homework’ reasoning.” (below)

Just add “policy” in two places in Romm’s quotation above, and substitute “inaction” for “action” at the end, and his conclusion can be fixed. But who is Joe Romm? And what is his track record? I have tangled with Angry Joe for decades (I am a ‘sociopath’ to him) and can address these questions.…

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Alaska Energy Shenanigans: Eklutna Dam and the RPS (Part II: Political Highjack)

By -- January 10, 2025 No Comments

Ed. Note: With yesterday’s background, Part II examines the politicization of one of Alaska’s major hydroelectric projects to reveal ulterior motives from “stakeholders” and elected officials.

“Once an RPS becomes law, the boards will be able to point to the new law in effect requiring them to adopt unreliable and expensive sources and be held harmless once things start to spiral out of control, up to and including rolling brownouts and blackouts.”

“Pumped energy storage is only necessary as a mitigating backup to the planned 100% unreliable not-so renewables. The Renewable Portfolio Standard will mandate a government-subsidized solar, wind and transmission build-out by grifters and profiteers. Wind and solar power producers should be made to pay for all infrastructure that makes them as reliable as a gas turbine.”

For environmental groups and their political carriers, the question is how to expand wind and solar power in the state, the very resources that are dilute, intermittent, fragile, expensive, and taxpayer-dependent.…

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Enron, NYT Declare Solar ‘Competitive’ (1994)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 17, 2024 1 Comment Continue Reading

“THIS AGREEMENT WILL BE GOOD FOR ENRON STOCK!!” (1997 Kyoto memo)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 13, 2024 No Comments Continue Reading

Houston: Oil and Gas Capital (‘energy transition’ hyperbole falls flat)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 8, 2024 1 Comment Continue Reading

Nuclear Consultant Goes Nuclear (Adam Brown for the record)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 25, 2024 3 Comments Continue Reading

Vineyard Wind: Catastrophic Failure (‘sharp fiberglass shards’ close Nantucket beaches)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 18, 2024 3 Comments Continue Reading

Industrial Wind Power: Infant Industry Not

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 12, 2024 1 Comment Continue Reading