Search Results for: "Enron, wind power"
Relevance | DateDynegy, Coal, and Two Takes at the Houston Chronicle
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 11, 2009 3 CommentsToday’s Houston Chronicle has two takes on the recent decision by hometown Dynegy to pull back from participating in the construction of new coal plants and concentrate on expanding capacity at its existing plants.…
Continue ReadingCERAWeek 2009: Why Didn’t Daniel Yergin Question Climate Alarmism–and Both Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxation?
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 15, 2009 2 CommentsAt the just-completed CERAWeek, here in Houston, Daniel Yergin had an excellent opportunity to inject some scholarly realism into the climate-change debate. As a wise man of energy and an opinion leader, he could have stated publicly what many in the vast audience mutter privately, such as:
- Global warming has stalled in the last decade or more, bringing into question the high-sensitivity, high-warming scenarios of climate models (the major costs of climate change)
- Cap-and-trade CO2 reduction in the European Union has failed under a variety of metrics–deadweight costs, higher prices, very little gain, unintended consequences
- U.S. voters have put climate-change at the very bottom of their list of concerns and affordable energy high on their list of concerns
- What emerges from Congress in the next several years will be grotesque–almost regulation and higher energy costs for its own sake (with no appreciable effect on climate).
Governor Rick Perry (R-TX), T. Boone Pickens, and the Enron Legacy of Windpower
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 24, 2009 15 CommentsLast December, Texas governor Rick Perry, speaking at a Houston fundraiser, sadly noted how President George W. Bush had lost his way in Washington, D.C. His good friend had compromised his principles and left the nation in a lurch, however unintentionally.
But then the governor launched into his Texas-is-great stump speech that included kudos to windpower, a new large industry (no) thanks to a legislative mandate requiring that Texas electricity retailers purchase qualifying renewable energy. (Wind is the most economical of the qualifiers.) The 1999 mandate, enacted with the crucial help of Enron lobbyists, was increased in 2002 with a powerful wind lobby at work. And so at the point of a gun, Texas became the leading windpower state in the country, passing California along the way.
So it was not surprising that last Saturday night Gov.…
Continue ReadingPickens Plan II: Retreat as Prelude to Failure? (worth reading Sunday)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 29, 2009 2 CommentsSeveral MasterResource posts on the problems of the original Pickens Plan, and the retreat to Pickens Plan II, are worth revisiting as T. Boone continues his multi-million-dollar quest for a government-engineered energy makeover.
Pickens, like Al Gore, does not want to debate his plan–he just wants to implement it with edicts. But fundamental problems remain with Pickens I and the scaled-back Pickens II. Here is a one-two-three punch by critics:…
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