ExxonMobil’s Tillerson on Renewable Energy: Realism amid Politics

As reported by Russell Gold at Environmental Capital, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has made an incisive new argument against his company’s investing in government-dependent renewable energy.

“If I wanted to kill [tax subsidies], the thing to do is for Exxon Mobil to go and invest heavily in them and then Congress would immediately cancel the tax subsidy. Actually what they would do is they would just cancel it for us,” said Mr.Tillerson, during the annual analyst meeting at the New York Stock Exchange.

He added: “In reality, that is what I fear would happen. So we are not going to go into investments that are dependent on a government providing a tax system to make them viable.”

This is very interesting. Former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond and now Tillerson have argued against investing in politically dependent renewables because they have been-there-done-that, with investor losses in the 1970s.…

Wind: Energy Past, not Energy Future (the intermittency curse then, as now)

The disadvantage of windpower as a primary energy source has been long recognized. This 1838 textbook described the competitive situation of wind as follows:

 William Stanley Jevons also detailed the problems of windpower…

The Malthusian Wing of the Party in Power: When Will They Speak Up?

“The economic recession/depression is good, not bad. It lowers our carbon footprint in countless ways. It saves resources. It throttles back industrial society to sustainable levels that were exceeded long ago. Let the downturn continue to get us out of the growth mentality. Let rising expectations fall! Less is more!”

When will some prominent Left environmentalist slip and say something like this? No doubt the tongues are tied right now, but as time goes on it will be harder to keep the Malthusians muted.

Consider Paul Ehrlich’s advice for families, which can be extended to the economy as a whole:

Once a cooperative movement had gained momentum, it could also engage in an enormous campaign to re-educate other consumers and to change their buying habits. The pitch might be: ‘Try to live below your means!

Solar Hyperbole 2009: Don’t Forget Enron/Solarex circa 1994

Beware of the New “Limits to Growth” (and looking for ReaganVision/CarterVision)

Thomas Edison to Henry Ford: Forget Electric Cars (Is this advice from 1896 still relevant?)

CERAWeek 2009: Why Didn’t Daniel Yergin Question Climate Alarmism–and Both Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxation?

Windpower: Yet Another Texas-sized Problem (Hurricane Risk)

John Holdren Told “Not to Make News” at his Confirmation Hearing

Pielke, Jr.: “The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science”