“A major player in the renewable energy opposition in rural Michigan is Kevon Martis, who works for E&E Legal, a D.C.-based lobbying firm that gets funding from the fossil fuel industry.” (Sinclair, below)
“Those are the people funding Peter Sinclair: huge fossil fuel entities. Yet he plays the fossil fuel card against me when I have never received a dime from any fossil entity unless you count my cashback credit card used for gasoline purchases!” (Martis, below)
DC-based Big Environmentalism has a grassroots problem: local residents who do not like or want super-sized industrial wind turbines and multi-acre solar slabs. It is more than NIMBY since taxpayer dollars put such (unneeded, duplicative) machinery in play. But also respect the opposition’s rational concern about mega-machinery noise, visual blight, health effects, and property devaluation.…
“There are substantial environmental, technical, and cost challenges in using carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at the scale needed to significantly reduce global warming…. [that make it] unlikely that CDR could be implemented rapidly enough or at sufficient scale to entirely avoid dangerous levels of climate warming in the near term.” (Pro, public letter, February 27, 2023)
“The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonization policies.” (Con, open letter: January 17, 2022)
It is hard, contradictory, and hypocritical to be “green” as conventionally defined. I am reminded of a comment in the 1970s that noted “a general frustration generated by the energy crisis: every solution to the problem seems to create tremendous problems of its own.”…
Is there a ‘free market’ solution to the question of capacity incentives versus volumetric charges? I contend this the PUCT/ERCOT is in a central planner situation versus a true free market where integrated gas and power companies would solve the economic calculation problem, not state and federal regulators. More here: https://www.masterresource.org/texas-blackout-2021/central-planner-ercot-worked-as-planned/
Joseph Pokalsky: Integrated gas and power companies and gas companies are monopolies, don’t compete, and essentially tax ratepayers through rate setting by Public Service Commissions, a.k.a. Central Planning Committee Kommissors.
Robert L. Borlick: ERCOT is the furthest away from a central planning paradigm as any power system I know of. To argue that a free market consists of integrated gas/power companies is laughable. You don’t appear to understand the concept of a natural monopoly. As for the document you cited, it is a political rag that misrepresents the situation in Texas and unfairly blames Professor William Hogan for the irresponsible behavior of the Texas politicians.…