“That points to another potential challenge [to algae fuel commercialization]: the availability of land. NREL’s model for a commercial-scale algae facility calls for 5,000 acres of open-air algae ponds plus an additional 2,000 acres for support facilities. Yet all that land would produce only a limited amount of fuel.” [E&E News, below[
“Algae nevertheless serve a purpose for the company, [Robert] Brulle said. ‘They’re not selling you algae. They’re selling you, there’s good guys at Exxon,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to regulate us, you don’t need to sue us. We’re good guys.’ [E&E news, below]
Although nothing like the fall of once mighty General Electric (GE) under Jeff Immelt, the post-Lee Raymond Exxon Mobil is a sad corporate governance story of missed market opportunities and a wrong turn toward political correctness.…
“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . . Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.” [Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), p. 454.]
“Planet of the Humans‘ expose is long overdue.” [below]
Big Green, Inc. has been challenged by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs’s “Planet of the Humans.” Importantly, the multi-million-view documentary brought together the inconvenient truths of (politically correct) renewable energies, as well as batteries for electric vehicles.
In a recent post for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), “Long-standing Eco-warnings Against Renewables Reinforce ‘Planet of the Humans’,” I documented how many mainstream eco-authors forthrightly talked about these problems. I noted:
…Moore/Gibbs memorialized what had long been recognized by the environmental intelligentsia.
“Four years of regulatory reform has promoted the prosperity and liberty of Americans and advanced the rule of law. This Regulatory Plan continues that tradition.” [below]
“Reforms of environmental and energy regulations have propelled America to a position of energy dominance while maintaining and advancing the cleanliness of our air, water, and land.” [below]
Two per year, each U.S. federal agency publishes a Regulatory Agenda. The Trump Administration just last week released its Fall 2020 agenda, excerpted below.
MasterResource has closely followed Trump’s deregulatory actions on energy and the environment (see here). It has been a positive story as mentioned in our final comment below. But what is good is bad to the regulate-regulate-regulate crowd, seeing market failure as ubiquitous and both analytic failure and government failure as unimportant.…