“It is in the national interest to promote clean and safe development of our Nation’s vast energy resources, while at the same time avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production, constrain economic growth, and prevent job creation.”
– President Trump, Executive Order (March 28, 2017)
Do you miss the prior Administration’s record on energy and climate–and push-back against environmental excesses otherwise?
With the Biden Administration scrambling to hoist an anti-consumer energy/climate agenda on Americans on short notice, it is important to keep the opportunity cost of free markets and America-first in mind.
Four years ago, President Trump signed into law one of the most libertarian, free-market executive orders in energy history, easily rivaling that of President Reagan’s oil price and allocation decontrol executive order of early 1981. Titled Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth, Executive Order 13783 began with this paragraph:
… Continue ReadingSection 1.
“The physical operation of the grid can be separated from the economic decisions of what power is generated, transmitted, and sold at wholesale or retail in terms of quantity, cost, and price.”
“Mistakes by ERCOT or the PUCT or Texas legislature make my point–this is a planning failure, not a market failure. Not physics but economics. A historian is weighing evidence about this either being a market or government failure. It is a government failure writ large.” (Bradley, below)
Electricity is different. Power flows must the centrally managed. Ergo, regulators and politicians must manage the grid.
WRONG. The physical operation of the grid can be separated from the economic decisions of what power is generated, transmitted, and sold at wholesale or retail in terms of quantity, cost, and price. Companies themselves, vertically and horizontally integrated, what might be called electricity majors, is the opportunity cost of the present regulatory regime.…
Continue ReadingOne of the barbs tossed around frequently on Twitter last week — more wistful than angry — was that we’d all be better off if H-E-B took over the Texas power grid. (Houston Chronicle, below)
Government grows from crises. In the wake of the Great Texas Blackout, the foregone reliability path of greater market reliance–a true free market absent state and federal regulation and regulators–deserves serious debate.
For students of crises in free societies, the Texas power debacle offers another example of civil society stepping up where government is unable or unwilling to do so. As noted in “It’s Not Getting Any Better’: Undergrads in Texas Contend with Snow, Power Outages,” The Harvard Crimson (February 19, 2021):
… Continue Reading[Molly] Martinez [of Dallas] added that Texas residents turned to community organizers for assistance during the storm due to the government’s failures.