A Free-Market Energy Blog

Green Party Bucks Biden (but ignored by MSM)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 27, 2020

“‘Trump says that climate change is a hoax, but Biden acts like climate change is a hoax,’ [Green Party nominee Howie] Hawkins said. ‘I wonder if he really understands the issue,’ he mused.”

“‘We’ve been pretty much blanked out of the media,’ he said. ‘We’re not part of the conversation.’ … ‘I’ve got nothing, pretty much nothing, certainly from cable, the big three cable networks.'”

If Green Party Presidential nominee Howie Hawkins did not like Joe Biden’s energy and climate platform months ago, Hawkins has a lot more complaining to do this time around. In search of electoral votes in swing states, Shifty Joe has endorsed fracking on private land, rejected the Green New Deal, and apologized to the oil industry for his sin of talking about an energy transition.

In Green Party Presidential Candidate Says Progressives Are Going Too Easy on Biden (September 10, 2020), Chantal Da Silva documented the bridge-too-far between Biden’s camouflaged energy program and the Green Party’s open proposals.…

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Wind PTC: Enough!

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 26, 2020

“After a dozen extensions and nearly three decades on the books, it’s time to end the Production Tax Credit….”

Thirteen extensions of a 1992 tax credit for a supposedly infant industry in need of start-up aid. A subsidy has risen with inflation and become more lucrative with new technological design.

Little wonder that wind power can be “predatory” by under-pricing conventional electrical generation that does not get the subsidy. As in negative, zero, or small-positive prices. Little wonder that firm, dependable power sources are leaving the market–or require a corrective subsidy to continue to compete (a second wrong).

It’s a racket. And so 41 free market groups have aligned to urge the U.S. Senate to end the racket. The full letter, organized by the American Energy Alliance, follows.…

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Malthusianism Reconsidered: Desrochers on Smil

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 22, 2020

 “Civilization’s advance can be seen as a quest for higher energy use required to produce increased food harvests, to mobilize a greater output and variety of materials, to produce more, and more diverse, goods, to enable higher mobility, and to create access to a virtually unlimited amount of information.” (Smil, Energy and Civilization, quoted below)

“Fortunately, basic numbers don’t lie, and what they convey is that, in the context of market economies, past Promethean writers proved much more right than their opponents.” (Desrochers, below)

Pierre Desrochers (Department of Geography, Geomatics and the Environment, University of Toronto Mississauga) is one of the world’s leading scholars in the fields of energy and sustainable development. A generation ahead of Desrochers is Vaclav Smil, a renowned expert in energy history and technology whose profuse writings document his energy worldview–at least most of it.…

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‘Democrats Run from Green New Deal, Fracking Bans’ (E&E News reports, you decide)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 21, 2020
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Shifty Joe on Energy (Fracking? Green New Deal?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 20, 2020
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Trump on Energy: the Latest

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 19, 2020
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Wind Subsidies and ‘Predatory Pricing’ in Texas (Part III: Time for Regulators to Investigate Predatory Pricing in Texas?)

By -- October 15, 2020
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Wind Subsidies and ‘Predatory Pricing’ in Texas (Part II: Harming ERCOT)

By -- October 14, 2020
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Wind Subsidies and ‘Predatory Pricing’ in Texas (Part I)

By -- October 13, 2020
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David Simon: “Let’s Be Serious, More C02 Isn’t Making the Earth ‘Uninhabitable'”

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 12, 2020
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