Wind Growth after PTC Expiration
By Lisa Linowes -- September 24, 2018“The US Treasury estimates the PTC will cost taxpayers $40.12 billion in the period from 2018–2027, making it, by far, the most expensive energy subsidy under current tax law.”
“After billions in public hand-outs, the wind industry has never been able to stand on its own and there’s no reason to believe this will change. Tax credits are now a required component of the industry’s economics. The outcome of an expired PTC is evident: wind installations will crawl to a near stop.”
Just twelve months after the PTC phase-out [1] went into effect, the wind industry boasted that thousands of new megawatts were under construction or in advanced stages of development. Confirming specifics is challenging since the industry tends to bloviate, but reports put the number of safe-harbored turbines between 30 and 70 thousand megawatts with the majority expected to be in service before the end of 2020.…
Continue ReadingHenrietta Larson: A Scholar for the Ages (her business histories are among the greatest energy tomes)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 20, 2018“What we have done is … to put business in its broader political and cultural setting…. We are not out to defend business, but to try to do an impartial, scholarly investigation of an important American institution.”
– Henrietta Larson (1894–1983), Harvard business historian
For many decades, corporate histories were dominated by simplistic notions of big-is-bad and capitalist exploitation. Yes, Ida Tarbell documented many innovations and economies from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, but she jumped to examples to paint the Standard Trust as ultimately evil in its exploitation of competitors.
Much “Robber Baron” history followed in the decades after Tarbell, failing to comprehend the advantages of industrialization and to differentiate free-market entrepreneurship on the one hand from corporate/government cronyism on the other. As Harvard business historian Thomas McCraw would later explain:
… Continue ReadingWithout the benefit of a vocabulary that distinguished conceptually between center and peripheral firms, productive and allocative efficiency, vertical and horizontal integration, economies of scale and transaction cost, these observers had only their personal sensibilities and political ideologies to guide them.
Betting the House on Plant Vogtle
By Joseph Pokalsky -- September 18, 2018
[Editor Note: The touted nuclear power renaissance in the United States has been stymied by engineering, procurement, and construction problems with new-generation plants, namely Westinghouse’s AP1000 design. With yet another recently announced cost overrun, two minority owners of Plant Vogtle III and IV must soon decide on whether to continue with their investment with another ante-up for what was originally estimated to cost $14.3 billion (with a four-year construction period) that is now estimated by the majority owner to cost $25 billion with years still to run.
The author below reports on the latest developments for the two Vogtle Units and provides the framework for an unbiased, probability-based model that can be used by the minority owners to support their upcoming decision on the project.]
… Continue Reading“The reluctance to cancel this project stems from the fact that so much has been expended to date.