A Free-Market Energy Blog

Warring Against Natural Gas: Joint EEI/NRDC Statement to NARUC (crony environmentalism at work)

By -- February 26, 2018

“Their ‘all of the above’ debate wasn’t all of the above…. It was a propaganda stage for a ‘clean energy’ pact between EEI and NRDC for announcing their joint indoctrination campaign aimed at increasing market share of electricity at the expense of natural gas.”

“What this ‘powerful’ cabal intends to do is to monopolize energy by electricity under the guise of environmental necessity.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), the national trade association representing state public service commissioners who regulate investor-owned utilities, was recently the site of a political war against natural gas. [1] On the last day of NARUC’s annual Winter Policy Summit (February 14), E&E News reported (Nation’s regulators get down to business at winter meeting): [2]

The final NARUC session on Wednesday will feature a debate of sorts between Phil Moeller, executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, and Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy.

Continue Reading

Climate Groupthink: Understanding Intellectual Error

By Christopher Booker -- February 22, 2018

[Editor note: A new paper by Christopher Booker, GLOBAL WARMING: A Case Study of Groupthink (subtitled How science can shed new light on the most important ‘non-debate’ of our time) was released yesterday by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The full paper is highly recommended, but a useful summary of major climate-debate events is provided below in Mr. Booker’s Introduction.]

—————————————

“… the rest of the world had no intention of going along with the declared aim of Paris, to agree on the wholesale ‘decarbonisation’ of the world’s economy. Yet astonishingly, so lost were developed countries in the groupthink that the Western media failed to recognize what was happening. One person who did was President Trump who, to the fury of all those still blinded by the groupthink, gave the refusal of the rest of the world to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions as his reason for pulling the US out of the Paris Accord (although even now this was not picked up by those reporting on his decision in the West).”

Continue Reading

Oil Saves New England!

By Donn Dears -- February 21, 2018

“Unreliable wind and solar made very little contribution to sustaining the grid…. Oil provided the fuel that saved New England from a grid disaster this past January. On January 6, it supplied 36 percent of the electricity for the New England grid.”

During the coldest days this past January, the New England grid was on the brink of disaster. Only pre-planning by New England Independent System Operator (ISO-NE), emergency actions by the Coast Guard, and luck kept the lights on.

The pre-planning by the New England Independent System Operator consisted of ensuring there were sufficient duel burning, i.e., oil and natural gas power plants, with oil stored on site, available for extended periods when natural gas would not be available for meeting increased demand for electricity.

Homeowners have first call on natural gas and power plants could not be sure of having adequate supplies when cold weather resulted in increased loads.…

Continue Reading

Julian Simon Reconfirmed: A Half-Century Retrospective (population, progress positively correlated)

By Marian Tupy -- February 20, 2018
Continue Reading

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: February 19, 2018

By -- February 19, 2018
Continue Reading

Texas’s CREZ Transmission Line: Wind Power’s $7 Billion Subsidy (ratebase socialism as ‘infrastructure improvement’)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 16, 2018
Continue Reading

Beware EPA ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ Models

By Shawn Ritenour -- February 14, 2018
Continue Reading

Julian Simon Remembered (would have been 86 today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 12, 2018
Continue Reading

‘America’s Vast Energy Potential Awaits, Mr President’ (message to Obama revisited)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 11, 2018
Continue Reading

Mexico’s Energy Reform: Don’t Backslide (a la Venezuela)

By Richard Sigman -- February 9, 2018
Continue Reading