My Time at Enron: For the Record (again)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 9, 2017The Institute for Energy Research (IER) and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), are in the news.
As reported last month in the Los Angeles Times, and more recently in Bloomberg Politics, IER/AEA are involved in the free-market directions that the president-elect and his team have followed to date.
One account described the founding of IER as follows:
The Institute for Energy Research was founded to be a clearinghouse for energy information in 1989 in Houston by Robert L. Bradley Jr., a speechwriter for Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay, who was later convicted of securities fraud.
Given that this association is part of the political conversation (Joe Romm started it in 2009: see below), and the continuing attention that is ahead for IER/AEA, I wish to revisit the historical record about my time at Enron that overlapped with IER.…
Continue ReadingCornwell Alliance Petition for EPA Administrator Nominee (real environmentalism, not dogma)
By E. Calvin Beisner -- January 7, 2017“Some radical environmentalists and religious activists oppose Mr. Pruitt because he does not embrace their exaggerated fears of human-induced global warming—fears that go well beyond the empirical evidence crucial to genuine science—or their antipathy to the development of the abundant, reliable, affordable energy indispensable to lifting and keeping whole societies out of poverty and the disease and premature death that invariably accompany it.”
January 5, 2017
Dear President-elect Donald J. Trump:
We write to you as evangelical and mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish scientists, economists, legal scholars, policy experts, and religious leaders in support of your nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to the office of Administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA has the crucial task of writing and enforcing regulations that apply statutes passed by Congress and signed by the President to protect the life and health of Americans.…
Continue Reading“Market Conservation vs. Government Conservationism: Understanding the Limits to Energy Efficiency and ‘New-Economy’ ESCOs” (2009 post questions intellectual foundations of efficiency mandates today)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 5, 2017Editor Note: The post below, published at MasterResource in June 2009, has profound challenges for the notion that self-interested business underinvests in energy efficiency, giving a “market failure” rationale for government investments in and mandates for energy efficiency. This post introduced the term conservationism to differentiate government conservation from market conservation. It also documents the market failure of Joe Romm’s shuttered nonprofit, the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions.
… Continue Reading“Enter the energy outsourcing model of energy service companies (ESCOs) in the 1990s, widely heralded as a ‘new economy’ breakthrough and a new feature of ‘natural capitalism’. Enron Energy Services (EES), in particular, the energy outsourcing division of the late Enron, was the next great thing…. ‘ESCOs are DEFINITELY the future,’ exclaimed Joe Romm. ‘I intend to work with the big ones to transform the market, which I think will take about two or three years.’