“A free market in electricity is not ‘utopian’ or problematic. It is practical and timely with a strong intellectual case. It just needs classical liberal champions rather than technocratic schemers.”
“I will not dance to your tune” proclaimed technocrat Lynne Kiesling in our exchanges on electricity policy last year. A free market in electricity is “utopian,” she added in another exchange. All this in the service of a centrally planned wholesale market imbued with government-enabled wind, solar, and batteries (Kiesling’s VPP–‘virtual power plant‘). And an implicit preference for climate alarmism/forced energy transformation from an academic that pretends to be free market but is a woman of system.
Giberson Exchange
And so once again, I debated just this with Michael Giberson (Kiesling’s designated one-off voice in a peculiar relationship).…
Continue Reading“Will the Trump Administration challenge against climate alarm and forced energy transformation reach its logical end? Can commercial nuclear power be privatized away from DOE for this to happen? Can ‘carbon management’ be demoted as part of this? Free market, classical liberal proponents can only hope so.”
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was a mistake on Day 1. It continues to be a harem of government intervention on the supply and demand sides. It should be abolished as an easy budget cut, with the military side moved back to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Remember President Reagan’s campaign pledge to abolish DOE? He continued the promise into his first term, with his energy secretary, James Edwards, promising to work himself out of a job and “spread salt on the earth to make sure [DOE] never rose again.”…
Continue Reading“A recent survey by the American Automobile Association (AAA) found that only 16% of potential buyers were either “likely” or “very likely” to buy a fully electric vehicle as their next car, … down from 25% in 2022 and was the lowest level of EV interest recorded by AAA surveys since 2019.”
The road to adoption of Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs) is growing steeper. For over two decades, states used incentives and mandates to try to force a transition from gasoline vehicles to ZEVs. But softening market demand, shifting federal policies, and poor economics threaten to halt the ZEV revolution in the United States.
Zero Emissions Vehicles are cars and trucks that produce no tailpipe emissions. These are either electric vehicles (EVs) or hydrogen vehicles. California is the only state with a significant number of hydrogen cars, but its hydrogen car population is declining, so ZEVs mean EVs in practice.…
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