“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.” (- Allen Myerson, Solar Power, for Earthly Prices, New York Times, November 15, 1994)

Thirty years ago, the ‘newspaper of record’ excitedly reported atop the business section that a breakthrough with solar energy had occurred with the business genius of the upstart energy company Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press continues to create an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute, intermittent) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.…

This week, a Hall of Shame business memo turns 27 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement.

Global green planners were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). But Kyoto predictably failed, and the Paris climate accord of 2015 teeters, with COP27’s recent failure making COP28’s prospects look grim.

Palmisano’s memo cites the benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron. Enron, in fact, had no less than six profit centers tied to pricing carbon dioxide (CO2)–and seven if CO2 were capped and traded. The story of Enron as the darling of Left environmentalists has been well told elsewhere.…

“The Biden Administration’s offshore wind ambition, not only Vineyard Wind, is going the way of the EV debacle. It is time to end the charade, even before the Presidential election.”

All the current political news is keeping this week’s implosion of the fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry off the front pages. “Vineyard Wind shut down after turbine failure sends ‘sharp fiberglass shards’ onto Nantucket beaches,” reported CBS News out of Boston. The worst case event could spell the end of another Biden anti-economic, anti-ecology “climate” program, with only the 132 MW South Fork Wind project off the coast of Long Island under construction.

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, was at the 10-turbine, 136 MW mark of a planned 62 turbines totaling 806 MW. GE Wind (formerly Enron Wind), the blade-maker, is in trouble too.…

“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, 1979, p. 49)

The idea of a transition to a “new energy future” is historically incorrect with wind power, grid solar, and battery-driven cars and trucks. All have a history of non-competitiveness with or displacement by fossil fuels. Energy density explains much of why the renewable energy era gave way to a far better world of coal, oil, and natural gas in recent centuries.

This is taken from a 2014 article by Zachary Shahan for Renewable Energy World, History of Wind Turbines.

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1887: The first known wind turbine used to produce electricity is built in Scotland. The wind turbine is created by Prof James Blyth of Anderson’s College, Glasgow (now known as Strathclyde University).…