“The adage ‘if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’ is alive and well within The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The same goes for legislation and elections which have sanctioned EERE’s regulatory biases.” (Krebs, below)

Q. Mark, you have been a tenacious voice for free consumer choice to use natural gas in the face of government “deep decarbonization” intervention to substitute electricity under the guise of “energy efficiency.” Tell us about your activism today.

A. I am now independent, having retired from the gas industry. My statements are solely intended to serve the best interests of energy consumers, and not necessarily the gas industry, or any one of its parts, or any other energy sector.

Q. In November 2020, you wrote a three-part series that reviewed the legal highs and lows of the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology (EERE) during the Trump window of opportunity.…

“Classical liberalism does not have a long resume in the history of energy thought. Prior to the 1970s energy crises, it was a backwater for free-market intellectuals, although the opportunity was there for both scholarship and political advocacy.”

I recently constructed a new home with a two-story library, ladders and all. On one side are my energy-related books; on the other, economics. Several thousand volumes are, for the first time, organized in one place. Better late than never as I am in my 66th year.

The energy books, many unearthed from storage, bring back a lot of memories. Some observations follow.

Classical liberalism (or the political term, libertarianism) does not have a long resume in the history of energy thought. Prior to the 1970s energy crises, it was a backwater for the free market intellectuals, although the opportunity was there for both scholarship and political advocacy.…

“Bad economics required the DOE furnace mandate in the first place: replacing gas furnaces are much cheaper than a new electric heating refit even with a longer-term, back-end savings. Why? Because consumers, given the choice, chose gas.”

The mandatory energy efficiency movement (conservationism vs. market conservation) arose alongside oil and natural gas shortages in the 1970s. It began prior to the Arab Embargo as President Nixon’s price control order of August 1971 was having its predictable, undesirable effect.

In March 1973, wholesale oil shortages and dire resource predictions led Congress to hold a full-fledged energy conservation hearing. The first fuel conservation hearing in decades, a new movement was begun not seen since World War II’s fuel rationing program.

What began with the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 continued apace in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 and with the creation of the U.S.…

“The end-result [from ignoring one properly identified modelling “error”], unwittingly or otherwise, massively skewed EERE’s economic ‘determinations’ in favor of stricter standards for commercial packaged boilers. This ‘error’ also exists in other proposed rulemakings. In other words, EERE likely ignored this correction request to avoid embarrassment by exposing deep analytical biases within EERE, its Labs and contractors.”

This post concludes a three-part series on the highs and lows of the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology during the Trump window of opportunity. Part I was an overview, and Part II examined EERE’s process rule and overhaul efforts to date.

Historically, Final Rules become that when published in the Federal Register. Prior, such rules have been subject to change pursuant to the “error correction” procedure codified at 10 C.F.R. § 430.5 (etc.).…