“The owner [of the Lake Pulaski solar project], multinational conglomerate Enel Green Power, recently clear-cut hundreds of mature hardwood trees to make way for tens of thousands of solar panels later this summer. Angry residents posted dozens of photos of the carnage on the township’s Facebook page, too late to save 11 acres of maple, ash and oak from the chainsaw.”
It’s a given that solar power is unreliable as a source of base load power to meet our daily energy requirements. After all, the sun—at best—shines some of the time. Great River Energy’s experimental solar array in the Twin Cities, for example, operated at 13.6 percent of capacity in 2014. The utility recorded overcast skies a full 70 percent of days, observing clear and sunny conditions just 10 percent of the year.…
Continue ReadingTwenty years ago, Rob Bradley, then president and now CEO of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), published a two-volume, two-thousand-page history of hydrocarbon regulation, legislation, economics, and politics from the mid-1800s to the mid-1980s. Titled Oil, Gas & Government: The U.S. Experience, Bradley’s treatise puts many of today’s energy issues in historical context.
On April 1, 1996, I wrote about the book in the newsletter I founded and edited, Natural Gas Week. I started my column, dubbed Perspective, by quoting philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Today, 20 years later, I would urge current legislators and regulators to consider the main takeaways of Bradley’s book before casting another vote or initialing another regulatory memo.
In his book, Bradley said that political motivations for government intervention are “narrow and self-interested, not necessarily in the common good and not necessarily representative of the citizenry.”…
Continue Reading“Our politicians should be seizing all eight of these opportunities. Instead, they are squandering them.”
Alex Epstein, who has emerged as perhaps the most important energy voice of 2016, has said:
“The 2016 election presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime energy opportunity–and energy danger. There is no middle ground. There can be no more standing down. It’s time to stand up.”
Back in January, Epstein, published an energy manifesto for this election year. In case you missed it, here are his eight policy areas with prescriptions.
1. Jump-start the American economy
Our challenge: We have been mired in recession or near-recession for a decade—and without the energy industry it would be much, much worse.
Our opportunity: The same industry that has kept us out of desperate trouble can bring us to new heights, by producing and selling energy around the world.…
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