A Free-Market Energy Blog

CONSOLIDATED UTILITIES COMPANY ANNUAL REPORT (Management's Letter to Stockholders)

By Jim Clarkson -- August 21, 2012

Dear Fellow Shareholders:

By now you have heard news reports of Consolidated Utilities (ConU)’s $1 billion cost overrun on the construction of our nuclear plant. However, that’s just part of the good news we have to report. If all goes according to plan, we will be able to overrun another $1 billion before the project is complete. You are, of course, aware this extra $2 billion in our capital base will mean higher earnings for decades to come with increased dividends for us all. We are, indeed, a green company.

This achievement brings with it challenges that your management team is well equipped to handle. While these cost overruns and associated incremental profitability is our fiduciary duty in our world of public-utility regulation, they come with increased public criticism, large expenditure of political capital, and problems for our regulatory allies.

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Positive News from AWEA: "Layoffs mount in U.S. wind power manufacturing plants this week"

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 20, 2012

Unfortunately the [wind] industry has begun letting workers go up and down our American manufacturing supply chain…. Congress must [extend subsidies] now to give wind energy a stable business environment… to … save 37,000 American jobs by the first quarter of next year.”

    – Denise Bode (AWEA), Press Release, August 9, 2012

“He who lives by a legalized sword, will perish by a legalized sword.”

    – Ayn Rand, “The Moratorium on Brains II,” Ayn Rand Letter, 1971

The wind industry is imploding, and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is providing the details. Suffice it to say that there will be no Jay Leno at the next AWEA confab.

With accumulating layoffs, extending the Production Tax Credit (PTC) is increasingly becoming too late. AWEA has been warming about 10,000 job losses by September 1, and now the number is 37,000 in the next seven or so months.

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Law over Power: Liberty's Work

By David Boaz -- August 17, 2012

“I was asked once by some skeptics what the most important libertarian accomplishment ever was. I said ‘the abolition of slavery.’ OK, they conceded. Name another. I thought more carefully and said ‘bringing power under the rule of law’.”

– David Boaz, “Power and Law,” Cato Policy Report, July/August 2012, p. 2.

[Friday posts sometimes take a more general, big-picture look at the science of liberty and ‘why we fight.’ Cato executive vice president David Boaz is featured today in his recent editorial for Cato Policy Report. The Cato Institute has played an important role in energy and energy/environmental scholarship in the last several decades.]

At Public Policy Day, our event for Cato Sponsors held after the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty Dinner, I thanked our Sponsors for our beautiful expanded building.

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'Revenue-Neutral' Carbon Tax: Merely Implausible or Mathematically Impossible?

By Josiah Neeley -- August 16, 2012
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Fraying Support for Windpower: Exelon Does the Math

By Michael Giberson -- August 15, 2012
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"Recouping cost of wind turbine may take more than a lifetime" (Consumer Reports confirms micro-wind diseconomies)

By Kent Hawkins -- August 14, 2012
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Energy at ALEC: Response to Media Matters

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 13, 2012
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Debating Locavores: Food to Energy to Smart Action (response to critics)

By Pierre Desrochers -- August 10, 2012
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Electricity Policy Prime Time

By Ken Malloy -- August 9, 2012
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PTC Teeters, AWEA Whines, Romney Leads

By -- August 8, 2012
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