“The cost for wind’s little or no environmental benefit is high.”
– Robert Peltier, “Chart a New Course.” POWER, September 2011, p. 6.
POWER magazine’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Robert Peltier, is in the energy reality business. An honest broker, the professional engineer and former Stanford University professor assesses rival technologies as he sees them. And so at times, he is at odds with groups such as the American Wind Energy Association that peddle uneconomic technologies.
Peltier’s lead editorial in the September 2011 issue of POWER magazine is notwworthy for its arguments and for its import in the history of energy thought.
Future scholars will look back on our present debate and assess who had the best arguments, and who was willing to take risks to advance them–and who were the for-hire millers using half-truths and PR hits to evade the implications of consumer choice, technological reality, and sound science (and yes, climate science is hardly settled in favor of alarmism but just the opposite).…
Continue Reading[Ed. note: This post follows yesterday’s post by Donald Hertzmark challenging a call for federal price controls on energy.]
The spectacular problems that beset the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after Hurricane Katrina have led analysts of weather emergencies to look elsewhere for leadership, or even evidence of competence.
Increasingly, that leadership has been found prominently in the private sector: among companies being recognized for their emergency response capabilities are big box retailers like Walmart and Home Depot and the regional restaurant chain Waffle House.
One reason that some government agencies may be failing is that their attention is directed to the wrong things. High on that list is policing against high prices during emergencies. Basic economic analysis finds that price gouging laws end up wasting state government resources and wasting consumers’ time during emergencies.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: Tomorrow, economist Michael Giberson will critically assess government ‘price gouging’ laws.]
As an economist, whenever I hear the word “shortage” I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually “price control.”
– Thomas Sowell, “Electricity Shocks California,” January 11, 2001.
Like Bill Murray’s weatherman character in the movie Groundhog Day, the American public is obliged to relive certain bad ideas again and again (and again).
Like the movie the idea of price controls for energy keeps coming back, but will we, like Murray’s weatherman, reexamine what leads us to relive such unworkable concepts? The latest contestant in this march of folly was posted recently in the Atlantic Monthly’s business blog.
The idea–called a buffer fund–is to establish a target price for retail gasoline (diesel, too, though they seem to have forgotten that part of the fuel supply) and use taxes or subsidies to maintain the target price over time.…
Continue Reading