A Free-Market Energy Blog

Expanding Energy Horizons (Part II: Robert L. Bradley Interview)

By -- January 12, 2011

[This is Part II of an interview of Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Stephen Hicks (website here). Part I was published last week.] This four-part series (Part III, Part IV to come) is the full interview (with some elaboration), from which an abbreviated version was published in KAIZEN magazine (Issue 13: August 2010) and a longer version was posted online.]

Kaizen: You began as a specialist in oil and gas regulation. How did you evolve from there to where you are now?

Bradley: There are four or so stanzas in my intellectual career to date. The first was certainly oil and gas regulation, taxation, and subsidization, the subject of my Cato book, Oil, Gas & Government: The U.S. Experience. The research for that was essentially complete by 1985 when went to the corporate world by joining HNG-InterNorth, soon to become Enron.…

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China and Wind: What a Waste

By Kent Hawkins -- January 11, 2011

Setting aside the matter that wind turbines are not an effective means to supply utility-scale electricity, the claims of job creation and 21st century industrial development are equally illusory. A New York Times (NYT) article last month spoke volumes on this.

I have frequently claimed that the recently created wind turbine manufacturing industries in Europe (Denmark, Germany and Spain) are in jeopardy from competition by the emerging giants, China, India and the U.S. The Times article reports that China now controls almost half of the global market, having absorbed billions of dollars in government assistance and consumer subidies.

The wind businesses in these European countries have existed for little more than a decade, and having saturated their domestic markets, have enjoyed a brief, and unsustainable, dominance of global markets. I may have been mistaken in including the U.S.…

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"Clean Energy Standard:" Bad Solution to a Non-Problem (Lindsey Graham rides again)

By E. Calvin Beisner -- January 10, 2011

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has found another disguise for lining the pockets of “alternative energy” producers with consumers’ dollars directed there not by rational economic choices but by government mandate.

Once a supporter of cap and trade, Graham now supports a “Clean Energy Standard” that would require utilities to generate increasingly high percentages of electricity from “renewable” sources like wind, solar, and biofuels, from nuclear, and from coal using “carbon capture and sequestration”—catching the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted when coal burns and forcing it, under pressure, into deep geological formations for long-term storage to keep it out of the atmosphere.

A variation on that theme suggested by Entergy Corp. head Wayne Leonard in the Wall Street Journal suggests that we begin with the seemingly innocuous step of increasing U.S.…

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Libertarianism and Energy (Part I: Robert L. Bradley Jr. Interview with Professor Stephen Hicks)

By -- January 7, 2011
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Privatizing Local Transit: Part of the Free Market Energy Agenda

By Randal O'Toole -- January 6, 2011
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Wind Farms DO NOT Provide Large Economic and Job Benefits (quite the opposite)

By Glenn Schleede -- January 5, 2011
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'Hey America': 'Wonky' Climate Alarmism Coming at You (Big Science, Big Environment want to scare you into energy, economic retrogression)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 4, 2011
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2010: The Year that Climate Alarmism Melted

By -- January 3, 2011
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John Holdren’s Big Science, One Science Directive (so what has this smartest-guy-in-the-room said in the past?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 30, 2010
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Virginia Renewables: Taxpayer Santa

By Charles Battig -- December 29, 2010
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