A Free-Market Energy Blog

Federal and New York Officials Reward Spain’s Iberdrola at the Expense of U.S. Taxpayers, Job Seekers, and Electric Customers

By Glenn Schleede -- March 1, 2010

Often it’s hard to tell whether highly questionable actions by federal and state government officials that reward special interests at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, job seekers, and electric customers are due to honest but misguided intentions, skullduggery, malfeasance, incompetence, or simple mistakes.

Consider, for example, the connections between: 

  • Spain-based Iberdrola’s recent announcement that its net profit had doubled, and
  • Actions affecting Iberdrola during the last few months by members of the New York State Public Service Commission (NYS PSC), NY Senator Charles Schumer, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Please recognize that “connecting the dots” among the actions of these officials will require careful reading of the following four pages.

Iberdrola (Spain) announces doubled profit on February 24:

“MADRID (AFP) – Spain’s Iberdrola, the world’s biggest wind-power generator, said Wednesday its annual net profit in the fourth quarter more than doubled to 795.3 million euros (1.07 billion US dollars)

“But the company reported that for the full year 2009 net earnings weakened due to weakness in core markets, which was offset by higher renewable energy output and greater income from its US unit.

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Global Warming is Responsible for … Everything Bad! (climate alarmism’s PR problem in one list)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 27, 2010

[Editor note: Hat tip to Michael Fumento at globalwarming.org for his recommendation of Number Watch’s listing below. This site advertises itself as a depot for “all about the scares, scams, junk, panics, and flummery cooked up by the media, politicians, bureaucrats, so-called scientists and others who try to confuse you with wrong numbers.”]

Of course U.S. EPA is correct in their finding that the human influence on climate (aka anthropogenic global warming) poses a threat to human welfare. And no wonder why Obama science advisor John Holdren has not disowned his prediction that as many as one billion people could perish by 2020 from climate change.

We surrender. We apologize. We bucked the science as long as we could and just have nowhere to hide. And Dr.…

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Easy, Cheap ‘Green’ Energy? Just the Reverse!

By Kenneth P. Green -- February 26, 2010

[Editor note: This post by Kenneth P. Green and Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute, is a slightly revised version that originally appeared at The American, AEI’s flagship monthly publication.]

In December 2009, economists Hector Pollitt and Chris Thoung of Cambridge Econometrics published a self-described “short” modeling exercise on an 80 percent greenhouse-gas emissions reduction by 2050 in the United Kingdom.[1] Pollitt and Thoung used the Energy-Environment-Economy Model of Europe (E3ME), which they observe has been “used for a variety of analyses including greenhouse-gas mitigation policies, incentives for industrial energy efficiency, and sustainable household consumption.”[2] The E3ME model covers 29 European countries and uses detailed data on 42 economic sectors, 41 categories of consumer goods, 12 types of fuel, and 14 emissions, including the six major greenhouse gases.…

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New Oil and Gas Study: Robust Oil and Gas Resources Could Be Developed for Consumers and Taxpayers (big opportunity for decision makers!)

By Dave Harbour -- February 25, 2010
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Obama’s Proposed Oil and Gas Tax Hike: What Has the Industry Done for Us Lately?

By Donald Hertzmark -- February 24, 2010
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The Rapidly Melting Case For Carbon Legislation

By Robert Bryce -- February 23, 2010
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More on EPA’s Climate Science Problem: The Peabody Petition

By Chip Knappenberger -- February 22, 2010
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Is DOE/Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Windpower Impacts Study ‘Junk Science’? (Albert R. Wilson challenges the ‘experts’)

By Kent Hawkins -- February 20, 2010
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Green Jobs: The Last Redoubt (invoking military images of us-versus-them)

By Donald Hertzmark -- February 19, 2010
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Radioactive Corporate Welfare

By Jerry Taylor -- February 18, 2010
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