A Free-Market Energy Blog

Peter Lang on Australian Windpower: High Costs, Low Emission Reduction

By Kent Hawkins -- January 21, 2010

The higher costs and inferior reliability of government-mandated wind power and solar power are well known to students of the electricity market. Many analyses on wind and solar have documented their real-world problems.

But another negative aspect of wind and solar technologies is their failure to live up to their raison d’être: emissions reduction. As I have explained in a four-part post, firming intermittent electric generation requires very inefficient fossil-fuel generation that creates incremental emissions compared to a situation where there is not wind or solar and fossil-fired generation can run more smoothly. This is a huge insight, a game changer, that could take the renewable energy debate in a new direction entirely.

A number of studies are emerging that quantify both the cost premium of politically-forced renewables and the minimal amounts of emissions reduction (and even notable emissions increase) resulting from their use.…

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“Cap-and-Trade” Is Dead–Will the “Federal Renewables Mandate” Be Next? (An “environmental tea party” may be brewing against industrial windpower)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 20, 2010

Temperature trends, Climategate, Copenhagen, IPCC falsification, and now the Massachusetts Revolution–cap-and-trade is dead, the political pundits say. So much for the  inevitability argument that I heard from my colleagues during the Enron years (“come on Rob, get out in front of it and shape it!”), as well as the science-is-settled that had been the Word.

But what about a scaled back energy/climate bill with the key provision of a federal renewables mandate? Has the ‘Massachusetts Revolution’ killed that too?

We will soon find out. But one thing can be certain: Americans from coast-to-coast and border-to-border are going to look more closely at wind power, and I do not believe they are going to like what they see. (Enron, anyone?) Witness the growing complaints from the grass roots–including in-the-trenches real environmentalists–that industrial wind is intrusive, costly, and unreliable.

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Remembering When Enron Saved the U.S. Wind Industry (January 1997)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 19, 2010

January 7, 1997, some 13 years ago, was one of the worst days in my 16-year career at Enron. Enron had already entered into the solar business (1994) in partnership with Amoco (Solarex), and the U.S. wind industry was on its back. Zond Corporation was struggling, and rival Kenetech had recently suspended its dividend and was on the way to  bankruptcy. Enron bought Zond on this day and renamed it Enron Wind Company.

Enron Wind would never turn a profit, and it would be sold in May 2002 by the bankrupt parent to GE. (GE and Enron would have other ominous parallels.)

Enron came in at just the right time for a troubled, undeserving industry by

  1. Putting a big-name corporation in the U.S. wind industry for the first time;
  2. Issuing countless press releases on ‘wonderful’ green wind for the next several years; and
  3. Successfully lobbying Texas politicians to enact the most strict renewable mandate in the country in 1999.
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‘The People vs. Cap-and-Tax’: James Hansen and the Left’s Civil War on Climate Policy

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 17, 2010
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Pioneer Press Op-ed: We’re Warming, but not so Fast

By Chip Knappenberger -- January 16, 2010
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Smart Grid Passion–It’s On Your Dime (Part II)

By -- January 15, 2010
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Power Generation Industry Forecast: Natural Gas as Fuel of Choice, Little Change for Other Technologies (Part II)

By Robert Peltier and Kennedy Maize -- January 14, 2010
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Power Generation Industry Forecast: Natural Gas as Fuel of Choice, Little Change for Other Technologies (Part I of II)

By Robert Peltier and Kennedy Maize -- January 13, 2010
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‘Smart’ Grid: New Critics of a Bad Idea (Part I of II)

By -- January 12, 2010
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Energy Innovation as a Process: Lessons from LNG

By Vaclav Smil -- January 11, 2010
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