A Free-Market Energy Blog

Global Nuclear Plant Construction Moves Forward, Except in the U.S. (Politics and market conditions make it tough for a large-scale rival to carbon-based energy)

By Robert Peltier -- November 24, 2009

July 17, 1955, was the first time electricity generated by a U.S. nuclear power plant flowed into a utility grid. In what then was an experiment, Utah Power & Light plugged in the Argonne National Laboratory experimental boiler water reactor, BORAX-III.

The plant produced merely 2 megawatts for more than an hour, as planned. Since then, the U.S. nuclear industry has steadily improved their ability to effectively manage the operations and maintenance of nuclear power plants. Now,  more than 50 years after that first nuclear power supply, America lags far behind even developing nations in new construction. New roadblocks threaten to further erode progress in the U.S. Whether this is good or not I will leave to the reader, but here is a snap-shot of the situation facing the U.S.

Significant Global Growth

Today, 436 nuclear power plants are in operation in 30 countries with a total capacity of 370 GW, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).…

Continue Reading

Simple Model Leaves Expensive Climate Models Cold

By J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green -- November 23, 2009

[Editor’s note: J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten C. Green, first time guest posters, are leading researchers in the field of forecasting. Scott Armstrong is a Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Kesten Green is a Senior Research Fellow at the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit at Monash University]

We have recently proposed a model that provides forecasts that are over seven times more accurate than forecasts from the procedures used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This important finding, which we report in an article titled “Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making” in the latest issue of the International Journal of Forecasting, is the result of a collaboration between climate scientist Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and ourselves.…

Continue Reading

Dear Tom Friedman: Don’t Want You to Die Off … Just Get Well!

By Donald Hertzmark -- November 21, 2009

In the New York Times editorial page’s latest excursion into shrill climate alarmism, foreign affairs correspondent Thomas Friedman accuses those opposing the current cap-and-tax bill as wanting a few people, say 2.5 billion to die off.  And us bad guys are just grasping at straws. “. . . you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims,” he says. “One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.”

Gosh, Tom, I suppose that the pace of global warming has accelerated in the last decade, and hurricanes are getting more frequent and stronger too. And those emails from the alarmist in-crowd that the climate world (and general public!) are reading about right now–those are the good guys, the real disinterested scholars at work.…

Continue Reading

The Decline of Climate Alarmism (Will the Left rethink an increasingly futile crusade?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 20, 2009
Continue Reading

High Capital Costs Plague Solar (RPS mandates, cost dilution via energy mixing required) Part III

By Robert Peltier -- November 19, 2009
Continue Reading

Origins of the Gasoline Tax (Part II of “Political Capitalism: Understanding the Beast that Broke the Cage”)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 18, 2009
Continue Reading

Climate Change – What Do Economists Really Think?

By Jerry Taylor -- November 17, 2009
Continue Reading

Wind Integration: Incremental Emissions from Back-Up Generation Cycling (Part II)

By Kent Hawkins -- November 16, 2009
Continue Reading

“Industrial Wind Power in Maine’s Mountains is Bad Policy” (Testimony of Citizens Task Force on Wind Power)

By Brad Blake -- November 14, 2009
Continue Reading

Wind Integration: Incremental Emissions from Back-Up Generation Cycling (Part I: A Framework and Calculator)

By Kent Hawkins -- November 13, 2009
Continue Reading