“Sorry to bother you with this. See the attached pieces. Rob [Bradley] is obviously not a fan of renewables or the global warming issue. Unfortunately, he works for a company that is.”
– Tom White (CEO, Enron Renewables Energy Corp.) to Ken Lay (CEO, Enron Corp.), June 8, 1998
Joe Romm, for the fifth time (the previous four are here, here, here, and here) has purposely obscured the record of my association with Enron in an attempt to discredit the Institute for Energy Research. I founded IER in 1989, in fact, to give myself an independent voice in the energy policy debate. And I used IER to challenge my employer Enron on the issues of climate alarmism and government-dependent renewable-energy investments.
Here is Romm’s headline from yesterday’s Climate Progress:
The latest polluter front group trying to kill the clean energy bill is overseen by a proud former shill for a man convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges
Romm’s angst is centered on the American Energy Express bus tour sponsored by the American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with IER.…
Continue Reading“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.”
– William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question (1865), p. 122.
Texas has repeatedly been lauded as a leader in wind power development. Some of that attention is deserved. In 2008, the state installed nearly 2,700 megawatts of new wind capacity. If Texas were an independent country, it would rank 6th in the world in terms of total wind power production capacity. But such growth is not the result of the free-market energy choices.…
Continue Reading[Editor Note: This piece was orginally published by the Institute for Energy Research and is reprinted with permission]
There are two futures for energy, depending on which socioeconomic system we adopt. The free-market promises a bright energy future, while the opposite path of political energy is dark. In that sense energy differs little from other goods and services (such as health care): its supply will depend on whether economic laws are allowed to work or are hampered by political intervention.
Free-Market Energy
As the late Julian Simon explained, the future for free-market energy is positive. “It’s reasonable to expect the supply of energy to continue becoming more available and less scarce, forever.”[1] So Simon said in his most influential book, The Ultimate Resource. This prediction riled his Malthusian critics, who labeled Simon a naïve romantic.…
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