Ken Maize’s recent post arguing for a strong grid instead of a smart one made an important point: the Smart Grid is largely an assortment of tweaks and minor fixes that lets America’s utilities get by with the transmission status quo to cope with the growing demand and integration of intermittent renewables.
Policy should instead aim at a strong grid. Redundancies and “excess” capacity could better maintain reliability and lower delivered power costs in a world of monopoly utilities. It would also facilitate market transactions if competitive retail and wholesale power markets prevail.
Maize has well-founded concerns about how utilities in a smart-grid world will
… Continue Reading1) administer their new gizmo-heavy systems;
2) justify the benefits that small consumers will get in return for higher bills, and
3) make up for the prospect for increased vulnerability to innocent or serious hacking.
“If there is one thing I have been impressed with over the last decades, it is that when the environmental community defines a number one priority, something happens. Not always something good—but something.”1
Dr. Kenneth L. Lay, Chairman, Enron Corporation, June 1997 (1)
Who was the late Ken Lay, the architect and chairman of Enron throughout its 16-year history? All parties to the current legislative debate on a CO2 cap-and-trade bill should know. After all, Lay’s tireless efforts to promote CO2 regulation and enact renewable energy quotas make him a father figure for HR 2354, the Waxman-Markey climate bill, what I have called the Enron Revitalization Act of 2009.
In his lifetime, Lay did not win CO2 regulation, but he got a very damaging renewable energy mandate passed in his home state of Texas.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: This April 27th post is reprinted with slight modifications in light of the current newsworthiness of Alaska’s soon-to-be-ex-governor, Sarah Palin]
Last month, our friends over at the Heartland Institute published a front-page lead story in the April, 2009 edition of Environment & Climate News. Alyssia Carducci’s “Palin Energy Plan Receives High Praise” begins:
“Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has announced an ambitious plan to produce half of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Palin’s plan, which empowers local municipalities to identify and develop the most cost-efficient renewable power sources available to them, won immediate praise from environmental groups, consumer groups, and industry.”
This article is yet more evidence that the inexplicable conservative love affair with Sarah Palin remains unrequited—at least, when it comes to economic policy in general and energy policy in particular.…
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