A Free-Market Energy Blog

“Repower Texas”: Taxpayers, Ratepayers, Economic Energy Producers Beware!

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 1, 2009

“It will be possible to achieve a 100% clean power mix over the next ten years if appropriate policies are put in place to unleash the [zero carbon source] technologies’ vast potential.”

– Repower America (The Alliance for Climate Protection)

The heavily bankrolled climate alarmist/energy coercion lobby, led by Al Gore’s new national organization Repower America, is coming to a town or city near you!

In Houston, they have arrived. The “Repower Texas” campaign is being fronted by a group of government-dependent political capitalists that see Big Green (as in money) in Texas’s renewable energy mandates. And how did this business underclass get started? It began with the Ken Lay/Enron renewables mandate for the Lone Star State in 1999, and the policy begun by then-governor George W. Bush is being continued today by governor Rick Perry.…

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Energy Reality Wins at Exxon Mobil Annual Meeting (Atlas is not shrugging at this substance-over-form company)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 30, 2009

If only the United States economy were as strong as ExxonMobil. If only energy realism and free-market consumer service were guiding lights in Austin, Texas; Washington, D.C.; and other seats of political power.

The good news from Exxon Mobil’s annual stockholders meeting in Dallas earlier this week is that the company is focused on its core competencies amid the energy politicization around it. No Enron political machinations here!

In fact, Exxon Mobil is the anti-Enron of corporate America, a rebuff to Ken Lay, who once worked at Exxon, and Jeff Skilling, who declared in 2000: “You will see the collapse and demise of the integrated energy companies around the world. They are going to break up into thousands and thousands of pieces.” (1)

Key Messages

The key messages of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson were: 

  1. Petroleum as a primary energy source is the future, not only the recent past.
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Smart Grid: Can ‘Smart Metering’ Overcome the Hassle Factor? (transaction costs matter too)

By -- May 29, 2009

When asked for conjectures about the Smart Grid, economists’ imaginations become almost indecently fertile. Writing in her blog, market-friendly Lynne Kiesling sees astounding dividends from real-time pricing and smart grid technology, preferably with competitive retail service.

Say, for example, you are on the train to work, and you get a SMS [ text message] notification that due to unexpected weather, there will be a higher-than-normal electricity price in the 9:00-10:00 hour. You may have already programmed your devices to respond to price signals, but what if the price is high enough that you want to change your settings? You can log in to your HAN [Home Area Network] from your mobile device, or from your computer at work, and change the device settings in the home through the web portal. … [i]f the home has e.g.

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The New MIT Climate Study: A Real World Inversion?

By Chip Knappenberger -- May 28, 2009
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Houston Chronicle: Climate Alarmism and Policy Activism, but no Economic Analysis

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 27, 2009
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Unilateral or Worldwide, Waxman-Markey Fails Standard Cost/Benefit Tests (CO2 “leakage” makes bad even worse)

By Robert Murphy -- May 26, 2009
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Waxman-Markey Clothier for the Emperor: A Climate Parable (response to RealClimate)

By Chip Knappenberger -- May 23, 2009
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“Best Science” and the Problem of Land-based Thermometers (Anthony Watts’s Surfacestations project)

By Indur Goklany -- May 22, 2009
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“The Unbearable Lightness of Wind” (EU update)

By Ross McCracken -- May 21, 2009
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The President’s New Cars (climate policy for motor vehicle transportation rears its ugly head)

By Jerry Taylor -- May 20, 2009
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