[Editor note: Also see “Joseph Romm and Enron: More for the Record” (May 8, 2009) and “Enron and Waxman-Markey: Response to Joe Romm” (July 2, 2009)]
The headline at Climate Progress, the blog site of Joseph Romm, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, read:
MYSTERIOUS INDUSTRY FRONT-GROUP AFFILIATED WITH KEN LAY’S FORMER SPEECHWRITER LAUNCHES ANTI-WAXMAN-MARKEY ADS WITH PHONY MIT COST FIGURE
And here is what Romm specifically says about me:
… Continue ReadingWho is the [American Energy Alliance]? Good question. The AEA says on its website:
“AEA is an independent affiliate of the Institute for Energy Research (IER)….”Aside from the cryptic nature of the oxymoronic phrase “independent affiliate,” it is worth noting that the Institute for Energy Research “has received $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.”
One dumb government intervention in energy markets typically begets another, as special interests lobby to counteract the unintended (although not unforeseen) consequences of some previous intervention they championed. The federal ethanol mandate, also known as the renewable fuel standard (RFS), provides a recent example.
Thanks to this Soviet-style production quota system, which Congress created in 2005 and expanded in 2007, daily corn ethanol production in February increased by about 17,000 barrels to 647,000 barrels per day, despite weak motor-fuel demand and poor to negative profit margins for ethanol producers.
Unsurprisingly, inventories of unsold ethanol increased by 1.5 million barrels in February and about 20% of new capacity added last year is idle. An ethanol glut is one of the factors that have bankrupted several ethanol companies. Other factors include high feedstock (corn) prices in 2008–itself a consequence of the mandate—and the collapse of crude oil and gasoline prices in 2009.…
Continue Reading“Today, 1.6 billion people in developing countries do not have access to electricity in their homes. Most of the electricity-deprived are in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. For these people, the day finishes much earlier than in richer countries for lack of proper lighting. They struggle to read by candle light. They lack refrigeration for keeping food and medicines fresh. Those appliances that they do have are powered by batteries, which eat up a large share of their incomes.”
– Faith Birol, “Energy Economics: A Place for Energy Poverty in the Agenda?” The Energy Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2007), 1–6, at 3.
Chris Flavin, head of the Worldwatch Institute, has written prolifically (albeit often erroneously) on energy and the environment. Ken Lay, the architect of Enron’s “sustainable energy” vision, was a Flavin fan, keeping this study in his “Desk.”…
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