Ed Note: This excerpt is from Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industrial Resources (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933).

“Harnessing the air for generating electric power … [is] engrossing the attention of scientists and technicians and may revolutionize the German electric industry. [Hermann] Honnef claims to have … overcome the drawback of the inconstancy of air currents which hitherto has been a handicap to the utilization of this source.” (1932)

Erich W. Zimmermann’s World Resources and Industries (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933) is one of the towering tomes of energy and mineral thought. The treatise (850 pages) in the old tradition, wherein a scholar presents a unified system of thought and considers differing viewpoints.

It is a tradition that seems to have stalled, with the next-best-thing being the latest book from Vaclav Smil.…

“The solution to keeping the lights on in Texas is … to stop politicians and regulators from micromanaging the Texas energy market. Texas politicians could do this by ending renewable energy subsidies in the state and making renewable companies pay for the costs they impose on the rest of us from their federal subsidies.”

As everyone knows, Texas had the worst blackout in its history during the winter of 2021, when 10 million Texans went without power and 12 million without water. After the Texas Legislature passed a number of bills in response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott proclaimed, “Bottom line is that everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.”

At least until this summer, that is, when in May electricity prices skyrocketed in response to generation shortages as the state’s grid regulator ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) asked Texans “to conserve power when they can by setting their thermostats to 78-degrees or above and avoiding the usage of large appliances (such as dishwashers, washers and dryers).”…

“We congratulate Simon Kinsella for his fortitude and diligence. Other communities are in line for similar threats as from South Fork Wind proposal (Long Island). Pushback to agencies that thrust agreements and permits in favor of wind development without appropriate assessment is essential, economic issues aside.”

Simon Kinsella of Suffolk County New York is no stranger to legal proceedings. His filing last month with the District Court at District of Columbia follows a neat pattern of Citizen “water bearer” to environmental concerns raised for years now regarding South Fork Offshore Wind (Ørsted) with the Long Island Power Authority and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Department of the Interior).

The Biden Administration’s priority is industrializing large strips of coastal ocean water to get the radically uneconomic offshore wind industry going on the East Coast.…

“Dominion has proposed a lower utilization rate (42.5%) than the Block Island wind farm because of the weaker winds off Virginia. The output from that project is already underperforming, and the records of other older wind farms in Europe confirm that wind farm utilization rates are often lower than initially assumed. Plus, the utilization rate declines as turbines age.”

On August 5, 2022, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) approved the application by Virginia Electric and Power Company (Dominion Energy, VEP) to construct and operate the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project. Hearings on the nine-year-old proposed project have revealed numerous high-risk issues, any one of which could make costs skyrocket for customers.  Instead, the SCC wants Dominion to shoulder one of them, causing Dominion to threaten to bail. Maybe it should for everyone’s sake.…