Ed. Note: This post from 12 years ago recounts the political origins of the Texas wind power boom. It is also the prehistory of the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021. Note that critics of Texas’s intervention warned of reliability problems.
“Texas is the nation’s leader in wind energy thanks to our long-term commitment to bolstering renewable energy sources and diversifying the state’s energy portfolio.”
– Rick Perry, Texas Governor
“Our representatives [in the Texas Legislature] now have less than six weeks to pass the best of nearly 100 bills that have been introduced on clean power and green jobs. These energy efficiency and renewable energy bills set the stage for rebuilding, repowering and renewing our state’s economy during tough times. They will build a sustainable future for Texas.”
– Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Public Citizen, April 2009
As reported by Russell Gold in the Wall Street Journal, (April 23, 2009), Texas, which has the strictest renewable energy mandate in the country, is about to increase its quota for the third time.…
Continue Reading“Hence the CLC decision to ‘suspend’ ExxonMobil. Why did they not expel them once and for all? Obviously, the CLC hopes that ExxonMobil will grovel, endorse ever-more strongly the ‘climate crisis’ narrative and the imperative for climate policies making energy more expensive, and then — above all else — write a big check to the CLC as an exercise in the only kind of penance applauded by the political Left.”
“So bad at ideological battle are ExxonMobil and many others in the fossil-fuel sector that they remain convinced that a stance of ‘Me Too, But Less’ is politically viable.”
– Benjamin, Zycher, “The Climate Leadership Council ‘Suspends’ ExxonMobil.” August 16, 2021.
Unlimited money has produced a number of questionable groups that claim to be “bipartisan,” “conservative,” or “Republican.”…
Continue Reading“In a press release today, Georgia Power announced that the long delayed Plant Vogtle expansion will be delayed even further. Unit 3, which has just finished a critical testing cycle, is now expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2022, and Unit 4 in the first quarter of 2023.”
– The Augusta Chronicle, July 29, 2021.
In “Vogtle News,” a website from Georgia Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company, all seems swell with progress updates. But the real truth is that the construction of Plant Vogtle 3 & 4 is a boondoggle that has all but sidetracked nuclear as a major electric generation source for the foreseeable future.
It’s a mess. Original contractor Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt in 2017, which left the AP1000 (‘passive design’) project with Southern Nuclear, a subsidiary of the Southern Company.…
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