“The consolation prize for a lot of us is that Joe Romm is so extreme and unprofessional that his cause of “Hell and High Water” suffers. Climate change is exaggerated and nefarious, just like Joe Romm himself.

MasterResource has followed the mercurial climate alarmist/activist Joe Romm since its beginning (2007). Back in the late 1990s, I sparred with Romm while I was at Enron, (“a company I greatly respect,” said he) regarding what turned out to be its most deceitful business, one promising free-lunch energy efficiency. Enron Energy Services (EES) and Romm’s Center for Energy and Climate Solutions (CECS) both bit the dust. For-profit or non-profit, the “energy service company” (ESCO) was a mirage.

Romm has referred to me as a “sociopath” in a private email.…

Ed. Note: Just 15 months after receiving a $3.0 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (Jigar Shah), Sunnova stock price has cratered with the prospect of bankruptcy. Sunnova founder (and Enron-ex) John Berger’s battle cry–“solar is going to rip apart the energy business as we know it”– is an example of the philosophical fraud committed by political capitalists who are tipsy on taxpayer dollars.

UPDATE: Sunnova is bankrupt several times over. “The company has approximately $1.9 billion in debt that needs to be fully repaid by the end of 2028,” reported Houston Chronicle (02-20-2025). “That includes $975 million in debt due for payment in 2026. In comparison, Sunnova’s market capitalization, or the value of its total shares, is $251 million….” It is also in legal peril (see here).…

“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.” (- Allen Myerson, Solar Power, for Earthly Prices, New York Times, November 15, 1994)

Thirty years ago, the ‘newspaper of record’ excitedly reported atop the business section that a breakthrough with solar energy had occurred with the business genius of the upstart energy company Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press continues to create an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute, intermittent) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.…

This week, a Hall of Shame business memo turns 27 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement.

Global green planners were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). But Kyoto predictably failed, and the Paris climate accord of 2015 teeters, with COP27’s recent failure making COP28’s prospects look grim.

Palmisano’s memo cites the benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron. Enron, in fact, had no less than six profit centers tied to pricing carbon dioxide (CO2)–and seven if CO2 were capped and traded. The story of Enron as the darling of Left environmentalists has been well told elsewhere.…