Editor Note: This commentary is reproduced, with slight revision, from the December 2009 issue of POWER magazine.

As director of public policy analysis in my last seven years at Enron, I participated in many legislative and regulatory debates involving electricity, although the public policy thrust of the company was the opposite of what I personally believed was good social policy.

While I favored free markets, the business model of Ken Lay (a PhD economist with years of Washington regulatory experience) centered on special government favor. Enron, for example, had seven profit centers geared to government pricing/rationing of carbon dioxide (CO ₂) emissions. And in the 1990s, the company was squarely behind a Btu tax. Today, Enron would be pushing cap and trade and a federal renewables mandate–and a lot of mandated energy efficiency with its profit centers in mind.…

Editor note: Jon Boone’s previous post on industrial wind parks led to this interview by Michael Morgan of Allegheny Treasures, an information resource dedicated to preserving the historic mountains of West Virginia and understanding the impact of industrial wind installations. 

Introduction: It’s been extremely difficult to bridge the gap that exists between those who know little about the issue and those who have a more comprehensive understanding of the workings of the electrical grid and the related technologies that supply it, like wind energy.  For many, their only information comes from the local press, “green” promotions by so-called environmental organizations, and occasional visits to web sites dedicated to one side or the other.  It’s often a mind-boggling quagmire!

The following conversation with Jon Boone, who now lives in Oakland, MD after a 30 year career at the University of Maryland, College Park, is an attempt to bridge that gap, perhaps allowing us to better understand the limitations of and problems associated with industrial wind technology.…

[Editor note: This interview with Rob Bradley from the April 2006 issue of The New Individualist, published by The Atlas Society, is reproduced for two reasons: 1) the role of Lay and Enron in launching the global warming debate within the energy industry in the late 1980s and 1990s; 2) the role of Bradley during his 16 years at the company brought up by critics of the Institute for Energy Research/American Energy Alliance.]

TNI: Why should Objectivists, libertarians, and individualists take an interest in the collapse of Enron and particularly in the fall of Ken Lay?

Bradley: Enron will prove to be one of the most important episodes in the history of American business, and its story, from beginning to end, is inseparable from Ken Lay, its founder and long-time chairman.…

“Enron Lives! in Waxman-Markey. The sooner the public, media, and intelligentsia realize this, the faster cap-and-trade can be put in the dustbin of bad ideas.”

– Cap-and-Trade: The Temple of Enron, MasterResource, May 14, 2009.

Joseph Romm holds a Ph.D. (in physics) from MIT and works for a 501(c)3 foundation. Being highly educated and in the education business, to most of us, means being careful and fair in our arguments–and avoiding reckless ad hominem argument. But not so with Joe as evidenced by his very inaccurate recent post against me.

In “George Will and WattsUpWithThat embrace a proud former shill for a man convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges,” Romm argues that I must be corrupt because of my former association with Enron and Ken Lay–and thus George Will and the mega-site WattsUpWithThat are party to corruption too.…