[The new proposal] would qualify as the 13th federal subsidy extension for wind power, dating back to 1992. Yet back in 1986, amid California’s wind subsidies, a representative of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) stated: “The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive.”

“Bipartisan senators ask Mnuchin to extend safe harbor deadlines for wind, solar projects,” reads the April 24th headline from Utility Dive.

The Brief explains:

• A group of bipartisan senators on Thursday asked the Department of Treasury to extend safe harbor deadlines to ensure renewable energy developers are able to secure the tax credits they need to finance their projects.
• In order to qualify for the production tax credit (PTC) or the investment tax credit (ITC), project developers have to meet certain construction deadlines, but many in the industry are seeing lengthy project delays as a result of supply chain disruptions, workforce shortages and other COVID-19-related setbacks. 

“Soviet-style central planning may have died with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But what has not yet had that demise is that other variation on the collectivist theme: ‘democratic socialism’ (European-style) and the redistributive welfare state.”

“But what is required, what is asked of all of us who care about liberty, is not to allow the everyday ‘trends’ and outcomes of electoral politics to make us so despondent that we ‘give up the good fight.’ Only if we do so will the institutions of the paternalistic welfare state remain intact — even as the money dries up!”

It is worth recalling the state of the world when Ludwig von Mises wrote “Trends Can Change” 61 years ago (see Part I in this series).…

“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.”

– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 5.

The 20-year-old production tax credit (PTC) has not done its work yet, claims the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). It should be extended …. and extended … and extended.

The credit, now worth about 2.2 cents per kWh, or 40 percent or more of the wholesale average price of power, was first enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and has been extended six times, sometimes retroactively to cover the entire period without lapse.

What are the key facts regarding this subsidy to qualifying renewable energies, primarily electricity generated from wind and solar? This summary by the Institute for Energy Research (of which I am CEO) provides much good information for the ongoing debate given that the PTC is set to expire at the end of this year.…

Act I finds the protagonist boldly proclaiming an original and bold explication of the economics and history of the gas and electric industries. In Act II, we use the weapons developed by our protagonist to render much that passes for sound energy policy both tragic and comedic.

In Act III, we search deeply within ourselves to discern if the protagonist provides answers to the modern vexations that ail us. Come let us listen to Friedman Milton as he disarms the protagonist.

Black and White–or Gray?

The Bradley Project seems to dichotomize the world into free market capitalism and political capitalism. To paraphrase George Orwell, free markets good; political markets bad.

I have no quarrel with Bradley’s conclusion that both energy generally and natural gas and electricity in particular have been victims of political capitalism in all its hoary forms.…