“If it were only so simple to pass a law and increase income and wealth. ‘One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than by their results,’ as the late free -market economist/educator Milton Friedman once said.”

The Houston Chronicle, as yesterday’s post documented, has gone from bad to worse in the hydrocarbon capital of the United States and world. The New York Times of Houston (the proper name for our supposedly hometown paper) seems to be at war with not only Donald Trump but also skeptics of climate alarmism and the free market more generally.

Along with climate-alarmist unsigned editorials, guest editorials, (selected) letters-to-the-editor, and cartoons, the Chronicle is all-in with Progressive notions. Consider the lead editorial on Labor Day, September 4, 2017.…

“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”

– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (1979), p. 219.

Tomorrow (October 5, 2016), a book seminar will be held at Resources for the Future [register here] to revisit the lessons from the 1970s energy crisis. Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s by Meg Jacobs will receive comments from three RFF scholars.

The Princeton historian and author usefully provides a good deal of archival documentation surrounding the ill-fated attempt by federal authorities to regulate the price and allocation of crude oil and oil products in the 1971–1981 era. …

“President Bill Clinton in 1997 announced the Department of Energy’s Million Solar Roofs Initiative as part of the buildup to the international negotiation on climate change held in Kyoto, Japan. The goal’s date was 2010.… Yet after 40 years of government plans and incentives, the U.S. is not halfway to Bill’s one-million goal.”

“If solar was really cheap, dependable, and competitive, Hillary would not need to be touting solar as the energy future — or espouse special government favor either. Let-the-market-decide would be enough.”

The centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s energy plan for Election 2016 is to boost the nation’s installed solar capacity seven-fold between the time she takes office and the end of 2020 (four years). Going from 20 gigawatts to 140 gigawatts would involve a half-billion solar panels on twenty-five million roofs.…

“Profile costs exist due to the fact that wind has bad timing; when the wind is blowing strongly the market isn’t demanding high amounts of electricity and vice-versa.”

With nearly a century of federal government oversight in electricity markets, one might expect the regulatory equivalent of a well-oiled machine, in this case the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

To its credit, FERC has generally given favorable treatment to market-based solutions opposed to top down control. [1] However, the push for green energy has changed how many markets behave for the worse. Far from a well-oiled regulatory machine, we have a Rube Goldberg device that produces curious outcomes. One great example is the way utilities gladly overpay for wind power.

In “Profile Costs as a Component of Integration Costs in Wind Energy”, published in Stanford University’s Comparative Advantage (Vol.…