Duke Energy’s Rolling Blackouts: Remember Jim Rogers’ CO2 Politics

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 17, 2023 No Comments

Ed. Note: In mid-2019, MasterResource published a post on a notable political capitalist in the history of the energy industry, the late James E. Rogers, longtime CEO of Duke Energy. With that company’s rolling blackouts (“load shedding”) over Christmas weekend for a half-million customers “for the first time in the utility’s history“, it is worth remembering the damage done to free markets and electric reliability by the political track chosen by one executive. (The post is reproduced below with minor edits.)

At 41 [in 1988], [James Rogers] was named CEO of PSI Energy Inc., a small, financially troubled Indiana utility. Breaking ranks with others in the electric-power industry, he supported legislation putting caps on sulfur-dioxide emissions. “Some of my guys thought I was drinking the environmental Kool-Aid,” he said later.

Continue Reading

Chris Wright (Liberty Energy): Setting the Tone for 2023

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 13, 2023 1 Comment

Ed. Note: With the failing climate narrative, it’s time to play offense in energy/environmental debates. Chris Wright of Denver-based Liberty Energy Inc., previously profiled at MasterResource, drawing upon his company’s 99-page 2022 sustainability report, “Bettering Human Lives,” offers a compelling argument. [1]

“Let’s all check our desires to be fashionable or hip when we talk about energy. Energy is so critical to human well-being that we must speak honestly, candidly, and frequently to combat the increasingly damaging plague of energy ignorance that has taken over our country and much of the western world.”

Chris Wright is a member of the New School of moral-high-ground fossil-fuel executives. So is Adam Anderson, CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions, who exposed North Face/VF Corporation’s anti-petroleum stance. Another notable is Vivek Ramaswamy, Executive Chairman, Strive Asset Management, who exhorts more oil and gas production from the companies he invests in “to both create significant shareholder value and contribute to human flourishing.”…

Continue Reading

UK Energy Reset! (GWPF/Net Zero policy primer)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 29, 2022 1 Comment

“Renewables must be put on the same footing as other generators, with no subsidies and no preferential dispatch, and eventually wound down.”

“… the government should be candid with the public and focus relentlessly on replacing the older combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) with new models that are more thermally efficient (and thus cheaper and cleaner) and on increasing UK production of natural gas onshore and offshore.”

The United Kingdom (and EU more generally) is ground zero is the failed war against consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral mineral energies. Energy sustainability is affordable, reliable, plentiful energy–and wind and solar are not that.

Net Zero Watch of the Global Warming Policy Foundation is doing yeoman’s work in identifying the UK/EU energy fail in real time. Their latest is “Taking Back Control: Addressing Britain’s Energy Crisis.”…

Continue Reading

Energy and Environmental Review: February 28, 2022

By -- February 28, 2022 No Comments

Ed. note: This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete MBN for this post can be found here.

Greed Energy Economics:
*** The green industrial revolution is a lie
*** Wind farms were paid not to generate HALF their potential electricity

Wind Energy:
*** Limits to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer
*** America’s Power Grid Is Increasingly Unreliable
The stampede of green lemmings
Wind Energy Developer Compares Opponents To Hitler And The Holocaust
Offshore Wind Power Has a Long Way to Go in America
One Year After Texas Blackouts, ERCOT Expects Massive Increase in Solar and Wind Capacity
Lies My Wind Developer Told Me

Solar Energy:
Large Western NY Solar Project In Planning Stages
China Extracts Yet Another Favor from Biden to Sell Us Solar
Spain’s Solar Energy Crisis: 62,000 People Bankrupt After Investing in Solar Panels
Wind and Solar expansion is a threat to biodiversity — but by how much?

Continue Reading

Coal Is Back (webcast today makes its energy, policy case)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 16, 2022 No Comments Continue Reading

Energy and Environmental Review: February 14, 2022

By -- February 14, 2022 No Comments Continue Reading

Carl Pope on Energy: Exactly Backwards (old-school alarmist in denial)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 3, 2021 2 Comments Continue Reading

“Power Mad” (Matt Ridley on the UK Energy Crisis)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 23, 2021 5 Comments Continue Reading

Can-do Petroleum vs. Can’t Do Renewables (Part II)

By Steve Overholt -- August 27, 2021 3 Comments Continue Reading

Wind Apologetics (don’t double down on bad, Texas)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 22, 2021 3 Comments Continue Reading