“It’s policy, it’s regulation, it’s industry structure and it’s incentives . . . It’s not physics, it’s not chemistry, it’s not even the electric grid. It’s what we decide we want.” – Ron Binz
“Postmodernism … can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A small victory for consumers and free-market energy policy came yesterday when energy statist Ron Binz withdrew as a nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, D.C.
Binz put the blame on others rather than his own postmodern energy philosophy and coercive energy-policy views, which he unsuccessfully tried to hide before Congress.…
The nominee for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairmanship Ron Binz will have plenty of potential questions to answer today at his confirmation hearing (9:30am ET), including these posted by the Institute for Energy Research.
The importance of the Binz nomination stems in roughly equal parts from:
(1) The growing significance of FERC as an agency with new and expanded authority,
(2) The context and timing of the nomination, which comes as part of an aggressive (Congress-and-voters-be-damned) climate action plan, and
(3) The details of Ron Binz’s history as a radical (pro-renewable) regulator and energy “expert.”
To complement today’s questions posed by members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, university economist and electricity specialist Robert Michaels would ask the nominee the following questions:…