Ed. Note: This week features four posts on the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021, the greatest mal-coordination in U.S. energy history. Today’s introduction is followed by 1) a blackout prediction that came to pass; 2) the fallacy of market failure; 3) a 2025 MasterResource blog recap of the debate; 4) a 2025 IER blog recap of the debate.
Market failure or government failure? The Great Texas Blackout of February 2021 (five years ago) is a case study that will forever be in debate. Why? Because the counterfactual–a real free-market in electricity–was not present (versus ERCOT et al. statism). Still, never before had a “market failure” of this type occurred in the U.S. electricity market, not even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the free-market era) when the technology to prevent blackouts was much more primitive.…
Continue ReadingThis post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. Droz is also the author of the popular Substack Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues.
Greed Energy Economics:
*** Blue States, High Rates
Electricity Rate Increases
Unreliables: Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
Minnesota green energy program fined for killing bald eagle: ‘National treasure’
Conservation Group Sues, Claims Feds Hiding Wyoming Wind Turbine Eagle Deaths
Unreliables (General):
*** Transition & Redundancy
*** Report: The Intrinsic Danger of Siting Utility Scale Lithium Based Energy Storage Systems In Densely Populated Areas
Charging ahead: $500M Dunkirk battery storage project seeks tax assistance
Letter to DOE Sec Wright re the Senate considering Carbon Taxes (!)…
“For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism. (David Hughes, below)
In case you missed it (I did), here is a trial balloon from several years ago for us (normal folk) to accept the shortcomings of wind and solar and promote power outages as social policy. Rich and poor. Brown, black, white. Old and young.
“To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity,” by David Hughes (Boston Review: October 2020) came with the subtitle, “Waiting to ensure uninterrupted power for everyone as we transition away from fossil fuels will cost too much time—and too many lives.”…
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