“Subsidies like the DOE’s guarantees can incentivize firms to prioritize short-term gains over long-term compliance. Sunnova’s aggressive sales tactics, which targeted vulnerable consumers, were enabled by its belief that federal backing insulated it from accountability.” (Issac Lane, below)
MasterResource has chronicled the rise and fall of the large, government-enabled rooftop solar company, Sunnova Energy International, Inc. Led by the toothy Enron-ex John Berger (who made millions of dollars at the expense of just about everyone else, including taxpayers), Sunnova is yet another case study of business failure under political capitalism (versus free-market capitalism).
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“[The Paris agreement] is a fraud really, a fake…. It’s just worthless words.” ( – James Hansen, below)
COP30, a CO2-fest of sorts, is failing. Major emitters have not shown up. Virtually all nations and regions are in serious noncompliance with their Paris Agreement goals according to Climate Tracker, and the gap is widening. The new pitch is less about emissions as about the fantasy of cheap wind and solar and batteries heralding a new energy era. Yet the energy transition has been demoted to energy addition (Daniel Yergin) and now energy duplication. Think rising energy prices from climate policy….
Hansen on Paris
James Hansen is a realist when it comes to the United Nations’ global warming negotiations; wind and solar energies; and the lobbying frenzy surrounding the issue.…
“BP ‘Beyond Petroleum’ is Out … real energy environmentalism is In. And while the redistributionists, the ‘experts’, the rent-seekers hash-and-trash it out in Belém, Brazil (COP 30), the real producers, the on-the-ground energy makers, are perfecting their craft. Here’s to a great conference!”
It is (past) time for the fossil fuel industries to unite with a message of clean and green. After all, oil, natural gas, and coal are now environmental products, and the density and reliability of each is a gift to the living space. In the words of the late Peter Huber:
…The greenest fuels are the ones that contain the most energy per pound of material than must be mined, trucked, pumped, piped, and burnt. [In contrast], extracting comparable amounts of energy from the surface would entail truly monstrous environmental disruption….