“If the private sector won’t build wind turbines without the credit, it’s time for America to rethink its approach to wind power and renewable energy in general…. Congress should abandon the idea of reviving the federal Wind Production Tax Credit, because it actually undermines efforts to make wind competitive.”
– George David Banks, R Street Institute (2014)
Back in October 2014, R Street Institute senior fellow George David Banks wrote a piece, ‘How the Wind Production Tax Credit Undermines Wind Power.” Banks, who is no longer with R Street, also wrote free-market blogs/op-ed’s against EPA’s ethanol mandate and Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Given R Street’s recent seminar/lovefest with wind power (see MR’s post from last week, Energy Statism: R Street Hits New Low), Banks’s op-ed has new relevance.…
“A new ethic is needed for corporate America, one where cronyism, obvious or subtle, is uncovered, reported, and criticized by the media and the public. Corporations will do the right thing under the new norms of a free, civil society.”
Corporations can practice Principled Entrepreneurship™ wherein “good profits” are derived from private property rights and voluntary exchange. Common ethical standards are respected in this quest as well.
Or corporations can practice contra-capitalism, mixing rent-seeking (cronyism) with philosophic fraud and imprudence.
A major corporation, ExxonMobil, and a major trade association, the Edison Electric Institute, used their financial and membership powers at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to go contra-capitalist on the issue of a resolution challenging the science behind Obama’s 2009 Clean Power Plan.
As described by Sterling Burnett at Climate News:
A resolution calling on the U.S.…
[Editor note: Earlier this week, Alex Epstein and Tyler White gave three minute talks to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in San Francisco on the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. Epstein’s comments are videotaped here. The two’s comments are transcribed below (h/t to Don Watkins).]
…“But most of what I’m hearing today, most what I’m seeing outside, certainly most of what I’m seeing from our public officials–particularly our most famous representative, Nancy Pelosi–is complete carelessness and complete obliviousness to the consequences of radically restricting fossil fuels, as well as completely bizarre and self-contradictory exaggerations about the negatives.” – Alex Epstein to EPA (below)
“Many people today have said that it’s not government policies that are killing coal, but that coal is getting outcompeted. Fine. Let us compete–let us compete on an even playing field with every other energy producer.