“The only good national energy strategy is one premised on private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law. Not a central, government plan, but a decentralized we-the-people ‘plan’.”
Energy studies, energy plans. They are not new. We saw them in 1938, 1977, yesterday—and in years between.
Now, the smartest-guys-in-the-government-room will, once again, pontificate and propose more regulation and intervention on top of the tens of thousands of pages of directives that have built up in the last 40+ years. (The modern era of U.S. energy regulation began with Nixon’s wage-and-price-control order of August 1971.)
Usually, such studies come out with recommendations, which then turn into legislative proposals for a Congressional debate and a vote before reaching the President’s desk. But with President Obama legislating via Executive Order, expect the worst.…
“Here’s to a post-PTC world. One where, in Lisa Linowes words, ‘the industry shifts their business plans away from those based on tax avoidance to plans based on energy production’.”
Last month, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) held a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill to discuss the problems of wind power in light of the debate about whether to extend the long-standing (1992–) production tax credit (PTC). The event highlighted a new IER study calculating the “taker” and “payer” states from the PTC, Estimating the State-Level Impact of Federal Wind Energy.
I moderated the panel. Panelists included Travis Fisher (IER) and three leading grassroots activists: Lisa Linowes of New Hampshire, Tom Stacey from Ohio, and Kevon Martis of Michigan. Lisa, Tom, and Kevon are wind-power experts whose volunteer work is inspired by the economic waste and wholly unnecessary degradation of rural life.…
Leslie Stahl (CBS): Part of this [green technology investment] was supposed to be creating new jobs. Everything I’ve read there were not many jobs created.
Steven Koonin (DOE-ex): That’s correct.
Stahl: So what went wrong there?
Koonin: I didn’t say it would create jobs. Other people did.
Stahl: So you never thought it was gonna create ….
Koonin: I didn’t think it mattered as a job creation, no.
Last night (January 5, 2014), Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes (CBS) exposed the green-technology boondoggle before a national audience.
The Cleantech Crash focused on venture-capitalist (and rent-seeker) Vinod Khosla, “the father of the Cleantech revolution.” Khosla has invested more than one billion dollars personally in approximately 50 energy startups, along with much taxpayer commitment. Yet his projects are in the red.…