“This scholarly work fills in much missing history about two of America’s most important industries, electricity and natural gas.”
– Joseph A. Pratt, NEH-Cullen Professor of History and Business, University of Houston
“An engaging look back at the market and political development of the U.S. energy industry. Industry and policymakers will benefit from reading this book.”
– Dr. Robert Peltier, PE, Editor-in-Chief, POWER magazine
Edison to Enron is the second book in my trilogy on political capitalism inspired by the rise and fall of Enron (order information: Amazon, Scrivener Publishing, John Wiley & Sons).
Book 1, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy, provided a worldview of market-based versus political business, as well as an interpretation of energy sustainability. The present volume (Book 2) examines the individuals and companies that are related to Enron’s prehistory.…
When I was director of public policy analysis at Enron in the late 1990s, I hired climatologist Gerald North of Texas A&M as a consultant to help me get to the bottom of the raging debate between climate ‘skeptics’ and ‘alarmists.’ I was Ken Lay’s speechwriter, and I was concerned that Enron’s embrace of climate alarmism (we had seven profit centers banking on priced CO2 from government intervention) was intellectually off base and thus violated the honesty plank of corporate responsibility.
It was money well spent. Dr. North was personable and honest, although he had a propensity to default toward alarmism if you did not challenge him. (Such is the neo-Malthusian propensity of most natural scientists who see nature as optimal and the human influence as only downside.) This is why I have called Dr.…
[This post reproduces a front-page story in the New York Times business section that excitedly reported a breakthrough with solar energy as represented by a heady energy company named Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.]
“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.”
Allen Myerson, Solar Power, for Earthly Prices, New York Times, November 15, 1994.
The nation’s largest natural gas company is betting $150 million that it can succeed where the Government has so far failed: producing solar power at rates competitive with those of energy generated from oil, gas and coal.…