Paul Williams, chairman and CEO of Stallion Oil Corporation, recently shared his holiday wishes on social media as follows:
To All My Democrat Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2025, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.…
“Rob’s snide reference to my ‘chess pieces’ is a reference to my unwillingness to agree with his Utopian dismissal of ISO/RTO organized wholesale markets.” (Lynne Kiesling to Vernon Smith, below)
“Yes, playing with government chess pieces (on-grid solar, wind, batteries, ‘smart’ meters) and a centrally planned wholesale market is Statism writ large.” (Robert Bradley to Kiesling, below)
Electricity specialist Lynne Kiesling champions herself as a classical liberal, free-market advocate. But she is just the opposite and relies on obfuscation and charm to advocate and sell
1) government central planning of wholesale electricity and
2) government-enabled wind, solar, and batteries in place of least-cost (central-station) electricity.
It is her “synthetic regulation” or the highway, premised on a belief that there cannot be private property rights to grid electricity.
This woman of system will not forthrightly define what a free market is with electricity.…
“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)
Thirty years ago, the ‘newspaper of record’ excitedly reported atop the business section that a breakthrough with solar energy had occurred with the business genius of the upstart energy company 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.
Good press continues to create an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute, intermittent) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.…