“Lynne Kiesling is a technocrat whose theories come alive in the governmental domain. She believes she has melded the free market and government planning in electricity. By playing classical liberal in other respects, she has fooled many free market types, while collecting many academic positions for her contra-capitalist views.”
Statism in classical-liberal garb is the story of electricity specialist Lynne Kiesling. This post documents her exchange with Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental studies at the CATO Institute. She shows her style but avoids the fundamental arguments of markets-versus-government in electricity. My interpretation of Kiesling as contra-capitalist concludes this post.
This exchange occurred with a post by Todd Snitchler, head of the Electric Power Supply Association.
Fisher (to Kiesling): in a recent piece you attempt to reconcile designed markets with a Hayekian approach.…
“… the ‘energy transition’ has been just the other way around: from dilute, intermittent, and quantity-limited supplies to dense, reliable, storable mass quantities representing the sun’s work over the ages.”
LinkedIn is a forum of vigorous open debate on climate science, energy, and public policy. I have been an active participant, probably responding to comments an hour or more on most days. I learn, and, in turn, people learn from me. It is a good avenue for many of my links on the issues under discussion.
Here is an exchange on “Energy Transition,” as introduced by “professor, author and leader in energy transition engineering” Susan Krumdleck.
Susan Krumdleck: How would you define “Energy Transition”? What outcomes would an investment in an “Energy Transition” project require in order to meet your requirements, or to fit with the science?…
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
– Milton Friedman
It was supposed to be a ten year window to allow commercial nuclear power to prove its economy and safety. But the Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act of 1957 (Price-Anderson Act), capping damage claims and establishing a fund “to protect the public and to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry,” is still with us today, some two-thirds of a century later.
The 1957 law’s limit of $60 million per plant (about 10x in today’s dollars) was supplemented by an up-to-$500 million indemnification guarantee per accident. [1] These provisions, vetted among the parties, was just enough to remove a major barrier to the commercialization of nuclear power for electric utilities and for Westinghouse, GE, and others to build.…