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Electricity Statism and Misdirection: Introducing Doug Lewin’s “Texas Energy and Power Newsletter” (well-funded propaganda)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 5, 2023

“The supply-side reliability fix offered by the Texas Senate is a direct response to the February 2021 carnage created by, yes, wind and solar taking over a once reliable grid. It is a hard-wired governmental solution to a soft-wired governmental problem. But there is an alternative. Free markets, anyone?”

The big guns of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation are out to prevent Texas from shoring up its grid from the cancer of wind and solar. Out of the blue, the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter (Substack) appears, with the message that renewables are not the problem but the solution, complemented by, in Doug Lewin’s words, “Fast-acting reciprocating engines, batteries, geothermal power, and demand response [to] help with both resource adequacy and operational flexibility.”

In denial about the wounded supply side–where the obvious solution is to demote (government-enabled) intermittent resources–the answer is “smart meters” in the home so Big Brother can oversee demand.…

A Try at Electric Vehicles: Samuel Insull a Century Ago

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 3, 2023

Ed. Note: The current government-led drive for battery electric vehicles (EVs) can be informed by history. In the 1890s through about 1920, electric vehicles went from market dominance to market rejection, outcompeted by the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. This post, and others at MasterResource (here and here), revisit the early history of the electric vehicle.

Electricity was the early front runner for horseless carriages, and the great man of electric utilities, Samuel Insull, got out in front. In 1898, Chicago Edison opened battery-charging stations and offered promotional rates to jumpstart this market. “Load-leveling” rates meant cheap off-peak charging at wholesale to serve this embryonic market.

In 1899, Insull became president of the $25 million Illinois Electrical Vehicle Transportation Company, the western branch of the Columbia Automobile Company of New York, to market electric cabs and carriages in Chicago.…

Wind-financed Exposé against Kevon Martis Backfires

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 1, 2023

“Delegitimization is a favorite tactic of the climate alarmist/forced energy transformation lackeys. They cannot conceive that a moral, reasonable person can be against a scheme to impose ‘clean’ energy on townships (really ‘machine up’ the great outdoors). Kevon Martis proves them wrong, and they cannot accept it. What will they come up with next?”

Kevon Martis has been profiled numerous times at MasterResource. His grassroots-truth-to-wind-power has been a game changer in Michigan and elsewhere. And he is a regular fellow, the epitome of the hard-working, successful American.

A news story by Michigan Capitol Confidential (Mackinac Center for Public Policy) tells the backstory of an attempted ‘hit job’ on Martis by a Leviathan. The article by Jamie Hope (March 28, 2023), “Wind industry declares war on Michigan man,” is one that should resonate with every citizen of every town threatened by government-enabled industrial wind turbines and/or solar arrays.…

The Infrastructure Overload of Renewable Energies

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 25, 2023

Resourceful Earth Day: Fred Smith on Julian Simon

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 22, 2023

Federal Fiscal Reform: The Economists’ Letter

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 21, 2023

Solar Optimism and Coal Alarmism a Century Ago

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 19, 2023

“Degrowth” (Last refuge for climate alarmists?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 18, 2023

Battery Weight: Hidden Costs of EVs versus ICEs

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 16, 2023

On RCP 8.5 IPCC Exaggeration

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 12, 2023