“Flush with your cash, utilities tried to build plants with unproven technology; they launched projects with unfinished designs and unrealistic budgets; they misled regulators and the public with schedules that promised bogus completion dates; they hid damning reports from investors and the public; they tried to silence critics and whistleblowers.”
“In the mid-2000s, power companies across the South, including SCANA, NextEra, Duke Energy and Southern Company, had their robust lobbying machines running at full throttle. An energy gold rush had begun…. (- Tony Bartelme, below)
Tony Bartelme, senior projects reporter for the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier wrote an interesting exposé that should be revisited for its relevancy to the problem of utility ratebase economics: “Power Failure: How utilities across the U.S. changed the rules to make big bets with your money” (December 10, 2017; updated December 28, 2022).…
“Methanol has been promoted as an alternative transportation fuel from time to time over the past forty years. In spite of significant efforts to realize the vision of methanol as a practical transportation fuel in the US, such as the California methanol fueling corridor of the 1990s, it did not succeed on a large scale.” ( – Bromberg and Cheng [1])
“[With] U.S. energy policy … there is always a promised solution, usually through a technological wonder, or group of wonders, that will settle America’s energy dilemmas once and for all.” (- Peter Grossman, U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, 2013, p. x.)
The history of government and energy in the U.S. is important for its many lessons for public policy today. In light of the California Energy Commission taking on gasoline and diesel in California today (see yesterday’s post), a look back at a prior savior from oil is merited.…
“We are fast approaching the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” (Ayn Rand)
“What the bill is really about is giving more artificial advantage to electric vehicles over the internal combustion engine. Higher the prices, the better, while deflecting the blame to Big Oil.”
When it comes to energy, the California government has termite aspirations. Having wounded its electricity grid with centrally planned wind and solar reliance, the state is legislating vile-and-spite toward the mainstays of the transportation sector: gasoline and diesel.
Consumer preference for the most affordable, plentiful, dependable energies? No standing in this state. Taxpayer neutrality? Absent. Government knows best, with today’s intervention adding to the issues created by prior intervention.
Already, taxes and other mandates have made the Golden State’s pump prices the highest in the country: $4.83/gallon, almost 40 percent higher than the national average.…