“I am fearful that electricity will be turned from an affordable, thoughtless necessity into the opposite.”
“Electricity would/should be inexpensive enough where folks don’t want to hassle with saving a dollar here or there [via a ‘smart’ meter] if it requires any sort of thought or potential inconvenience.”
The wolf is at the door with electricity–and it has virtually nothing to do with the free market but a lot to do with government intervention guided by experts/regulators, and planners. Call it analytic failure and government failure, not market failure.
Background: Forcing intermittent renewable energy on the grid has compromised reliability directly and indirectly. Directly, wind and solar disappear at the peak. Indirectly, renewables with the lowest marginal cost (but highest average cost) displace the reliables, natural gas but also coal and ruin profitability margins otherwise.…
“In terms of affordability, availability and scalability – methanol and ethanol are the best prospects to [displace oil in transportation] quickly.”
– John Hofmeister, quoted in “Q&A: He Ran Shell Oil Co. – and He Thinks We Use Too Much Crude,” Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2014.
“Retired Shell Oil President John Hofmeister will say practically anything to get quoted in the news media, presumably in the hope of raising his public profile.” (John Donovan, 2016)
It was with some relief that I learned about the passing of a 1) oil executive who never should have been one; 2) mega-promoter who shamed his profession with vitriolic messaging; and 3) thorn in the side of free-market energy education.
Background
John Hofmeister (1948–2021) combined flawed views on energy with ultra-political correctness. How Royal Dutch Shell could have promoted its human resources director (1997–2005) to run Shell Oil Company (2005–2008) is a story of how one contra-capitalist act leads to another.…
“Replacing gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles will increase demand for power … [but] Texas’ grid lacks the transmission capabilities…. And without more batteries to store power when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, it will be difficult for renewables to become a stable source of electric generation.”
“The electric vehicle maker Canoo announced in late June it would build a large factory in Oklahoma instead of in North Texas, citing the Lone Star State’s unreliable energy infrastructure as one reason.”
– Houston Chronicle, July 5, 2021, B4.
Renewables cause “greenouts” by disappearing at the peak and wounding conventional (‘reliable’) generation otherwise.
And greenouts are putting electricity for transportation in doubt–and discouraging new business from relocating to PUCT/ERCOT’s Texas.
Read it for yourself: Shelby Webb in “Houston’s energy transition not likely to be smooth.”…