A Free-Market Energy Blog

North Face vs. Energy Reality, Business Civility

By Adam Anderson -- December 17, 2020

Editor Note: Adam Anderson, CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions, wrote the letter below to Steve Rendle, CEO of North Face’s parent, VF Corporation, in response to the latter’s refusal to fulfill a shirt order for the oil and gas company. Mr. Rendle has not responded to date. The title above was chosen by the editors, not the author.

“I think this stance by [North Face to not fulfill our shirt order] is counterproductive virtue signaling…. We should be celebrating the benefits of what oil and gas do to enable the outdoors lifestyle your brands embrace. Without Oil and Gas there would be no market for nor ability to create the products your company sells.”

I am proud to be the CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions.  We are an industry leader providing tools and technologies to service oil and natural gas producers worldwide. …

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Exxon’s Algae Dry Hole ($300 million greenwashing failure continuing)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 16, 2020

“That points to another potential challenge [to algae fuel commercialization]: the availability of land. NREL’s model for a commercial-scale algae facility calls for 5,000 acres of open-air algae ponds plus an additional 2,000 acres for support facilities. Yet all that land would produce only a limited amount of fuel.” [E&E News, below[

“Algae nevertheless serve a purpose for the company, [Robert] Brulle said. ‘They’re not selling you algae. They’re selling you, there’s good guys at Exxon,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to regulate us, you don’t need to sue us. We’re good guys.’ [E&E news, below]

Although nothing like the fall of once mighty General Electric (GE) under Jeff Immelt, the post-Lee Raymond Exxon Mobil is a sad corporate governance story of missed market opportunities and a wrong turn toward political correctness.…

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Yesterday’s Eco-complaints; Today’s ‘Planet of the Humans’

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 15, 2020

“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . .  Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.” [Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), p. 454.]

Planet of the Humans‘ expose is long overdue.” [below]

Big Green, Inc. has been challenged by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs’s “Planet of the Humans.” Importantly, the multi-million-view documentary brought together the inconvenient truths of (politically correct) renewable energies, as well as batteries for electric vehicles.

In a recent post for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), “Long-standing Eco-warnings Against Renewables Reinforce ‘Planet of the Humans’,” I documented how many mainstream eco-authors forthrightly talked about these problems. I noted:

Moore/Gibbs memorialized what had long been recognized by the environmental intelligentsia.

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Trump’s Last Regulatory White Paper (Fall 2020 Regulatory Plan)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 14, 2020
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Energy Efficiency Policy Under Trump (Part III: Litigation)

By -- December 10, 2020
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Energy Efficiency Policy Under Trump (Part II: EERE’s Process Rule & Overhaul)

By -- December 9, 2020
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Energy Efficiency Policy Under Trump (Part I: A Mixed Bag in the Swamp)

By -- December 8, 2020
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Gas Ban Economics 101

By Kenneth Costello -- December 7, 2020
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Ayn Rand, Energy, and Enron: Five Questions

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 3, 2020
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Remembering Enron (Bankruptcy & layoffs 19-years ago today)

By John Jennrich -- December 2, 2020
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