“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).…

H.R. 1 can be characterized as pro-free market and deregulatory. But it is only a start. Free market reforms will ultimately require repealing dusty old federal laws from the New Deal (Public Utility Holding Company Act; Federal Power Act; Natural Gas Act) and laws before and after…. At the same time, numerous states should implement free market reforms by repealing and amending laws.

The Lower Energy Costs Act just passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support. Senate confirmation is not expected to pass it, and the Biden Administration has promised a veto. But it is a start, a placeholder, for pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, pro-freedom policy reform to come.

H.R. 1, in the words of its sponsors, “restores American energy independence by:

• Increasing domestic energy production
• Reforming the permitting process for all industries
• Reversing anti-energy policies advanced by the Biden Administration
• Streamlining energy infrastructure and exports
• Boosting the production and processing of critical minerals

A summary of the Bill follows:

H.R.

Ed. note: The loss of impartial intellectual inquiry and scholarship at Harvard University continues, as indicated by an upcoming article in Harvard Environmental Law Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2024, “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths.” Given this trend, the contributions of a pioneering Harvard business historian, who also broke through the ranks of a male-only faculty, are worth revisiting.

“What we have done is … to put business in its broader political and cultural setting…. We are not out to defend business, but to try to do an impartial, scholarly investigation of an important American institution.”

 – Henrietta Larson (1894–1983), Harvard business historian

For many decades, corporate histories were dominated by simplistic notions of big-is-bad and capitalist exploitation. Ida Tarbell documented many innovations and economies from John D.…

“Fossil fuel-supporting Chicken Littles have done their best to spread fear of renewable energy, warning that relying on wind, solar and storage would lead to blackouts and economic devastation.”  (Tomlinson, pre-Storm Uri)

“The Republicans’ goal [with new legislation] is to keep coal plants open and burn more natural gas … [and] wreck the climate….” (Tomlinson, today) 

Chris Tomlinson rides again–bashing gas/coal-based grid reliability in favor of more wind, more solar, enormous battery reliance, and government demand-side management to ration demand to (wounded)  supply.

The latest is his editorial in the Houston Chronicle last week, “Lawmakers to Send Electric Bill Much  Higher” (March 22, 2023). Rather than admitting that the unreliables have wounded (and will further wound) the reliables because of government intervention and planning (see here, here, and here), he  fusses at fossil fuels and muckrakes (hypocritically [1]) against the rich.…