“Environmentalists Against Wind Turbines” (international reporting)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 15, 2021 2 Comments

“For those who love the great outdoors and make a conscious effort to conserve our natural resources, here is a place to share news and articles about how wind turbines threaten the things we hold dear.”

It has 1,500 followers and deserves a million five. Environmentalists Against Wind Turbines (EAWP) is a great resource for national and international developments regarding the fits and perils of industrial wind turbines. This site offers a few original commentary posts but is mostly publication news that is of great service to the pro-landscape, pro-energy, pro-free-market energy community.

Kudos to Christine Morabito for her administration of the site. Thank the members for posting news updates.

The About section reads:

For those who love the great outdoors and make a conscious effort to conserve our natural resources, here is a place to share news and articles about how wind turbines threaten the things we hold dear.

Continue Reading

Nuclear Power: A Free Market View

By Jane Shaw Stroup -- September 9, 2021 1 Comment

Ed. Note: This interview with Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Jane Shaw Stroup appeared earlier this week at the Liberty and Ecology website of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research. Comments are welcomed, including new questions to clarify the role of nuclear power in a free economy.

Q1. What role should nuclear power have in the years ahead?

A. “Let the market decide” is the straightforward classical-liberal, free-market answer. This means government neutrality in terms of not subsidizing or penalizing one energy technology versus another to determine what, when, where.

The decision to build new capacity, or the decision to operate-versus-retire, should be based on stand-alone economics, without government favor or penalty.

Q2. Under this standard, what is the future of nuclear in the energy mix as far as new capacity?

Continue Reading

“Energy Facism” (Rothbard 1974 speaks to us today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 16, 2021 No Comments

“When the black day of August 15, 1971 arrived, we free-market economists predicted that shortages of all sorts of products would result from the price control…. On the day of the freeze, everything seem[ed] to be functioning smoothly, and so the general mood [was] one of euphoric success.”

“When Tricky Dick imposed Phase I in August, 1971, price inflation was proceeding at something like a rate of 4% per year. Now, after 4 1/2 ‘phases’ of varying degrees of price dictation, and continued monetary inflation by the government, we are suffering a price inflation rate of something like 10% per year.”

August 15, 1971, was the day that President Richard Nixon shocked the country, and indeed the world, with a price control order. Everything—all goods and services, as well as wages and interest rates—were frozen for 90 days.…

Continue Reading

Book Review: Angwin’s ‘Shorting the Grid’

By Michael Giberson -- August 12, 2021 2 Comments

“By the end of the book, I could no longer shake the feeling she just might be right on the big thing. RTOs may be producing an increasingly fragile grid.”

Meredith Angwin’s Shorting the Grid is a likeable, sometimes irritating book. Or maybe an irritating, sometimes likeable book. I cannot decide. Angwin’s book offers an introduction to and assessment of the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) that since the late 1990s have come to coordinate use of the transmission grid for about two-thirds of the electric power consumed in the United States.

Her view: RTOs are dominated by insiders who skew the system their direction at every chance, reaping profits while shirking responsibility for reliability. As a result we have an increasingly fragile, unreliable grid.

When Angwin’s book was published in 2020 it may have seemed alarmist.…

Continue Reading

Denton, TX: Grid Reliability Sinks Renewables

By -- August 4, 2021 No Comments Continue Reading

Getting in the Houston Chronicle (back window better than nothing, I guess)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 28, 2021 No Comments Continue Reading

Anger in the Climate Patch: Exchange with a Climate Alarmist/Forced Energy Transformationist

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 26, 2021 6 Comments Continue Reading

‘Smart’ Meters: Big Brother in the Home? (shortages = government rationing

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 8, 2021 1 Comment Continue Reading

Electricity Planning Quagmire: Marginal Cost Pricing & Renewables

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 1, 2021 No Comments Continue Reading

The Institute for Energy Research: Formation and Early History

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 24, 2021 No Comments Continue Reading