“The Icebreaker Windpower project can be seen as entirely moot: there will be no meaningful benefit to Ohio and its citizens. The chimera of jobs and a boosted economy will never become material; the obvious loss to bird and bat life scarcely needs a comment.”

The heat is on for supporters of the six-turbine LEEDCo Icebreaker Windpower project offshore of Cleveland.

A show of “yeas” at the November 8^th public meeting of the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) at Cleveland City Hall failed to make a dent in the logical and passionate opposition. A few dozen supporters at a public meeting is not material for a facility that is uneconomical and environmentally invasive–and unneeded except for a poster child of what was Obama energy policy.

It is surprising that the OPSB has not closed the file on the now called “Icebreaker Windpower.”…

“[I]t is utterly futile, on a priori grounds, even to think that wind power can make any significant contribution to world energy supply, let alone to emissions reductions, without ruining the planet. As the extraordinary polymath Sir David MacKay pointed out, the arithmetic is against such unreliable renewables.”

– Matt Ridley, “Wind is an Irrelevance to the Energy and Climate Debate“(May 15, 2017)

An op-ed and blog post several months ago by Matt Ridley is still making the rounds. A great thinker, Ridley gets to the essence of things. He is hard to ignore, even by his critics. Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010), is a seminal contribution in the Julian Simon tradition. (His other work can be found here.)

Here are some salient excerpts from his op-ed/post:

“[Wind power’s] contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance.

“Given Tesla’s multiple business lines – leading edge EVs, auto financing, solar roof tiles, battery storage projects, and tunnel boring – more investors lump the company in with technology companies, meaning investors focus on the ‘dream’ rather than the results.”

“In 2016, the global motor vehicle population of cars and trucks was estimated at 1.4 billion, but just 2 million of them are EVs, or a 0.0014% market share.”

After spending three months as the world’s most valuable auto manufacturer, Tesla Inc.’s (TSLA-Nasdaq) share price has fallen due to perceived problems with its business model. Tesla reported its second quarter shipments at the end of June, results that were not as robust as many investors had hoped (being at the low end of management’s guidance).

As the quarter ended, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted details about the timing of production and delivery for the new Model 3 units, the company’s electric vehicle (EV) targeting the mass market.…

“Until last week, Richard Nixon was responsible for the two worst-conceived American energy policies. On June 1, Donald Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords displaced all competitors as the worst presidential initiative on energy in our nation’s history.”

– Hakes, “Quitting the Paris Climate Pact in Historical Perspective” (June 6, 2017)

“Historian Hakes got it exactly backwards. President Nixon violated economic law by imposing federal pricing on energy; President Trump removed an impetus to federal pricing for carbon-dioxide (CO2). Only if Trump had stayed in Paris would the Nixon analogy come into play.”

His bio line at Real Clear Energy reads: Jay Hakes is an energy historian who has worked for three presidents on energy issues. Experience aside, Mr. Hakes made just about the worst analogy possible regarding Donald Trump’s courageous decision to withdraw the United States from the redistributionist, toothless, ill-conceived Paris climate agreement.…