“[CEO Bernard Looney] and other BP executives have suggested that the company could play down future investment in areas including solar energy and offshore wind, according to some of the people. Discussions about the company’s direction have caused rifts inside BP over the past year, people close to the company say.”

The Wall Street Journal published a very revealing piece yesterday. “Bernard Looney seeks to sharpen strategic focus, with less emphasis on environmental goals,” reported Jenny Stasburg (February 1, 2023).

She begins:

Chief Executive Bernard Looney plans to dial back elements of the oil giant’s high-profile push into renewable energy, according to people familiar with recent discussions.

Mr. Looney has said he is disappointed in the returns from some of the oil giant’s renewable investments and plans to pursue a narrower green-energy strategy, the people said.

Ed. Note: In mid-2019, MasterResource published a post on a notable political capitalist in the history of the energy industry, the late James E. Rogers, longtime CEO of Duke Energy. With that company’s rolling blackouts (“load shedding”) over Christmas weekend for a half-million customers “for the first time in the utility’s history“, it is worth remembering the damage done to free markets and electric reliability by the political track chosen by one executive. (The post is reproduced below with minor edits.)

At 41 [in 1988], [James Rogers] was named CEO of PSI Energy Inc., a small, financially troubled Indiana utility. Breaking ranks with others in the electric-power industry, he supported legislation putting caps on sulfur-dioxide emissions. “Some of my guys thought I was drinking the environmental Kool-Aid,” he said later.

“In my period at Cato (1990–present), “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’“, is probably our most important Policy Analysis in the energy/environment area. Bradley’s thorough review and analysis (60 pages, 325 footnotes) was a real pushback against the viability of ‘green’ energy in theory and practice.”

– Jerry Taylor, Senior Fellow and Director, Natural Resource Studies, Cato Institute, 2012

On the fifteenth [25th] anniversary of “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’” (yesterday’s post), I recall, with pride, a lot of hard work that went into supplying the author with information about California’s wind and solar experience.

At the time I was working in the belly of the beast, the California Energy Commission (CEC) in Sacramento. The Commission was a major proponent of all things renewable, almost to the point of fanaticism.…

[Ed. note: On August 27, 1997, the Cato Institute published Policy Analysis #280, which criticized the government push to subsidize politically correct renewable energies. This review by Jon Boone, published ten years ago, is reprinted below.

“The policy implication of [a thorough examination of renewable technologies] is, stop throwing good money after bad. All renewable energy subsidies from all levels of government should cease.”

Such is the conclusion voiced today by a rising chorus of energy experts, economists, even politicians, after many years of failed renewables projects and more expensive utility bills in the growing shadow of a $16 trillion national debt ($140,000 per taxpayer). But, remarkably, fifteen years have passed since Rob Bradley crafted this statement for the Cato Institute as the bottom line of his comprehensive six-part policy alarum, Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’

An Opening Shot

Few knew about or shared Bradley’s concerns at the time.…