[The following is a weekly digest of California energy news excerpted from Calwatchdog.com.  This inaugural report will be followed by updates from the world’s 8th largest economy every one-to-two weeks, depending on  developments.   MasterResource welcomes Mr. Lusvardi to our team (bio below).]

California Dems pass pro-fracking bill; CPUC Blacks-Out Green Power Prices from Consumers; Rooftop Solar to Cost Other Customers $1.1 Billion per Year

A Pro-Fracking Bill Disguised as an Anti-Fracking Bill

Can you imagine California’s Democratic-controlled legislature and Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown passing a pro-fracking bill?  Neither could the mainstream media in California that reported state officials had passed an anti-fracking bill on Sept. 20 sponsored by State Senator Fran Pavley (D, Los Angeles County), the leader of the green voting block in both houses of the legislature.

State Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) was reported by green reporter Chris Clarke on his Re-Wire blog at the KCET public television website as requiring:  (1) a scientific assessment of fracking, (2) frackers to apply for permits, (3) fracking to continue while state crafts further regulations, (4) fracking permits to be provided to nearby property owners within 30 days; and (5) regulation of injecting acid into the ground, not fracking per se. …

“[P]ermanence and stability are the cardinal virtues of the legal rules that make private innovation and public progress possible. To my mind there is no doubt that a legal regime that embraced private property and freedom of contract is the only one that in practice can offer that permanence and stability.”

– Richard Epstein. Simple Rules for a Complex World,  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2004, p. x1.

In U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure–and in a recent blog post at MasterResource–I have argued that for government energy policy to be effective it has to be modest—modest especially in what policy can be expected to accomplish.

But for modest policy to be effective, there must be some basic understandings about what energy policy should or should not entail.…

“For more than 60 years, TransCanada has been a leader in the safe and reliable operation of North American energy infrastructure, including a vast array of natural gas and oil pipelines, along with natural gas storage facilities and nuclear, wind, hydro and solar power-generation facilities”  (TransCanada).

“It’s our commitment to you that the Keystone XL pipeline will be the safest pipeline ever built.”

It’s good to have reality on your side. The Keystone XL pipeline has a ready builder and ready customers. It employs state-of-the-art technology. It integrates North America. It transports a precious energy. It is modern transportation to make modern petroleum products for an energy hungry world.

Like the Shell commercial says, Let’s Go!

TransCanada in its series, Just the Facts, recently presented this analysis regarding three key issues: spill response, emergency response, and pipeline integrity.…

“It’s policy, it’s regulation, it’s industry structure and it’s incentives . . . It’s not physics, it’s not chemistry, it’s not even the electric grid. It’s what we decide we want.” – Ron Binz

“Postmodernism … can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

A small victory for consumers and free-market energy policy came yesterday when energy statist Ron Binz withdrew as a nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, D.C.

Binz put the blame on others rather than his own postmodern energy philosophy and coercive energy-policy views, which he unsuccessfully tried to hide before Congress.…