“Two recently approved solar power plants in California ranged from $100 to $200 per megawatt hour, compared to the $16 consumers will pay for natural gas generation. That’s six to twelve times the cost of gas–and for an intermittent supply that must be backed by natural gas to even be usable.” 

As states across the nation ponder what to do next on energy policy, there is no case study more important than California. One of the world’s largest economies, with nearly 30 million inhabitants, California for decades has lived on the progressive edge of American energy policy.

The state’s renewable energy mandate of 33% by 2020 has served as a beacon for anti-fossil fuel advocates nationwide. But as I have written elsewhere: “California isn’t a beacon of progress; it’s a lighthouse, showing the path to disaster.”…

“Ignoring how competitive markets operate–and pretending that wind energy is exempt from the basic rules of economics–will not change the fact that windpower is an expensive, unpredictable resource that cannot compete without enormous public hand-outs. If the PTC were permitted to expired today, the wind industry might be forced to increase its efficiencies and lower project costs, but the effect on electricity prices at large would likely go unnoticed.”

Last fall, utility-giant, Exelon Corp., encouraged Congress to let the federal production tax credit (PTC) expire, citing the subsidy’s distortionary effect on competitive wholesale energy markets. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) slapped back by publicly booting Exelon off its board and unleashing an army of surrogates to control the damage and berate the company for putting its interests first.

The latest attack came July 4th when eco-youth Gabe Elsner, a “public interest advocate” of The Checks and Balances Project, accused Exelon of conspiring with Big Oil to squeeze out cheaper competitors like wind in order to drive up consumer electricity prices and increase profits.…

“The Eagle Ford, still in an early stage of development, may end up being more complex than some of the earlier big resource plays such as the Barnett or Haynesville … Companies from around the world are interested in being part of the Eagle Ford success, a sign that this evolving transformation is global as well as awesome in scope.”

One of the most remarkable sources of gains in U.S. liquids and natural gas production in recent years has come from Texas’s Eagle Ford play, thanks to the application and ongoing refinement of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques. These developments have helped put Texas and North Dakota at the top of the list of regions that have been contributing to the brightening U.S. energy picture.

Oil production in the Eagle Ford, in the southwestern portion of Texas, has gone from a minimal level in 2010 to over 300 thousand barrels per day so far this year, plus another roughly 70 thousand barrels per day of condensates.…

“By concentrating the growing of crops in ever more suitable locations, hydrocarbon-powered long distance trade not only maximized output and drastically lowered prices, but also significantly reduced the environmental impact of agriculture.”

“Turning our back on the global food supply chain and, in the process, reducing the quantity of food produced in the most suitable locations will inevitably result in larger amounts of inferior land being put under cultivation, the outcome of which can only be less output and greater environmental damage.”

An article of faith among local food activists is that modern industrial agriculture damages the environmental more than decentralized food systems. The article of faith is that concentrated impacts are worse than multiple, smaller operations–negative environmental  scale economies, as it were.

This belief is erroneous, creating a gulf between (good) intentions and result.…