A Free-Market Energy Blog

Tax Bill Attacked for Loss of Electric Car Subsidy—But Most Americans Don’t Want Electric Cars

By Steve Goreham -- November 20, 2017

“It’s clear that most Americans don’t want electric cars. In 2016, US car and light vehicle sales rose to 17.6 million units. After eight years of promotion, subsidies, mandates, and tax credits by the Obama Administration and the ZEV states, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) sales totaled only 159,000 units in 2016, less than one percent of US car and light vehicle sales.”

“If regulators continue to try to force adoption of cars that consumers don’t want to buy, look for declining new car sales and a robust used-car market for traditional gasoline and diesel models.”

The Republican-led tax bill in the House of Representatives proposes to eliminate the $7,500 tax credit for purchases of electric cars. Green advocates of “electrification” are already attacking the bill for the loss of the subsidy.…

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Where Good Is Bad: ‘The Energy of Slaves’ (Oil as ‘servitude’?)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 16, 2017

“To many of us, our current spending of fossil fuels appears as morally correct as did human slavery to the Romans or the Atlantic slave trade to seventeenth-century British businessmen.”

– Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2012), p. xi.

A ran across a 2012 book by Andrew Nikiforuk, The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation and published by Greystone Books.

In it, I encountered a unique (okay, strange) application of Malthusianism to energy. And I found the author taking the present author head on. I like that, good or bad.

The thesis of Nikiforuk’s book is that yes, fossil fuels (and oil in particular) has greatly enabled mankind in a multitude of tasks.…

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Secretary Perry’s Hearing (Part II)

By -- November 15, 2017

“We have an politicized “all the above” electricity policy to the detriment of natural gas direct use. If energy diversity for electrical generation is desirable, then alternatives to electricity be also be desirable. This is especially true when considering diversity of energy delivery mechanisms (pipelines and wires) and the fact that customer outages are predominantly due to downed wires, not generation outages.”

Last month, US Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry held a hearing before the House Energy & Commerce Committee. None examined the very important issue of over-electrification.where public policies discriminate against direct-use natural gas.

The concept of an “all-the-above energy policy” was a recurring theme of Secretary Perry’s hearing with the House Energy & Commerce Committee on Thursday October 12 [1] This is a popular fiction; like another of Secretary Perry’s reoccurring themes that energy is not a free market.…

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The “Powering America” Hearings (Part I)

By -- November 14, 2017
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Preferential/Political Dispatch: Rigging the Market Against Baseload Energy

By Donn Dears -- November 13, 2017
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Climate Brainwashing? James Hansen Programs a Grandchild

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 9, 2017
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Are US Vehicle-Mileage Standards Obsolete?

By Steve Goreham -- November 8, 2017
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GOP Tax Plan Resets Big Wind

By -- November 7, 2017
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: November 6, 2017

By -- November 6, 2017
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RFF Rethink on ‘Social Cost of Carbon’: You Have Just Begun (SBC, SCG need to be added)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 2, 2017
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