Search Results for: "Enron, wind power"
Relevance | DateA Federal Energy Board? (Hofmeister’s Idea Is Old, Bad)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 4, 2013 8 Comments“Fundamentally, what is to stop a FEB from supporting an energy rationing scheme, say a carbon tax or CO2 cap-and-trade program, to ‘save the climate’ or ‘level the playing field’ for wind, solar, and other beggar energies? Hofmeister might oppose such programs, but a FEB is ‘independent’ to do so. Anti-energy forces such as the “green lobby” and current Washington establishment will not surrender or retreat but likely become emboldened by centralized power in a federal energy board.”
John Hofmeister, formerly president of Houston-based Shell Oil (the U.S. side of Royal Dutch Shell), has been an active voice for energy policy reform. Upon retiring from Shell in 2008, he founded Citizens for Affordable Energy (CAE), an educational nonprofit advocating “sound U.S. energy security solutions for the nation, including a range of affordable energy supplies, efficiency improvements, essential infrastructure, sustainable environmental policies and public education on energy issues.”…
Continue Reading4Q-2012: Continued Progress at MasterResource
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 18, 2013 1 CommentMasterResource, which turned four last month, recorded its best quarter in history with 116,877 views, a 20 percent increase from 4Q-2011. We reached as high as #7 of 9,984 “green blogs” tracked by Technorati in the quarter and currently stand at #40.
With one in-depth post per workday, with occasional weekend fare, MasterResource is the leading voice for free-market, science-of-liberty thought in energy and related environmental issues.
MasterResource features many different writers, some academics, some think-tank analysts, and others citizen-activists. Some areas of emphasis and impact may be mentioned.
Inconvenient Truths of Industrial Wind
Literally dozens of our writers have made MasterResource a leader of the windpower educational movement. Turning wind into electricity is wholly government-enabled; even NIMBYSM that might be criticized in other contexts is justified given that government mandates and special, outsized subsidies enables the rural invasion of wind machinery.…
Continue ReadingCreative Energy Destruction: Renewables Lost Long Ago
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 15, 2013 3 CommentsIt is the second most famous term in the history of economics after Adam Smith’s metaphor invisible hand. It describes the competitive market process in the real world. It was coined in 1942 by the famous, iconoclastic Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who would reminisce:
I set out to become the greatest lover in Vienna, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the greatest economist in the world. Alas, for the illusions of youth…. As a horseman, I was never really first rate.
“Creative Destruction” …
The best businesses rise to the top in consumer-driven markets. Less competitive firms contract and even disappear. Creative destruction is the process whereby the bad is eliminated, the better replaces the good, and past performance gives way to new strategies and victors. No firm is forever, and financial loss is a characteristic of capitalism, as is the more used term profit.…
Continue ReadingAs the Kyoto Protocol Dies, Remember Those Who Called It (Part I)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 26, 2012 3 Comments“It’s the weakest text I have ever seen. It’s a travesty of the process and commitments. It can be summed up in two words: We’ll talk.”
– Farukh Khan, Pakistan lead negotiator, quoted in Lisa Friedman, “After A Bruising Parley, Climate Conference Veers Toward a Successor to Kyoto Pact.” E&E Climate News, December 19, 2012.
“The total efforts of the last 20 years of climate policy has likely reduced global emissions by less than 1 percent, or about 250 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.”
– Bjorn Lomborg, “Climate Course Correction.” Foreign Policy, October 2012.
Notable voices with the conviction to speak truth to power predicted the futility of the global global-warming agreement of 1997, better known as the Kyoto Protocol. Of course, the rent-seekers applauded the prospect of new competitive space–such as Enron with its seven profit-centers.…
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