One dumb government intervention in energy markets typically begets another, as special interests lobby to counteract the unintended (although not unforeseen) consequences of some previous intervention they championed. The federal ethanol mandate, also known as the renewable fuel standard (RFS), provides a recent example.

Thanks to this Soviet-style production quota system, which Congress created in 2005 and expanded in 2007, daily corn ethanol production in February increased by about 17,000 barrels to 647,000 barrels per day, despite weak motor-fuel demand and poor to negative profit margins for ethanol producers. 

Unsurprisingly, inventories of unsold ethanol increased by 1.5 million barrels in February and about 20% of new capacity added last year is idle. An ethanol glut is one of the factors that have bankrupted several ethanol companies. Other factors include high feedstock (corn) prices in 2008–itself a consequence of the mandate—and the collapse of crude oil and gasoline prices in 2009.…

“Creative destruction results from verdicts at the intersection of supply and demand. Outside of the free market, energy elitism has created a political market, a sub-industry whose activity results from special tax favors, government grants, and/or mandates.”

Creative destruction, a term popularized by Joseph Schumpeter, is the market process whereby 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.

Energy is the story of creative destruction. Coal gas and later coal oil replaced a variety of animal and vegetable oils, including whale oil, camphene oil, and stearin oil. Crude (mineral) oil then displaced manufactured (coal) oil, just as later natural gas would displace manufactured (coal) gas.…

“And this is just the beginning. Large-scale deployment of ‘renewables’ will result in an ecological disaster.” (Hans Wolkers, PhD., below)

Climate alarmists are having a hard time on the business social media giant LinkedIn. Previous posts have documented the one-sided alarmism of Skeptical Science; a case of climate thuggery; an ad hominem backfire; time-series data evasion; ExxonMobil “whistleblowing“; and Greenpeace and Enron.

It is time to add to this list. The Climate Reality Project posted this message and picture on LinkedIn:

We have a responsibility to lead the way in advocating for hashtag#cleanenergy and climate action. Together, we will create a brighter future for ourselves and generations to come. hashtag#LeadOnClimate hashtag#saveourplanet

I responded: “That child must wonder about industrializing the green space. Pretty gross….”…

Energy is ubiquitous to modern industrial life. It is the fourth factor of production in addition to the textbook triad of land, labor, and capital. Julian Simon coined the term master resource to describe the resource of resources, energy.

Energy as been recognized as a unique driver of economic activity and human betterment for almost two centuries–about as long as carbon-based energies came to be recognized as a sea change from the inherently dilute, unreliable renewable energies of before. The Industrial Revolution was enabled by coal, the energy required by the new machinery, as W. S. Jevons so brilliantly saw in his day.

The quotations below, some classic, resonate as well or better today than ever before. They are as ‘right” as the peak-oil quotations (compiled here and here) have been wrong.…