[Editor note: This post was prepared by Mary Hutzler, Dan Simmons, et al. for the Town Hall blog at the Institute for Energy Research, a free-market ‘all-energy-all-the-time’ think tank.]

“The federal government is ultimately responsible for the long-term … consistent [energy] policy…. A clean energy portfolio standard is one example of a potential policy that the administration and Congress should discuss.… In this time of fiscal austerity I propose such a standard.”

–Secretary Steven Chu

With each passing day, the odds of Congress passing a Renewable Electricity Standard grow more and more dim. But Energy Secretary Chu, Senator Graham, and others are now promoting a similar mandate under a new name. Their old vinegar/new bottle effort should be exposed and rejected as the wrong path for energy policy.

Instead of a renewable electricity mandate, Chu, Graham, et al.…

Next year, Republicans will be the majority party in the House of Representatives, which means they’ll hold the committee chairmanships and run the hearings. They’ll have opportunities aplenty to review the Obama administration’s global warming policies and the alarmist “science” that supposedly justifies cap-and-trade, renewable energy mandates, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. 

They would do well to study how in the 105th and 106th Congresses, a GOP House committee chairman from Missouri single handedly debunked the Clinton-Gore administration’s economic analysis of the Kyoto Protocol. 

Kyotoism: Down but Not Yet Out

Politically, the last eighteen months have been remarkable. In June 2009, the House passed H.R. 2454, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” popularly known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Waxman-Markey’s passage was the culmination of a 20-year PR/lobbying campaign waged by U.N.…

The headlines were abuzz last month following Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s talk at the National Press Club where he dubbed the global race for clean energy our new “Sputnik Moment” and warned that the U.S. risked falling behind other countries. In this imaginary race, our competition is no longer the Soviet Union, but China, which now leads in the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels.

The Sputnik analogy is inappropriately applied for obvious reasons. The U.S. space program of the mid-twentieth century was an outgrowth of our military at a time when the United States and Soviet Russia were researching long-range ballistic missiles. The program was a high-cost, high-risk venture that never achieved economies of scale, nor was it intended to. There’s no question the race advanced us technologically and the productization of its research benefited generations of Americans.…

Building on yesterday’s Q&A on the realities of windpower, Part II has our heroine Jane discussing energy matters with her town supervisor:

Viewers are asking good questions about why I did or didn’t do such-and-such with the initial animated video. So here’s some background on making such a video as a teaching tool for wind activists around the country.

Making a Video

There are severe software restrictions when making these seemingly simple videos. For instance:…