Ed. Note: This post from 12 years ago recounts the political origins of the Texas wind power boom. It is also the prehistory of the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021. Note that critics of Texas’s intervention warned of reliability problems.

“Texas is the nation’s leader in wind energy thanks to our long-term commitment to bolstering renewable energy sources and diversifying the state’s energy portfolio.”

– Rick Perry, Texas Governor

“Our representatives [in the Texas Legislature] now have less than six weeks to pass the best of nearly 100 bills that have been introduced on clean power and green jobs. These energy efficiency and renewable energy bills set the stage for rebuilding, repowering and renewing our state’s economy during tough times. They will build a sustainable future for Texas.”

– Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Public Citizen, April 2009

As reported by Russell Gold in the Wall Street Journal, (April 23, 2009), Texas, which has the strictest renewable energy mandate in the country, is about to increase its quota for the third time.…

I have noted many times how the old hometown Houston Chronicle had gone from Left to Hard Left on energy and climate policy in the last decade or more. (Also see here and here.)

I am been a victim, with enough op-ed rejections (as in no response) to discourage me from submission.

But from time to time, I write a letter-to-the-editor on some egregiously biased energy piece. Chris Tomlinson, whose mind is about as closed and pen as vitriolic as they come (bitterness?), gets my goat in particular.

Dry Hole

And so several weeks ago, I sent this letter in, which got no response or publication regarding: “Conservative group takes on climate change” by Chris Tomlinson (Houston Chronicle, July 5, 2021).

The latest Republican interest in climate change activism remains a far cry from 2008 when a televised commercial had Newt Gingrich on a couch with Nancy Pelosi extolling cap-and-trade “to address climate change.”

“‘I think ultimately we’re headed for an era in which my grandchildren will be driving electric cars, powered primarily by renewable energy,’ [George W.] Bush said. Oil, he said, brings economic, environmental and national-security problems.

– Kate Galbraith, “W. is for Wind,” Texas Tribune, May 25, 2010.

Let history note that Enron and Texas governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry created an industry that consumers in a free market did not. With the help of the federal Production Tax Credit of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, since renewed 13 times, as well as the $6.9 billion CREZ transmission line, Texas became the wind power state on the backs of national taxpayers and in-state ratepayers.

Bush’s “America is Addicted to Oil” reference in his 2006 State of the Union address did not come out of nowhere.…

Note: On this day in 2001, the politically correct, all-things-to-all-people Enron entered the workweek in bankruptcy. Monday December 2nd was my last day at the company after a 16-year career there, as it was for several thousand other employees.

Enron, a unique story of corporate strategy and governance gone wrong, has been misinterpreted by the Progressive mainstream. The company represented the failure of political capitalism, not market capitalism. Its lessons extend to image environmentalism and renewable energy hyperbole, as I document in my book series on the company, as well as in shorter articles.

Reprinted below for the historical record is an email from John Jennrich, founding editor of Natural Gas Week, to Enron author John Emshwiller and myself. Jennrich discusses Enron’s role in the development of the modern natural gas market.…