Search Results for: "Jevons"
Relevance | DateW. S. Jevons (1865) on Coal (Memo to Obama, Part III)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 31, 2009 5 CommentsEach renewable energy, Jevons explained, was either too scarce or too unreliable for the new industrial era. The energy savior was coal, a concentrated, plentiful, storable, and transportable source of energy that was England’s bounty for the world.
There was no going back to renewables. Coal–and that included oil and gas manufactured from coal–was the new master of the master resource of energy in the 18th and 19th centuries. As Jevons stated in the introduction (p. viii) of The Coal Question (1865):…
Continue ReadingW. S. Jevons (1865) on Waterpower, Biomass, and Geothermal (Memo to Obama, Part II)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 30, 2009 4 CommentsW. S. Jevons in his early day recognized a central problem of windpower for powering machinery–intermittency. The wind does not always blow, and it cannot be known when this will occur, making an even flow of power (as from conventional sources) impossible short of cost-prohibitive battery backup.
What about the other renewables of the day: water power, biomass, and geothermal?…
Continue ReadingW. S. Jevons (1865) on Windpower (Memo to Obama, Part I)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 28, 2009 21 CommentsThe most important book ever written on energy economics was published in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question (London: Macmillan and Company). This classic is out of print but available in its entirety on the Internet. It is well worth reading. The book marks the birth of an entire discipline, and Jevons’s remarkably sophisticated treatment of energy sustainability remains pertinent today. In a real sense, the Biden approach to energy was refuted by the insight of W. S. Jevons almost 150 years ago.
Jevons makes four points regarding windpower. …
Continue ReadingPermanent Tax Subsidy? Solar’s 15 extensions
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 4, 2024 No Comments“But nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo, 1983, p. 115)
“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.” (Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, 1979, p. 49)
What was said in a previous post regarding wind power’s 14 extensions of the Production Tax Credit also applies to solar power’s Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and its preceding tax favors. From 1978 to the present (46 years), 15 extensions belie the industry’s age-old claims of almost being competitive. Remember the New York Times’ declaration in 1994 (per Enron) that solar was “competitive” with fossil fuels? Remember Solyndra? Joe Romm in 2011: “It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”…
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