In a previous post, CO2 Cap-and-Trade Meets the (China) Dragon, I described China’s rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a “one-country negation” to the Waxman-Markey climate bill (HR 2454). “The expected growth of coal-fired generation in China over the next 20 years will result in a net increase in CO₂ emissions from their power sector of more than ten times that of reduced U.S. emissions due to coal constraints,” I concluded. This is good, not bad, insofar as dung and wood are terrible things to burn.

Given China’s path, unilateral U.S. actions like Waxman-Markey are futile, symbolic measures. Indeed, U.S. industry would move to China to transfer emissions (called “leakage“) under a stringent U.S. carbon-dioxide regime.

A PR Moment from China

The Chinese government recently announced its intent to reduce the energy efficiency of its economy (GJ/$GDP) by 20%, invest something like $586 billion in renewable energy technologies, improve the power grid and other infrastructure by 2020, and phase out its older, less efficient coal-fired power plants with newer models, including supercritical (higher pressure boiler) technologies.…

[Editor note: Ken Maize, a long-time energy analyst, joins MasterResource for the first time (see his bio at the end of this post). A MR previous post by Robert Michaels has questioned ‘smart metering,’ part of the ‘smart grid’ concept]

However politically incorrect my conclusion, I’m convinced that the “smart grid” is not smart and even dumb. It diverts attention from what is a more important objective–a strong grid. And it politicizes in the very area where we need more consumer-driven, free-market incentives.

Following the Northeast grid collapse of 2003, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) popped out the smart grid concept, largely the brainchild of then EPRI’s CEO Kurt Yeager. The blueprint was for an interconnected intelligent network reaching from the generating station to your toaster, able to talk up-and-down the line, matching supply and demand seamlessly.…

I have previously described Exxon Mobil as the anti-Enron. In an opinion-page editorial in yesterday’s Houston Chronicle, I contrasted the two companies in terms of both energy strategy and public policy.

More could be said than is in the editorial (reprinted below). Enron’s first fraud, engineered by Andrew Fastow, came with the purchase of Zond Corporation, which was renamed Enron Wind Corporation and is now part of GE Energy. (This complicated story about a “qualifying facility” under federal energy law is told in McLean and Elkind’s The Smartest Guys in the Room, pp. 166–67 and Kurt Eichenwald’s Conspiracy of Fools, pp. 142–44.)

Enron Energy Services, the energy outsourcing division of Enron that so excited environmentalists (including Joe Romm, now blogging at Climate Progress), was one of the company’s biggest frauds.…

Yesterday’s post at MasterResource described the failure of the 81st Texas Legislature (aka the “solar session”) to enact a new renewables mandate. Other big news is the rejection of an initial renewable (read solar, biomass) mandate by the Florida Legislature, as well as a sweetheart deal desired by Florida Power & Light (FPL). Nuclear and offshore drilling also came into play in the legislative debate as tie-in’s in the political environment.

All this is instructive for the current federal push for a National Electricity Standard (NES). Florida would be a loser in any national NES–especially given the prohibitive cost of converting sunshine into electricity in any sort of a major way. The age-old promises of solar breakthroughs are a mirage, and Enron’s 1994 contrived Solarex splash should not be forgotten.

As reported by John Dorschner in the Miami Herald, Florida rejected a year-long push by environmental groups and their business allies to enact a renewable quota in the state.…