“Perhaps in a new free-market era the functional equivalent of an anti-Lois Lerner will investigate such rent-seeking entities as the Regulatory Assistance Project. Meanwhile, be warned: RAP may soon be coming to a Public Service Commission or environmental program near you, if they haven’t been there already.”
The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) may be one of the most influential “clean energy” not-for-profit organizations you’ve probably never heard of. RAP’s long-standing general policy to keep off the radar screen may be changing as this organization becomes emboldened by their own rhetoric. But behind the scenes, RAP is effectively demoting gas-fired end-use technologies, including cogenerated power capacity, in favor of renewables and forced efficiency that favors electrification.
In the beginning, RAP was involved with electric utility rate-case proceedings before state utility commission’s in the area of “energy efficiency.”…
Continue Reading“Falling commodity prices in general are a good thing in a free market because, as economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized, the sole end of production is consumption. Consumption first, production second. Also the US is a net importer of both oil and natural gas, which means we consume more than we produce. So provincially speaking, the US gains more than it loses from well-to-pump or well-to-burner-tip price drops.”
Business consultant Carlos Lara and I produce a monthly financial publication, the Lara-Murphy Report, which highlights the Austrian School of economics in both academia and the financial markets. The January 2016 issue interviewed Rob Bradley of Houston, Texas, who was trained in Austrian-school economics and is a longtime historian of oil markets. This interview is reproduced below.
Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a 501(c)3 educational foundation with offices in Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C.…
Continue Reading“The so called ‘green’ energy sources usually lauded on Earth Day have a heavy toll on the environment to produce piddling amounts of unreliable and costly energy. Both wind and solar energy are so dilute that large areas of land must be sterilised by roads, transmission lines and construction sites to collect significant energy. Already many wind towers have been abandoned and others are being de-commissioned because of high maintenance costs or poor energy production.”
It was petroleum that provided the kerosene that replaced whale oil in lamps and greatly reduced the slaughter of whales.
Coal saved the forests that were being cut down for smelters, forges, charcoal, heaters and stoves. Steel made with coke then replaced wood for mine props, bridges and tall buildings. As steam engines and iron ships replaced wooden wind-jammers in world navies and merchant fleets, the forests expanded.…
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