“… the economist is looking for the why-behind-the-why. And that is where negative pricing for wind and low margins in general from the regulatory setup ruined the economics of the [natural gas] industry, resulting in premature retirements, a lack of new capacity, and cost avoidance. Are you saying that there was a ‘market failure’ with natural gas in [the Texas blackout of February 2021]?” (Bradley to Kiesling, below)

She engages and then disappears. She is the “classical liberal” who refuses to question the climate alarm and favors the government-forced energy transformation to wind, solar, and batteries–and demand control from the political center. And she is all-in with the centrally planned wholesale power markets, better known as Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations (ISOs and RTOs).

She trumpeted the Texas ISO as the national model until it imploded in February 2021–and now blames natural gas, not wind and solar or central government planning.…

Ed Note: This (re)post from early 2015 by economist Michael Giberson, formerly at Texas Tech University, is reprinted below. While generic to pricing of any good or service in any emergency, it applies to Joe Biden’s recent concern about oil-price ‘gouging’ and calls from the Democrat leadership for FTC investigations into the same.

“Higher prices would discourage over-buying and help ensure that useful consumer goods get distributed to more households, not just the households best able to rush to the store. Consumer sentiment against higher prices during emergencies, by discouraging a price response and encouraging shortages, tends to put the burden of the shortages on those consumers least able to run to the stores in emergencies.”

When consumer demand shoots up and supplies are limited, either prices must increase or shortages will result.…

“By the end of the book, I could no longer shake the feeling she just might be right on the big thing. RTOs may be producing an increasingly fragile grid.”

Meredith Angwin’s Shorting the Grid is a likeable, sometimes irritating book. Or maybe an irritating, sometimes likeable book. I cannot decide. Angwin’s book offers an introduction to and assessment of the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) that since the late 1990s have come to coordinate use of the transmission grid for about two-thirds of the electric power consumed in the United States.

Her view: RTOs are dominated by insiders who skew the system their direction at every chance, reaping profits while shirking responsibility for reliability. As a result we have an increasingly fragile, unreliable grid.

When Angwin’s book was published in 2020 it may have seemed alarmist.…

Ed. note: This two-part series addresses repeated media errors about the role of Charles Koch in the formation of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) in 1989. Part I yesterday covered the history of the Institute for Humane Studies–Texas, the forerunner to IER. Part II below reviews the formation and early history of IER, then based in Houston, Texas.

Q1. Roger Donway: First, briefly summarize the major point of Part I yesterday on the founding of the Institute for Humane Studies–Texas (IHS–Texas), the predecessor to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

A1. Robert Bradley Jr.: IHS–Texas was a classical liberal organization focused on education, with Greg Rehmke focused on high school debate and the both of us on summer seminars for business people. Energy was part of it to the extent that I lectured, given my specialization, on oil and gas history and related public policy.