“[Philip] Mango told FERC staff he planned to ‘[d]o this for just a couple of years, make a bunch of money to put kids through school and do all those things, and no one’s hurt’ …. Ketchup Caddy [was] a corporate entity that Mango had created to sell an in-car ketchup holder he invented….” (Utility Drive, below)

Why do the worst often get on top where political entrepreneurship replaces market entrepreneurship? Why does regulation invite gaming where (at best) entrepreneurship is superfluous?

Consider the 1970s oil trading boom, where price-controlled oil was bid up to market levels without any value-added. Robert Sutton, a former trunk salesman, became a regulatory millionaire on that one.

Remember Enron’s gaming of the California hyper-regulated electricity market in 2000/2001? Three authors wrote in Business History Review:

Enron’s traders used their knowledge of the newly designed markets to artificially increase or decrease wholesale prices in their favor, which often involved submitting false supply-and-demand information, withholding available electricity, or scheduling energy they did not have.

Ed. Note: With the 3rd anniversary of the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021, it is worth remembering the second thoughts that architects of the centrally planned state grid (ISO/ERCOT) had at the time. But have the guilty feelings resulted in a fundamental rethink of government electricity? This post is reprinted from MasterResource (May 20, 2021)

“I have to admit, the ERCOT blackouts have shaken me. The amount of physical damage and human suffering they caused is astounding. Obviously, the ‘market’ failed to provide the service reliability that customers expected and deserved.”

– Robert L. Borlick, Independent energy consultant, here

It is tough when your belief system gets rattled by reality. Very few people can handle that well. The best prevention strategy is to keep an open mind, and understand other views about as well as your own.…

“I don’t agree with many (any?) of [Alex Epstein’s] points in his response, and it is conspicuously lacking in arguments about climate itself.”  Tyler Cowen

“It’s sad that a guy as smart as Tyler not only 1) irresponsibly commented on a book he was not willing to read carefully, but also 2) refused to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever.” Alex Epstein

It was distributed on social media by the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan programs office, Jigar Shah, described as “The man in charge of how the US spends $400bn to shift away from fossil fuels.” Shah forwarded Tyler Cowen’s post (at Marginal Revolution) critiquing Alex Epstein’s book, Fossil Future: Why Human Flourishing Requires Using More Oil, Gas, and Coal–Not Less.

A ‘classical liberal’ handing an intellectual gift to a DOE grifter?…

“… the ‘energy transition’ has been just the other way around: from dilute, intermittent, and quantity-limited supplies to dense, reliable, storable mass quantities representing the sun’s work over the ages.”

LinkedIn is a forum of vigorous open debate on climate science, energy, and public policy. I have been an active participant, probably responding to comments an hour or more on most days. I learn, and, in turn, people learn from me. It is a good avenue for many of my links on the issues under discussion.

Here is an exchange on “Energy Transition,” as introduced by “professor, author and leader in energy transition engineering” Susan Krumdleck.

Susan Krumdleck: How would you define “Energy Transition”? What outcomes would an investment in an “Energy Transition” project require in order to meet your requirements, or to fit with the science?…