“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
– F. A. Hayek: The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76.
The European Commission’s (EC) just-published Energy Roadmap 2050 (Roadmap) updates its last analysis (which I criticized here) of EU forced-energy-transformation projects to 2020 , as well as scenarios reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95% below EU 1990 levels by 2050. The forecast is stated (postmodernism?) as coincident with the need for energy security and affordability.
As one should “follow the money” when it comes to political capitalism, one should “follow the assumptions” when it comes to any roadmap pertaining to a post-carbon-based energy world.
… Continue Reading1. Renewables The share of renewable energy sources is projected to be 75% in gross final energy consumption and 97% in electricity consumption by 2050.
Many years ago at at a DOE/NARUC conference, I took note when Christopher Flavin of the environmental Left (EL) Worldwatch Institute commented that he didn’t support solar farms (macro solar) because of their large resource and land requirement. 1
‘Wow!’ I thought. That depletes the EL supply-side strategy, leaving just industrial wind and distributed (micro-solar)–and maybe a little biomass.
I was reminded of this when I read a recent article in ClimateWire (sub. req.), by Lacey Johnson, “Boom in Solar Panels injects NIMBY Battles into Neighborhoods.”
The story begins with Barbara Katz, whose hilltop home in historic north Baltimore, amid roaming wildlife, was threatened by her neighbor’s plan to install a 600-panel solar array. Johnson reports:
… Continue Reading“My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to be an eyesore,'” remembers Katz, who was confronted by a plan for more than 600 ground-based solar panels on her neighbors’ lawn.
One of the nation’s important energy analysts is Michael Giberson, an economist at the Center for Energy Commerce in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. Giberson, who has occasionally posted at MasterResource, teaches energy courses at Tech such as U.S. Energy Policy and Regulation and Energy Economics.
Giberson is also a principal (with fellow energy expert Lynne Kiesling of Northwestern University) of the energy-centric Knowledge Problem, described as “Commentary on Economics, Information, and Human Action.”
A month ago, Giberson critically reviewed a study by the Breakthrough Institute that claimed, basically, that government energy activism crucially enabled the shale gas (and oil) revolution that is now sweeping much of the United States and many countries around the world.
“New Investigation Finds Decades of Government Funding Behind Shale Revolution,” announced Breakthrough on December 20, adding:
… Continue ReadingBreakthrough Institute research and interviews show the direct and sustained support federal agencies provided to the gas industry leading up to the modern natural gas revolution.