“We don’t need to employ government solutions to every perceived problem. Rather than spreading monopoly privileges to others. we need to be abolishing them. Georgia’s oil pipeline and high voltage systems were developed through market relationships. Extend the market, not the monopoly!”
Some time ago, Georgia Solar Utilities filed a petition with the Georgia Public Service Commission asking to be granted all of the rights and privileges given to Georgia Power, the state’s large, regulated utility. The GA PSC punted the issue to the General Assembly. Since then, the same sorts of schemes are popping up in other states where green developers seek the rights to sell green power directly to end users.
These “rights” included access to the use of the transmission and distribution systems within the state and access to capital at the same rates as obtained by Georgia Power.…
Continue Reading“Despite the optimists telling us how well EVs are selling and that the charging and cost issues will be quickly resolved, the industry struggles. The math doesn’t work, and consumers are concluding hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) better meet their driving needs. Auto executives are wondering whether their betting on the EV transition, even with mandates, is putting them on the road to bankruptcy.”
“The math doesn’t work,” Mark Fields, former Ford Motor CEO, told Joe Kernen of CNBC early last week. Until the industry solves charging and cost issues, EV sales will continue to underperform. The bottom line for Fields is that “the government [Biden administration] will have to back off” its policies mandating two-thirds of new vehicle sales being EVs by 2030. Absent such an adjustment, emissions will worsen, and the EV transition will lag. …
Continue Reading[Ed. Note: Part I yesterday examined quotations on the primacy of energy for human betterment from friends of conventional energy. Today’s post adds respect from foes of oil, gas, and coal.
Free-market energy proponents gain the high ground when they stress the utilitarian nature of affordable, plentiful, reliable energy. Energy statists must play defense when their opponents stress the need to keep energy affordable for the less financially able and those billion-plus world citizens who do not have access to modern forms of energy.
… Continue ReadingIncreased energy affordability is not bad but good. Yet cheap energy is the enemy to the other side (although the Obama greens will not publicly admit it). Julian Simon noticed as much when he wrote The Cheaper the Energy the Better during the BTU tax debate in 1993:
Some people simply believe that it is ipso facto a good thing to use less energy and have less economic growth.