“Methanol has been promoted as an alternative transportation fuel from time to time over the past forty years. In spite of significant efforts to realize the vision of methanol as a practical transportation fuel in the US, such as the California methanol fueling corridor of the 1990s, it did not succeed on a large scale.” ( – Bromberg and Cheng [1])
“[With] U.S. energy policy … there is always a promised solution, usually through a technological wonder, or group of wonders, that will settle America’s energy dilemmas once and for all.” (- Peter Grossman, U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, 2013, p. x.)
The history of government and energy in the U.S. is important for its many lessons for public policy today. In light of the California Energy Commission taking on gasoline and diesel in California today (see yesterday’s post), a look back at a prior savior from oil is merited.…
Continue Reading“We are fast approaching the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” (Ayn Rand)
“What the bill is really about is giving more artificial advantage to electric vehicles over the internal combustion engine. Higher the prices, the better, while deflecting the blame to Big Oil.”
When it comes to energy, the California government has termite aspirations. Having wounded its electricity grid with centrally planned wind and solar reliance, the state is legislating vile-and-spite toward the mainstays of the transportation sector: gasoline and diesel.
Consumer preference for the most affordable, plentiful, dependable energies? No standing in this state. Taxpayer neutrality? Absent. Government knows best, with today’s intervention adding to the issues created by prior intervention.
Already, taxes and other mandates have made the Golden State’s pump prices the highest in the country: $4.83/gallon, almost 40 percent higher than the national average.…
Continue ReadingH.R. 1 can be characterized as pro-free market and deregulatory. But it is only a start. Free market reforms will ultimately require repealing dusty old federal laws from the New Deal (Public Utility Holding Company Act; Federal Power Act; Natural Gas Act) and laws before and after…. At the same time, numerous states should implement free market reforms by repealing and amending laws.
The Lower Energy Costs Act just passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support. Senate confirmation is not expected to pass it, and the Biden Administration has promised a veto. But it is a start, a placeholder, for pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, pro-freedom policy reform to come.
H.R. 1, in the words of its sponsors, “restores American energy independence by:
A summary of the Bill follows:
… Continue ReadingH.R.