“With two of the three projects in trouble, Massachusetts will not meet its clean energy goals, and when they do, the power prices will be higher than expected…. The energy chaos in the state is getting interesting with significant implications for the offshore wind business.”
The ongoing saga of Commonwealth Wind’s future took another twist in late January when it filed with the Massachusetts Supreme Court a petition to set aside the order by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (PUC) issued on December 30, 2022, approving the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) prices negotiated with the three local utilities purchasing the electricity.
The challenging, worsening economics have upset the future of the project. Avangrid, the developer of the Commonwealth Wind project, wishes to renegotiate the PPA prices or to have them rejected by the PUC which would then allow Avangrid to rebid the project’s output in the next Massachusetts wind power solicitation scheduled for this spring.…
Continue Reading“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.…
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