“Looking back with hindsight, the business opportunities were on the generation side, and the utility was going out for bid with all these big renewable-energy projects. But in retrospect, it seems clear, we weren’t as focused on these fire risks as we should have been.”
– Doug McLeod, former Maui county energy commissioner (quoted in WSJ, below)
Opportunity cost is a central concept in economics. Economics is about the unseen versus the seen. Resources spent in one direction are not spent in another. The same goes for corporations as politically correct, economically incorrect priorities crowd out good. Climate change policy is a premier example.
Government-forced substitution of dilute, intermittent energies for reliable incumbents has not only cost taxpayers and ratepayers. It has also cost the environment–dearly. The recent saga of Hawaiian Electric’s preoccupation with “the energy transition” at the expense of grid safety and reliability is the latest example of this.…
Continue Reading“It is time to do now what was not done in 1999 in Texas. First, deregulate the electricity market, do not re-regulate it under a new regime. That means removing public utility regulation of rates and other terms of service, as well as end the franchise protection over geographical territory.”
The Texas Electric Utility Restructuring Act of 1999 is approaching a quarter-century. And what a mess has resulted from the misnomer “electricity deregulation.” A monopoly wholesale market under mandatory open-access rules is central planning pure and simple. The idea that a ‘competitive’ retail market rescues a governmental wholesale market from the knowledge problem and politicization (per Lynne Kiesling, Michael Giberson, etc.) has been turned upside down in Texas and elsewhere.
I was reminded of this upon reading a 500-word commentary from Doug Sheridan on LinkedIn.…
Continue ReadingEd. Note: This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnighly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete Newsletter for this post can be found here.
Greed Energy Economics:
*** Don’t believe the renewables myth: Wind and Solar are not cheap
Chinese manufacturers dominate wind power, taking 60% of global market
Unreliables: Energy Health and Ecosystem Consequences:
*** Video: Assoc Prof Simon Michaux – The quantity of metals required to manufacture just one generation of renewables
*** Carnage of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction Elsewhere acceptable to Wealthy Countries
Unreliables (General):
*** Residents vs Town Council re Solar and Wind Facilities
*** Green Breakdown—The Coming Renewable Energy Failure
*** The Grid as an Energy Weapon — Massive Lithium Storage Centers Spread
*** The Prophet of Power Density
*** There is no green ‘transition’ to renewable energy.…