“FERC appears to have ignored the track record of top-down state and regional climate policies, which have increased costs and negligibly impacted the environment.”

“Prior to providing a blanket endorsement for state carbon pricing, the commission needs to hear from families, small businesses, and workers who will pay substantially more for electricity.”

Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced that President Trump had replaced then-Chairman Neil Chatterjee with Commissioner James Danly. Media reports suggested that the President’s decision to swap Republican Commissioners – both of whom he had nominated – was driven by dissatisfaction with Chatterjee’s push to accommodate state carbon dioxide (CO2) taxation.

Background

The change followed an unusual move by FERC to host a September 30 Technical Conference on Carbon Pricing in Organized Wholesale Electricity Markets.…

Fiction: “All signs are that cheap solar power is coming and that’s really good news”. — Ronald Bailey, Reason.

Fact: “California’s rollout of solar baseload power, advertised as cheap and otherwise worthy, failed despite a raft of government subsidies. Think rolling blackouts, time-of-use price spikes, and dropped green-related powerline fire disasters.” (below)

Fact: “Like running out of oil, solar predictions are perennial and wrong.” (below)

Ronald Bailey, a libertarian science writer at Reason Magazine online, has for years claimed that “unlimited free solar power” is the wave of the future.  Thus, it comes as no surprise that he has recently posed the question “Is King Solar Now the Cheapest Electricity Source Ever?”  His conclusion is yes, and “that’s really good news”.

To energy experts, this is new news.…

Energy, as Julian Simon emphasized, is the master resource. Without energy, other resources could not be produced or consumed. Even energy requires energy: usable mineral energies requires energy to manufacture and to power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel energy.

Fossil fuels upgrade renewable energies to be part of electricity grid. Short of prohibitively expensive storage, natural gas-generated power, in particular, fills in when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

As an input to all products and services, energy must be affordable, convenient, and reliable. To this end, public policy should respect consumer preference and allow energy entrepreneurs to meet the demands of the marketplace. This requires a respect for private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law to facilitate the global exchange of energy and its innumerable subcomponents.…

“In terms of sunk cost and opportunity cost, Trump is the one for liberty. Job #1, after all, is to defeat Biden/Harris or Harris/Biden.” (Bradley, below)

“But these are extraordinary times, and perhaps ‘all things considered, the other guy’s worse’ is a profound compliment. That’s why this libertarian is voting for Donald J. Trump, and recommending that my fellow opponents of the welfare-warfare state do the same.” (D. Dowd Muska, below)

It is fair to say that Donald Trump has upended politics and the Republican Party in the last five years or more. But he has also fractured the libertarian movement too, with some turning into Never Trumpers, even Trump Haters, namely David Boaz, gatekeeper at Cato, and Tom Palmer of Atlas Network.

In contrast, I appreciate the many openings Trump has provided to free-market groups coast-to-coast, border-to-border.…