Frac Bounty: All Should Participate (resource creation for economic revival)

By -- July 25, 2013 1 Comment

Deep Ecology adherents view fossil fuels as evil incarnate, and believe fervently in ‘peak oil’ and Climate Armageddon. They are frustrated that fracking guarantees a hydrocarbon renaissance and predominance for decades to come, and helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions without massive economic sacrifice.”

Anti-energy activists actively promote falsehoods about the vital, safe, job-creating hydraulic fractionation. They inhabit a callous parallel universe to wage war on affordable, plentiful energy–and quality, sustainable jobs. Such a war targets those who need jobs and lower costs the most. 

It is time for all thinking, good people–Democrat and Republican–to welcome the oil and gas treasure unleashed by new technology in every locality and state where private property rights are respected. And, as Bret Stephens wrote in the Wall Street Journal, it is high time for environmentalists to think.

Continue Reading

Wind Pricing: Not Cheap but Subsidized

By -- July 23, 2013 5 Comments

“Ignoring how competitive markets operate–and pretending that wind energy is exempt from the basic rules of economics–will not change the fact that windpower is an expensive, unpredictable resource that cannot compete without enormous public hand-outs. If the PTC were permitted to expired today, the wind industry might be forced to increase its efficiencies and lower project costs, but the effect on electricity prices at large would likely go unnoticed.”

Last fall, utility-giant, Exelon Corp., encouraged Congress to let the federal production tax credit (PTC) expire, citing the subsidy’s distortionary effect on competitive wholesale energy markets. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) slapped back by publicly booting Exelon off its board and unleashing an army of surrogates to control the damage and berate the company for putting its interests first.

The latest attack came July 4th when eco-youth Gabe Elsner, a “public interest advocate” of The Checks and Balances Project, accused Exelon of conspiring with Big Oil to squeeze out cheaper competitors like wind in order to drive up consumer electricity prices and increase profits.…

Continue Reading

The Incompatibility of Wind and Crop ‘Farming’

By -- July 1, 2013 15 Comments

“Absentee landowners may be gaining financially from [wind power] development, but the idea that ‘wind farming’ is a compatible agriculture use is more myth than reality in Illinois…. In fact, those Illinois farmers who have leveraged their operations conservatively tell us that they’re not interested in the ‘windfall’ of wind farming.”

The wind industry continues to claim that wind “farming” and agriculture are compatible land uses. Here it is again in a recent letter in the Wall Street Journal by the American Wind Energy Association defending the economics of wind power.

For years, politicians and urban/suburbanites have been treated to heaping doses of win-win business tales of family farmers leasing sections of their crop land for wind development, while working the soil right up to the towers and earning extra revenue to keep the land open.

Continue Reading

Sen. Alexander: Statement on Production Tax Credit ($27 billion over 10 years is enough!)

By Thomas Marks -- February 20, 2012 6 Comments

“Let’s focus on reducing the debt, increasing expenditure for research, and getting rid of the subsidies. Twenty years is long enough for a wind production tax credit for what our distinguished Nobel prize-winning Secretary of Energy says is a ‘mature technology’.”

In a speech last Wednesday on the floor of the United States Senate, Senator Lamar Alexander (R- Tenn.) called on Congress to reject any efforts to add a four-year extension of the Production Tax Credit.

His learned statement brings out a number of facts that contribute to the debate–and explains why ‘subsidy fatigue’ has set in with windpower. Alexander also explains why the future belongs to the energy efficient, not dilute forms of energy that carry a large environmental footprint.

The full transcript of his remarks, published in The Chattanoogan, follows.…

Continue Reading

'Windfall': A Civil War Film (Roger Ebert et al. reviews spell trouble for Industrial Wind; DC Environmentalism)

By -- February 8, 2012 17 Comments Continue Reading

"Let Them Eat Carbon: Britain’s New Green Tax Con": New Book Invites Consumer/Voter/Environmental Backlash

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 16, 2011 4 Comments Continue Reading

Jimmy Carter's 'Malaise Speech' of July 15, 1979: An Energy Moment to Remember

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 15, 2011 4 Comments Continue Reading

Federal Asset Privatization, Not a Higher Debt Ceiling (SPR a good place to begin)

By Robert Murphy -- June 2, 2011 11 Comments Continue Reading

'Windfall' Goes to Washington (Industrial wind turbines without Photoshop)

By -- April 4, 2011 6 Comments Continue Reading

The Case Against Section 1603 Grants ($5 billion easy pieces)

By -- February 28, 2011 23 Comments Continue Reading