ERCOT “worked as designed” (architect Hogan gives no quarter)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 23, 2021 No Comments

“After a winter storm in Texas earlier this month left the state’s residents to contend with widespread power outages and skyrocketing electricity prices, William W. Hogan, the architect of the state’s energy market system and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, said … the state’s electricity market had ‘worked as designed’ given the conditions.”

“One Texas resident … now owes $16,752 for his energy bill, wiping out his savings. Hogan acknowledged in the Wednesday interview that such situations are ‘terrible.’ Still, he argued the end result could have been much worse.”

Kennedy School Professor Who Designed Texas’s Energy Market Defends Skyrocketing Prices Following Winter Storm,” The Harvard Crimson (February 26, 2021).

“‘I feel like a caveman,’ said Alexander D. ‘Alex’ Kontoyiannis ’23, describing his experience studying for his organic chemistry midterm Tuesday night.

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Lay/Bush/Perry: Fathers of the Texas ‘Clean-Energy Powerhouse’ (an ERCOT backstory)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 8, 2021 1 Comment

“‘I think ultimately we’re headed for an era in which my grandchildren will be driving electric cars, powered primarily by renewable energy,’ [George W.] Bush said. Oil, he said, brings economic, environmental and national-security problems.

– Kate Galbraith, “W. is for Wind,” Texas Tribune, May 25, 2010.

Let history note that Enron and Texas governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry created an industry that consumers in a free market did not. With the help of the federal Production Tax Credit of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, since renewed 13 times, as well as the $6.9 billion CREZ transmission line, Texas became the wind power state on the backs of national taxpayers and in-state ratepayers.

Bush’s “America is Addicted to Oil” reference in his 2006 State of the Union address did not come out of nowhere.…

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Yesterday’s Eco-complaints; Today’s ‘Planet of the Humans’

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 15, 2020 No Comments

“The people who build wind farms are not environmentalists. . . .  Business is a delicate balancing act, and chief executives are always walking a tightrope between the needs of the community, their employees, and the marketplace.” [Paul Gipe, Wind Energy Comes of Age (1995), p. 454.]

Planet of the Humans‘ expose is long overdue.” [below]

Big Green, Inc. has been challenged by Michael Moore and Jeff Gibbs’s “Planet of the Humans.” Importantly, the multi-million-view documentary brought together the inconvenient truths of (politically correct) renewable energies, as well as batteries for electric vehicles.

In a recent post for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), “Long-standing Eco-warnings Against Renewables Reinforce ‘Planet of the Humans’,” I documented how many mainstream eco-authors forthrightly talked about these problems. I noted:

Moore/Gibbs memorialized what had long been recognized by the environmental intelligentsia.

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Ayn Rand, Energy, and Enron: Five Questions

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- December 3, 2020 1 Comment

This post reproduces a short q&a with The Atlas Society on how the worldview of Ayn Rand and Objectivism influenced me personally and as a scholar interested in energy, history, political economy, and public policy. [For more information, see “The Fall of Ken Lay: An Interview with Former Enron Insider Robert Bradley Jr.” (April 1, 2006) and “Political Capitalism: Warnings and Reality” (February 4, 2013)

Tell us who you are? What’s the couple of sentence summary of what you do and what you’ve done?

I am a classical-liberal intellectual, or at least a student of classical liberalism.

I specialize in energy history and public policy. That has led me to business/government cronyism. And that had led to trying to understand contra-capitalism as it applies to organizational failure.…

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‘Is it time for the political fall of renewable energy?’ [Peacock in the Houston Chronicle]

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- November 18, 2020 1 Comment Continue Reading

Remembering Fair Reporting on Climate (Houston Chronicle circa 2010)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- September 23, 2020 No Comments Continue Reading

‘The Value of Books’ (David Boaz, Alex Epstein on Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience)

By -- September 16, 2020 1 Comment Continue Reading

Endorsing Donald Trump for Re-election (American Energy Alliance on the record)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 20, 2020 3 Comments Continue Reading

Electric Vehicles: Old Market Competitor

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 14, 2020 No Comments Continue Reading

Enron on Mineral Resource Theory (Part II)

By Bruce Stram -- January 28, 2020 5 Comments Continue Reading