“It’s policy, it’s regulation, it’s industry structure and it’s incentives . . . It’s not physics, it’s not chemistry, it’s not even the electric grid. It’s what we decide we want.” – Ron Binz

“Postmodernism … can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

A small victory for consumers and free-market energy policy came yesterday when energy statist Ron Binz withdrew as a nominee to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, D.C.

Binz put the blame on others rather than his own postmodern energy philosophy and coercive energy-policy views, which he unsuccessfully tried to hide before Congress.…

“New York State’s installed wind factories averaged a pathetic 23.5% Capacity Factor in 2012….  It’s no wonder New York has earned the dubious distinction of having the highest electricity rates in the continental United States – 17.7 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) – a whopping 53% above the national average.”

The last minute extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC – aka: “Pork To Cronies”) within the December 31, 2012 fiscal cliff deal was good news for Big Wind corporate welfare profiteers, like Michael Polsky’s Invenergy. It was very bad news for rural/residential Towns being targeted by industrial wind developers here in New York State, and across the nation.

Despite the fact that the Wyoming County, NY Town of Orangeville’s conflicted Town Board approved Invenergy’s “Stony Creek” project in the Fall of 2012, Invenergy admitted they would not be going ahead with the project unless the PTC was extended – highlighting the fact that the only thing Invenergy is interested in ‘harvesting’ is taxpayers’ money.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Greed Energy Economics:

Wind Energy: Only When the Wind Blows and the Subsidies Flow

Wind Energy Curtailment

Wind and Solar are Parasitic Power Producers

It’s Not Gridlock That is Blocking a Carbon Tax, It’s Science and Economics

Radio Interview: Massachusetts’ Cape Wind — Beginning of the End…

“Although trained as a philosopher, [Alex] Epstein is perhaps best described as a happy intellectual warrior whose main goal is to rewrite the dominant romantic/authoritarian narrative that nowadays underlie energy and sustainability debates.”

To people who lived through them, the “good old days” were more akin to Hobbesian trying times where life was much more solitary, poorer, nastier, brutish and shorter than in our “Age of Energy.”

In a world where no good deed goes unpunished, however, hydrocarbons and the people who locate, refine and deliver them in usable forms are loudly condemned as toxic threats by activists who would rather have energy-starved masses consume little, distant, costly, intermittent, unreliable, and low-density alternative energy cupcakes.

Even more disheartening is how many energy executives have been shamed into paying lip-service (and a fair amount of “sustainability” and “green partnership” consulting fees) to their most virulent detractors.…