Ed. Note: The author is a solar technologist and founder/CEO of SunDanzer, a free-market, off-grid solar company based in Tuscon, Arizona. Jigar Shah is director of the $400 billion Loan Programs Office in the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dear Jigar:

We both have a passion for solar and renewable energy to succeed in the marketplace, and we both have progeny that will inherit the environment after we are gone. Leaving them a better place—ecologically, fiscally, and otherwise—is our North Star. This can be done with wisdom, skill, and compassion.

Massive annual budget deficits and record accumulated national debt are getting worse by the day. The annual deficit is now $1.8 trillion (FY 2024), despite a 11 percent increase in tax receipts. FY 2025 is shaping up to be worse.…

“Rob’s snide reference to my ‘chess pieces’ is a reference to my unwillingness to agree with his Utopian dismissal of ISO/RTO organized wholesale markets.” (Lynne Kiesling to Vernon Smith, below)

“Yes, playing with government chess pieces (on-grid solar, wind, batteries, ‘smart’ meters) and a centrally planned wholesale market is Statism writ large.” (Robert Bradley to Kiesling, below)

Electricity specialist Lynne Kiesling champions herself as a classical liberal, free-market advocate. But she is just the opposite and relies on obfuscation and charm to advocate and sell

1) government central planning of wholesale electricity and

2) government-enabled wind, solar, and batteries in place of least-cost (central-station) electricity.

It is her “synthetic regulation” or the highway, premised on a belief that there cannot be private property rights to grid electricity.

This woman of system will not forthrightly define what a free market is with electricity.…

“New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. Higher energy prices are in effect a regressive tax that places low-income households in the state in peril.”

Energy policies that originate from a political or quasi-religious agenda—propelled by climate zealots, misinformation, and obliviousness to basic economic principles—are on trial in the new political environment. Such policies sacrifice the public good to benefit special interests wed to rent-seeking.

While this commentary focuses on New Mexico, its urgings are applicable to other jurisdictions that currently have or are considering government-driven energy policies featuring mandates and subsidies that encourage consumers to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Three Hard Truths

Three truths should determine energy policy in New Mexico.

1. No climate benefit. Whatever action the state takes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has a negligible effect on climate change. …

“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.” (- Allen Myerson, Solar Power, for Earthly Prices, New York Times, November 15, 1994)

Thirty years ago, the ‘newspaper of record’ excitedly reported atop the business section that a breakthrough with solar energy had occurred with the business genius of the upstart energy company Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press continues to create an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute, intermittent) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.…