A Free-Market Energy Blog

Denton, TX: Grid Reliability Sinks Renewables

By -- August 4, 2021

Many Denton customers were stuck with astronomical electricity bills under the green power “choice” plans.

Denton, Texas, population 140,000, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, received national media attention for its $9,000 per megawatt hour ($9.00 per kilowatt hour) electricity price spike during the February 2021 Texas Freeze power crisis

Although not reported by the media as such, it was an unintended consequence of naive green dreams and “environmental justice” gone wrong.

“Green” Energy Planning

Home to two universities and a junior college, Denton is a Progressive Left city that:

  • Banned fracking within its city limits (later reversed by Gov. Abbott)
  • Contracted for 180 megawatts from the Blue Bell Solar Plant
  • Recorded 40 percent renewables, partly by ending its contract with the now mothballed Gibbons Creek Coal Power Plant
  • Built its own natural gas power plant (2018) to provide backup power to its customers and sell the excess into the ERCOT grid.
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California Electricity Woes: More Intervention, Higher Prices, More Emissions (the back side of wind and solar)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 3, 2021

“We’ll be setting up a mitigation program and new funds will be made available above and beyond our existing air quality funding that will mitigate those impacts.” (Liane Randolph, chair. California Air Resources Board, below)

“This huge list shows that if you mess up a grid, you have to try everything to hope to save the situation temporarily. In the proclamation: Air pollution rules–suspended. Ships in harbor—don’t connect to shore power, use your engines. Big industrial users—we’ll pay you $2/kWh not to consume energy. And yet, keeping a nuclear plant operating is not on the list.” (Meredith Angwin, August 2, 2021)

One intervention leads to another and yet another …. The ‘law of increasing intervention,’ as UK energy expert Colin Robinson coined it, is alive and well in the Golden State.…

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Mineral Energy and Progress: A Consensus View

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 2, 2021

“Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco industries is nonsense. Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that has done yeomen service for humankind. One gallon (3.7 liters) of gasoline (petrol) contains the equivalent of 400 hours of labor by a healthy adult.  Fossil fuels raised living standards in much of the world.”

– James Hansen, June 2021

The father of the climate alarm is a straight and accurate shooter on many things, that is outside of climate models and unsettled climate dynamics. His quotation above throws water in the face of Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University, as well as such climate campaigners as Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler.

Hansen’s view is actually mainstream. There is no doubt that dense mineral energies that emerged and took hold by the end of the 19th century unleashed the machines of progress.…

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“Off Target”: Bad Economics of the Climate Crusade (mitigation not supported by mainstream analysis)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 30, 2021
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The Fear of ‘Cheap Energy’ Revisited (1989 quotations for today)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 29, 2021
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Getting in the Houston Chronicle (back window better than nothing, I guess)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 28, 2021
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Field Notes on the Futile Climate Crusade

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 27, 2021
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Anger in the Climate Patch: Exchange with a Climate Alarmist/Forced Energy Transformationist

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 26, 2021
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Ohio Eviscerates Preferred Siting, Accelerated Permission for Wind/Solar Developers (communities win!)

By Sherri Lange -- July 22, 2021
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“The Electric Windmill” (Part II)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 21, 2021
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