“Your paper inspired me to re-review some of the congressional testimony of the renewable interests to see whether the litmus test of success was a cost target or more generally, competitiveness and market penetration. I think it is clearly the latter.”

“Imagine the coach of a football team justifying a perennial losing record by telling the administration that his players are getting bigger and faster …. Surely the administration would respond—’yes, we know the general trend and our participation in it. But we want real victories, not moral victories’.”

– Letter from Robert Bradley to Dallas Burtraw, January 1999.

It was arguably the very top intellectual research paper to justify past and continuing U.S. government support for renewable energies at the time of its publication (1999). I had a chance to rebut, working at Enron (as director, public policy analysis) that was a financial supporter of Resources for the Future (RFF), as well as a business leader in renewables.…

“In 2014, more than 40 percent of its resources went to renewable energy projects. Environmental advocacy groups such as Greenpeace largely support OPIC’s recent emphasis on renewable energy, but still criticize OPIC’s continued support of energy-related projects that use fossil fuels.”

A small victory for taxpayers and cronyism foes occurred today with the expiration of the charter of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a government lending agency. The agency is still open, but like its sister the Export-Import Bank (EXIM), whose charter expired this June 30, it cannot engage in new business.

OPIC and EXIM remain open to service existing loans, however, and reauthorization would bring them back to full life.

Background

OPIC’s three key policy objectives are to:

1. Stimulate economic development in developing countries;
2. Make foreign policy gestures on behalf of the U.S.

I have previously written about climatologist Judith Curry‘s continuing challenge to politicized climate science. “One plus the truth equals a majority,” I subtitled Part I back in May.

MasterResource has also covered Climategate, in which emails appeared that contained such statements as “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.” (Dr. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, May 30, 2008)

The Grand Dame of Climate Science is maintaining her prolific output at Climate Etc, which now includes energy- and policy-related commentary. Her posts, and guest posts by others, are increasingly multi-disciplinary, questioning not only the trumped consensus of physical climate science but also the postmodernist notion of preferable, competitive “clean” energy.…

“Robert Bradley, of the petro-funded and misleadingly named Institute for Energy Research (Ministry for Fossil Fuel Propaganda, perhaps, would be more precise), continues his lengthy crusade against clean energy with a tirade against subsidies in yesterday’s Washington Times.

Given that Mr. Bradley was director of public policy analysis for seven years at Enron, the natural gas giant that collapsed some years ago in a cloud of falsehoods and lawsuits, one might reasonably question whether his energy policy wisdom should guide the nation.”

– Tom Gray, American Wind Energy Association, “Bradley, IER Continue Long Crusade Against Clean Energy,’ Into the Wind: AWEA Blog, July 29, 2011.

How does one respond to such a statement as this? Mr. Gray may think he is an environmentalist and that windpower is an environmental blessing, but that does not make it so.…