“Increasing the affordability of both U.S. and global energy is an important economic and humanitarian objective. Policy makers heeding the time-honored healer’s maxim, ‘First, do no harm,’ should reject policies to tax and regulate away mankind’s access to affordable energy.”

It is titled Free to Prosper: Energy and Environment: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 116th Congress. It is the work of the energy and environmental stalwarts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the organization long led by Fred L. Smith Jr. and now directed by Kent Lassman. And as always, it is reliable scholarship to inform both sides of the political aisle.

The energy White Paper is part of a broader book, Free to Prosper. The eight areas other than Energy and Environment are Regulatory Reform and Agency Oversight; Trade; Banking and Finance; Private and Public Lands; Technology and Telecommunications; Labor and Employment; Food, Drugs, and Consumer Freedom; and Transportation  That’s a lot of the federal matrix of public policy.…

“I am not claiming any great originality for the Lake County Experiment [on rural electrification in 1910]. If I had not hit upon it somebody else would have, but it is rather an interesting sidelight that even the opponents of private ownership, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, by their work have put the stamp of approval on such matters….”

– Samuel Insull, The Memoirs of Samuel Insull (1934), p. 97.

[Ed. note: This post is taken from the author’s Edison to Enron (2011), chapter 3, pp. 105–108]

“The way Insull’s utility managed Chicago’s power load,” noted one technological historian, “is comparable to the historic managerial contributions made by railway men in the nineteenth century and is as interesting as the widely publicized managerial concepts and policies of John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford.”…

“Bitter conflicts over wage differentials, a hodgepodge of subdivisional judgments regarding the proper price of coal, blatant disregard for the code proscription against selling under a fair market price, and the widespread disregard of the other injunctions against unfair trade practices produced a chaotic price structure….”

“Each price classification included several individual pries based upon the physical structure, chemical analysis, and use-value of a specific type of coal, thus generating a number of prices–at least 400,000–far beyond the ability of a decentralized code to administer.”

“The fragile structure of the coal code buckled under the weight of inordinate administrative complexity and the persistent assaults of critics within and without the industry.”

 – John Clark, Energy and the Federal Government: Fossil Fuel Policies, 1900–1946. University of Illinois Press: 1987,  pp. 266–27.

“What was FDR’s New Deal (1933–35) pertaining to energy? The real New Deal was centered on petroleum and coal. Second, it was an alliance of special business interests and power-hungry bureaucrats working against common consumers and taxpayers. Third, it was about a police state to try to enforce command-and-control edicts.”

What exactly is the ‘Green New Deal’? E&E News (November 16, 2018) described the Progressivist energy policy of forced energy decarbonization.

“In a Democratic clash on Capitol Hill, progressives are pushing an ambitious plan to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels, boost renewables and build a ‘smart’ grid,” states Hannah Northey. “The proposal, drawing inspiration from President Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression-era New Deal, is one that progressives — led by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a rising star on the left — want Democratic leaders to embrace.”…