Renewable Energy
Blackouts
California’s Big Battery Bet
Following a 2020 summer of blackouts, the darkest since early this century, California is hoping that it can avoid replays in the future by investing in batteries. Big batteries. That are expensive. And come with significant energy storage limitations. Bloomberg News is reporting that by August, there will be 1,700 megawatts ...
California
Green Jobs Demonstrate The Perils Of Government-Directed Economic Growth
Part of President Biden’s Build Back Better initiative promises to “create good-paying union jobs and train Americans for jobs of the future.” The unspoken theory behind this initiative is that green jobs will offer a pay premium to workers compared to jobs in the fossil fuel industry. It also reflects the Administration’s ...
Blog
California’s Tomorrowland Of Energy Won’t Be Arriving On Time
California’s mandate to transition to an all-renewables electricity portfolio has always seemed like a fantasy. A just-released report “charting” the path to 100% clean power does nothing but confirm those suspicions. A joint summary released March 15 by the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California ...
Blackouts
Power Outages: California, Texas, next the U.S?
California was the object of ridicule last year when residents experienced widespread power outages due to high temperatures and wildfires. Now, during an historic cold spell, Texas is under fire for an energy infrastructure that left much of the state without power. The finger pointing will go on for months ...
Climate Change
President Biden Should Not Adopt California’s Approach To The Environment
Whether it is canceling the Keystone XL pipeline or obstructing new permits for oil and gas projects on federal lands, President Biden appears to be adopting California’s approach to addressing the problem of global climate change. If fully adopted, there will be large economic consequences with little net environmental benefit. ...
Blog
Biden’s New EPA Chief Should Heed the Lessons from His Home State
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Michael Regan to lead the EPA. Regan worked at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for years, and has been North Carolina’s environmental chief since 2018. As North Carolina’s top environmentalist, Regan has opposed constructing natural gas infrastructure, claiming North Carolina’s clean energy future is not ...
Blackouts
Powering California With Wind – A utility’s perspective
Milton Friedman famously declared that “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” While California desperately needs to apply this wisdom across the policy spectrum, arguably, the gap between policy leaders’ intentions and the empirical results are the widest when ...
Agriculture
California’s Failed Climate Change Policy
As California burns, Governor Gavin Newsom fiddles – with California’s climate change goals. In response to record-breaking wildfires, the Governor announced that California must accelerate its goal of reaching 100 percent green electricity by 2045. And on September 23, as dark smoke infiltrated our lungs and millions of acres burned, ...
Blog
The Latest Buzz On Newsom’s Electric Car Mandate
To adequately cover all the angles, implications, and consequences of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to rid the state of gasoline and diesel cars and trucks and replace them with electric vehicles would require a short book, or a long policy paper. We’ve already covered a few points, primarily the ...
Climate Change
Pandemics, Pollution, and Poppycock
By Henry I. Miller, M.S, M.D. and Andrew I. Fillat With the world in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the short-term focus is now on how to avoid surges of infections and get the economy functioning so people can go back to work. Hindsight is, of course, ...
California’s Big Battery Bet
Following a 2020 summer of blackouts, the darkest since early this century, California is hoping that it can avoid replays in the future by investing in batteries. Big batteries. That are expensive. And come with significant energy storage limitations. Bloomberg News is reporting that by August, there will be 1,700 megawatts ...
Green Jobs Demonstrate The Perils Of Government-Directed Economic Growth
Part of President Biden’s Build Back Better initiative promises to “create good-paying union jobs and train Americans for jobs of the future.” The unspoken theory behind this initiative is that green jobs will offer a pay premium to workers compared to jobs in the fossil fuel industry. It also reflects the Administration’s ...
California’s Tomorrowland Of Energy Won’t Be Arriving On Time
California’s mandate to transition to an all-renewables electricity portfolio has always seemed like a fantasy. A just-released report “charting” the path to 100% clean power does nothing but confirm those suspicions. A joint summary released March 15 by the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California ...
Power Outages: California, Texas, next the U.S?
California was the object of ridicule last year when residents experienced widespread power outages due to high temperatures and wildfires. Now, during an historic cold spell, Texas is under fire for an energy infrastructure that left much of the state without power. The finger pointing will go on for months ...
President Biden Should Not Adopt California’s Approach To The Environment
Whether it is canceling the Keystone XL pipeline or obstructing new permits for oil and gas projects on federal lands, President Biden appears to be adopting California’s approach to addressing the problem of global climate change. If fully adopted, there will be large economic consequences with little net environmental benefit. ...
Biden’s New EPA Chief Should Heed the Lessons from His Home State
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Michael Regan to lead the EPA. Regan worked at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for years, and has been North Carolina’s environmental chief since 2018. As North Carolina’s top environmentalist, Regan has opposed constructing natural gas infrastructure, claiming North Carolina’s clean energy future is not ...
Powering California With Wind – A utility’s perspective
Milton Friedman famously declared that “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” While California desperately needs to apply this wisdom across the policy spectrum, arguably, the gap between policy leaders’ intentions and the empirical results are the widest when ...
California’s Failed Climate Change Policy
As California burns, Governor Gavin Newsom fiddles – with California’s climate change goals. In response to record-breaking wildfires, the Governor announced that California must accelerate its goal of reaching 100 percent green electricity by 2045. And on September 23, as dark smoke infiltrated our lungs and millions of acres burned, ...
The Latest Buzz On Newsom’s Electric Car Mandate
To adequately cover all the angles, implications, and consequences of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to rid the state of gasoline and diesel cars and trucks and replace them with electric vehicles would require a short book, or a long policy paper. We’ve already covered a few points, primarily the ...
Pandemics, Pollution, and Poppycock
By Henry I. Miller, M.S, M.D. and Andrew I. Fillat With the world in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the short-term focus is now on how to avoid surges of infections and get the economy functioning so people can go back to work. Hindsight is, of course, ...
