Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
October 26, 2016
Solar Energy Can’t Survive Without Massive Subsidies
Notwithstanding the thunderous applause that solar photovoltaic (rooftop) power receives from enlightened opinion, it is not cost-competitive with conventional electricity, and cannot survive without massive subsidies. An army of lobbyists, commentators and bureaucrats has told us for years that rooftop power will be cost-competitive with conventional electricity very soon, if it is not already, and technically could provide over 38 percent of U.S….
October 18, 2016
Washington State Initiative 732 — All Cost, No Benefit
Voters in the state of Washington will vote November 8 on Initiative 732, which would impose a “carbon tax” on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and thus on energy, while reducing the sales tax and almost eliminating the business and occupation tax on manufacturers. Here is a number that those voters should keep in mind: twenty-five…
September 29, 2016
The Carbon Tax Is Not Just Political; It’s Ineffective, Too
In a recent editorial in support of a carbon tax, The Washington Post complains that “Americans are burning record amounts of gasoline,” arguing that “one of the most glaring … flaws” of the “Environmental Protection Agency fuel-efficiency mandates” is the reality that the regulations “cannot control how much people drive or what type of vehicles people buy.”…
August 16, 2016
Renewable Electricity as a Solution to Puerto Rico Debt Crisis? You Must Be Kidding
The Beltway lobbying machine is nothing if not inventive. The latest evidence for this eternal truth is a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis arguing that the debt restructuring plan recently hammered out for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) will not work as intended, in substantial part because it…
August 15, 2016
Mark J. Perry on Nuclear Power
It is hot. It is humid. Even sound intellects have trouble maintaining focus in the dog days of Beltway August, a phenomenon illustrated recently by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Mark J. Perry. An absolutely solid economist. AEI scholar. University of Michigan professor. General Secretary of Carpe Diem, hands down the most useful and interesting policy…
August 1, 2016
Missing the Forest for the Trees on Solar Net Metering
In a recent essay on the solar photovoltaic (PV or “rooftop”) power market, Mark Muro and Devashree Saha of the Brookings Institute applaud the net metering system of subsidizing such rooftop installations, concluding that the system is a “net benefit” for both the recipients and the non-recipients of the subsidy; that is, for all power consumers. The…
June 27, 2016
Is the Nuclear Liability Limit a Subsidy, or Not?
The heat is on. I refer not to the beginning of summer, nor the looming global warming apocalypse for which there is little evidence, nor an election season sure to be characterized by personal attacks aplenty. But instead, the increasing difficulty of defending the absurd argument that the massive explicit and implicit subsidies given wind and solar power and ethanol production yield environmental improvement and…
June 20, 2016
Nothing New Under the Sun as FTC Seeks to Expand Power over Solar
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced recently a workshop to be held on June 21, with the title “Something New Under the Sun: Competition and Consumer Protection Issues in Solar Power.” Accompanying the announcement is a discussion paper presenting a number of issues for public comment. The analytic quality of that paper is highly uneven, but for now it…
June 15, 2016
Four Decades of Subsidy Rationales for Uncompetitive Energy
The modern rationales for energy subsidies have varied in prominence over the decades, but none has been broadly discredited in the public discussion despite the reality that each suffers from fundamental analytic weaknesses. The rationales can be summarized as follows: Given the weak history of analytic rigor and policy success in the context of energy…
June 9, 2016
Comment for the Federal Trade Commission: Competition and Consumer Protection Issues in Solar Power
This note responds to the FTC request for public comment attendant upon the workshop scheduled for June 21, 2016 on the topic “Competition and Consumer Protection Issues in Solar Power,” as described on the FTC website, and detailed in a pdf document with that title. That document here is referenced as “the FTC discussion paper.” Read the PDF.