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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.
June 6, 2016
The Magic of the EPA’s Benefit/cost Analysis
Benefit/cost analysis: It sounds so scientific, so rational, so impartial. So sound as a tool with which to resolve conflicting assertions about the wisdom of regulatory proposals. So divorced from partisanship or ideological influence. A truck engine is tested for pollution exiting its exhaust pipe in California. REUTERS/Mike Blake Oh, please. Democracy is the art…
January 19, 2016
Subsidizing the Rich Through California’s Solar Scheme
Residential consumers of electricity in California pay almost 17 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), a price higher than those of every other state in the lower 48, except New York and five of the New England states. The average for the nation as a whole is about 12.7 cents per kWh. Neighboring states in the Pacific…
November 6, 2015
On Chinese Coal, the UN Vs. The New York Times
Good things come to those who wait, and the waiting is minimal when it comes to the endless stream of entertaining silliness offered by the U.N. climate-change bureaucracy. On November 3, Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, informed us that “China has taken an undisputed leadership” in terms…