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August 28, 2021
The Dubious Senate Proposal to Bail out Nuclear Powerplants
Costly economic distortions are an inexorable result of government bailouts for specific industries, the justifications for which are almost always deeply dubious. Consider section 3203 of the proposed Senate Energy Infrastructure Act. It would establish a $6 billion credit program over four years starting in fiscal year 2022 for nuclear electricity plants “projected to cease operations…
August 13, 2021
Should US Policies Transfer Our Wealth to OPEC+?
Incoherence is nothing new in the Beltway, but it’s still quite something to see the Biden administration simultaneously pursue new constraints on U.S. production of fossil fuels as a central component of its “climate” policies, while at the same time attempting to avoid the adverse price effects of that production stance. The administration on August 11…
July 21, 2021
Green Infrastructure: Pass It and Then We’ll See What’s in It
With the August recess imminent, the congressional Democrats are desperate to spend huge sums of other people’s money, and “infrastructure” is as useful a rhetorical vehicle for that purpose as any. With their innumerable constituencies’ long wish lists hardly a secret, an infinitely elastic definition of “infrastructure” is a virtue born of necessity, one manifestation of…
July 13, 2021
Litigation Against Fossil Producers Is Litigation Against Energy Consumers and Voters
Supply and demand form the oldest and most powerful framework we have for analyzing price shifts for goods and services. Increase the cost of supplying a given good, and — presto! — its price will rise, imposing economic costs not only upon the producers but emphatically upon the consumers of the good. Which brings us to…
June 16, 2021
The Modern Case for Competition in Power Markets
Sometimes localized controversies highlight an issue of far broader significance, a truth illustrated well by the ongoing battle over electricity policy in Virginia. The central question in a nutshell: Will power consumers be allowed to purchase electricity by choosing among alternative suppliers in a competitive market? Or will they continue to be constrained by the choices of…
May 26, 2021
The Dumbest New York Times Op-ed of 2021
Summer still is weeks away, but already we have a winner in the fierce competition for the coveted title of “Dumbest New York Times opinion column of 2021.” The envelope please… and the winner is “Why Charles Koch Wins When Our Energy System Breaks Down,” by someone named Christopher Leonard. One really does have to read this column to…
May 21, 2021
Fiction Vs. Reality on Fossil-fuel Subsidies
Some political targets are temporary, little more than props deployed in pursuit of a tactical advantage in the Beltway skirmish of the day. Others are permanent fixtures in the landscape, the foundations of an ideological worldview impervious to facts, reasoning, and the perverse outcomes that the attendant policy imperatives would engender. Prominent among the latter is…
May 12, 2021
Would a Phaseout of Hydrofluorocarbons Avoid Half a Degree of Global Warming?
In a recent “Daily on Energy” report for the Washington Examiner, Josh Siegel and Abby Smith reported: “This morning, the EPA unveiled a proposal to begin limiting potent greenhouse gas coolants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. It’s a significant step to curb climate change, as phasing down HFCs could help avoid roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming.” The claim that…
April 15, 2021
Where We Are Headed: Making the US Poorer and OPEC+ Richer
The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is brightening, in substantial part as a result of the global inoculation effort, however slowly and unevenly. With this improving public-health outlook comes a prospective renewal of worldwide economic growth generally, and in industrial, commercial, and transportation sectors in particular. That would engender an expansion in the…
January 23, 2021
Climate Policy Is the Purview of Congress, Not the Courts
The Supreme Court on January 19 heard oral arguments in a case (BP PLC v Mayor and City Council of Baltimore) that addresses an exceedingly narrow topic: whether or not the “federal officer jurisdiction” doctrine should direct climate lawsuits by states and municipalities against energy producers into state or federal court. Most such lawsuits attempt to…