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…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 15, 2016
I wrote recently about the manipulation of benefit/cost analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and more generally about the adverse implications of the evolution of the federal bureaucracy into an…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 8, 2016
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,…
By Benjamin Zycher | August 1, 2016
The weather warms. The flowers bloom. The garden parties begin anew, and nothing is worse than waiting day after agonizing day for invitations that never come. So why not make…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 30, 2016
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 27, 2016
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 20, 2016
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 15, 2016
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 9, 2016
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | June 6, 2016
“Sustainability” is a popular buzzword in the public discussion of energy and environment policies generally and in the defense of subsidies for “renewable” energy in particular. But the definition of…
By Benjamin Zycher | May 20, 2016
It is Earth Day, when pieties flow like wine, when the self-applause of the right-thinking is deafening, when the antihuman core of modern environmentalism shines bright, and when the destructiveness of groupthink…
By Benjamin Zycher | April 22, 2016
Policy research in the Beltway offers numerous attractions, among them the opportunity to exchange views and engage in back-and-forth challenges with other experts, in settings both formal and informal. Such…
By Benjamin Zycher | February 4, 2016
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…
By Benjamin Zycher | January 19, 2016
The question before us is straightforward: Is the Paris climate agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions a good strategy? A strategy, of course, is a set of tools used to…
By Benjamin Zycher | December 18, 2015
Breaking news Saturday in Paris from the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: National leaders described the agreement finally reached as “an historic…
By Benjamin Zycher | December 15, 2015