Energy
A blurb in a recent edition of National Review’s The Week offers a necessary reminder of an issue that shouldn’t slip out of public view: Having seized for itself, with the help of the courts, the authority to regulate greenhouse gases without the consent of Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama has aggressively proceeded…
On first hearing that Tiverton might be the site of a new on-land wind farm, I was more or less ambivalent, but with the feeling that the project would provide more benefit than detriment. But details on the structure of the initiative raise concerns more fundamental than Rhode Island’s habitual not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude: Nine communities…
The latest National Review offers a brief reminder to stock up on incandescent light bulbs: … the nation’s last major incandescent-light-bulb factory, in Winchester, Va., has shut down, a victim of the enforced switch to more efficient twisted fluorescent bulbs. It’s bad enough that Congress is telling Americans what to light their houses with, but…
John Mauldin’s report from an economic conference in Texas doesn’t leave much room for optimism, with its first point being as follows: John Hofmeister is the former president of Shell Oil and now CEO of the public-policy group Citizens for Affordable Energy. He paints a very stark (even bleak, as he gets further into the…
An article about a small-scale windfarm to be completed by spring 2012 offers some numbers and thereby invites readers to do the math: Three, 360-foot tall turbines — the largest in the state — will be built at the Narragansett Bay Commission’s Fields Point Wastewater Treatment Facility. The team for the $12-million project includes Gilbane…
OSPRI’s Bill Felkner has an excellent summary of Rhode Island’s adventures in mandated expensive wind power in the Daily Caller: President Obama recently proposed spending $2 billion for the creation of 5100 green jobs. On government standards, that’s a very thrifty $392,156 per job — a bargain compared to the $2.2 million being proposed in…
Well, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has reached the decision that the General Assembly and Governor Carcieri all but required it to make, signing off on the expensive contract for an offshore wind farm between Deepwater Wind and National Grid: “It will be four cents a day more,” Carcieri said. “Who wouldn’t be…
A couple of weeks ago, President Obama week showed off an expensive electric car with a short driving range and a nice taxpayer subsidy. On a tangential but important issue, Slate’s Charles Lane is correctly not happy about the latter aspect of this vehicle. … this little runabout is a rich man’s ride. And that’s…
After an excellent description of the process and risks of deep sea oil drilling, Mario Loyola turns political (see PDF here if you don’t subscribe to National Review): What is more startling is that, judging by appearances at least, Obama may be trying to advance his agenda by intentionally causing a fuel shortage. The moratorium…
This so-called “smartgrid” technology is a disaster waiting to happen: The hurried deployment of smart-grid technology could leave critical infrastructure and private homes vulnerable to hackers. Security experts at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas last week warned that smart-grid hardware and software lacks the necessary safeguards to protect against meddling. Utilities are being…