Michael Giberson
The Financial Times Energy Source blog unearths a recommendation from 100 years ago to try wind power “in view of our diminishing returns of coal and petroleum.” Practical issues are discussed, storage issues seen as important.
Also at Energy Source, “The murky task of curbing speculation.”
Lynne Kiesling
I would like to bring the blog Structured Thinking to your attention. Structured Thinking captures the ideas of a group of folks at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who do a range of energy-related and building-related research. For example, one recent post highlights a topic of great interest to me: behavioral economics and “keeping up with the Joneses” in energy efficiency. They are a welcome addition to the energy research and policy discussion!
Michael Giberson
I have a longish guest post, “Windpower: Focusing the Criticism Away from NIMBYism and Aesthetics,” up at Master Resource, Rob Bradley’s free market energy blog. In general, in the post I offer advice to free-market-oriented critics of wind power, urging them to focus on the distortionary policy problems and to stay away from arguments that seem to encourage more unprincipled policy intervention into markets.
Here is the somewhat dry introduction to the essay:
Market-oriented policy analysts have not been shy about cataloguing the problems surrounding windpower development. But in the enthusiasm to oppose the government interventions accompanying wind generation, market-based analysts sometimes have strayed beyond principled defense of markets and unwittingly offered support to anti-market NIMBYism and other meddlesome sentiments. Policy analysts examining wind power issues should consider more carefully which issues ought to be pursued through the policy process.
I run through a list of frequently made anti-wind power complaints – too costly, unreliable, uses too much land, etc. – and try to explain where the policy issues are, and, especially, where they are not.
Read the rest at Master Resource.
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