Michael Giberson Vero Beach, Florida, could become a hothouse of dynamic competition in retail electric power, if only the city would follow the recommendations of economist Dom Armentano. According to the Vero Beach [Florida] Electric Utility, they aim to provide “reliable, cost competitive electrical energy and services to our customers in a manner that exceeds …
Lynne Kiesling I really appreciated this Wall Street Journal article on how Whole Foods is adapting its corporate strategy to the current economic downturn. Their direction: shift away from a gourmet/”Whole Paycheck” focus and toward “healthy eating”. Founder and CEO John Mackey sees this adaptation as a movement in focus back toward his original commercial …
Evolving Competition: Whole Foods, Costco, Trader Joe’s Read More »
Michael Giberson Well, maybe not “with love,” but as Platts reports, Russian LNG could arrive in the U.S. as early as this Winter. (HT to NewsWatch: Energy.) Of course with the ongoing natural gas glut, that LNG may find itself “all compressed up with no place to go.” The WSJ Environmental Capital blog notes that …
Michael Giberson Danny Morris at Common Tragedies explains and advocates for wider adoption of the Idaho Stop Law: The law, named after the clever state that instituted it in 1982, says that cyclists may treat stop signs as yield signs (they must stop for those w/ the right of way, but can proceed w/o stopping …
Michael Giberson Should public policy accommodate the irrational fears of non-voters? In this case, the phrase “irrational fears” refers to a seemingly innate overwhelming aversion to vertical structures, namely wind turbines and high-voltage transmission lines, and “non-voters” refers to the lesser prairie chicken. A few weeks ago the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal ran a story on wildlife …
Wind Power, Birds, Public Policy, and the Irrational Fears of Non-voters Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In a Cnet Green Tech article, Martin LaMonica points to some developments in an area that I’ve been pushing on for years: the potential consumer value creation from bundling residential electricity service with home security services. The potential for such bundling is one example of why I argue so emphatically for retail competition: …
Home Energy Management and Home Security Product Bundling Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I’ve had several conversations with people my age and younger who work in the electricity end-use technology space in which we use a particular shorthand for the change in culture and mindset that we want to see happen in the retail electricity industry: “there’s an app for that.” In our conversations it’s shorthand …
Michael Giberson From Fortune-Investor Daily: If Congress or the CFTC forces through stiff curbs on futures trading by so-called “speculators” — i.e. investors who use futures to bet on future price movements but don’t buy actual oil — it may lead to higher, not lower, oil prices over the long term. Why? Imagine you’re an …
Keeping Some Speculators out of the Oil Market May Lead to Higher Oil Prices Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Last week Newsweek had an article on smart grid investments and projects that provides a good overview, focusing on the newly-funded Department of Energy demonstration projects. Many of you will already know more about these than the details provide in the article, but it’s a good overview if you don’t.
Lynne Kiesling I’m at a NIST smart grid workshop, where the objective is to take the identified, prioritized smart grid interoperability standards requirements and start working on the game plan for developing interoperability standards out of them. Toby Considine sat next to me yesterday morning and wrote about his observations, so I’ll spare you mine, …
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