Michael Giberson At The Atlantic‘s business blog, Reiham Salam invokes sci-fi author Vernor Vinge as he contemplates the meaning of what he saw at the SXSW Interactive Festival, but his post put me more in mind of these famous opening lines: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, …
Reiham Salam on the Angelheaded Hipsters at Sxsw Interactive Read More »
Michael Giberson FERC has posted it’s proposed smart grid policy statement and invited comments (comments due 45 days after the statement is published in the Federal Register). FERC offers this summary: This proposed policy statement and action plan provides guidance to inform the development of a smarter grid for the Nation’s electric transmission system focusing …
Michael Giberson Retroactive policymaking is all the rage in Washington, D.C., these days, with Congress discovering after the fact that policy made in haste a few months ago needs to be fixed, and now rushing to fix it. A recent regulatory settlement in Missouri shows the state to be ahead of the game in retroactive …
Michael Giberson At Slate, Chris Wilson advances the idea that the best way to win your local NCAA basketball pool is “to look for situations where the national bracket values a team much higher than the objective statistics.” By betting on the undervalued teams you are more likely to come out ahead. In the past …
Michael Giberson At the Streetwise Professor, Craig Pirrong finds that the current political flap over AIG bonuses well illustrates the value of rules over discretion. His conclusion matches my view: “Several hundred million dollars is a lot of money. But it pales in comparison to the amount that would be lost by undermining contracts and …
Michael Giberson Wind power has been subsidized by state and federal governments in the United States because it is seen as clean and renewable, and perhaps even because wind power is seen as glamorous. Consumers pay higher electric rates and taxpayers pay higher taxes to support these subsidies, and it is a quite reasonable public …
Environmental Benefits and the Production Tax Credit for Wind Power Read More »
Michael Giberson As Lynne just noted, this week Chicago is hosting GridEcon, a conference on smart grid economics. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the agenda for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission meeting this week indicates that the Commission will be issuing a policy statement on smart grid policy. No preliminary statements have been made under the …
Michael Giberson William Tucker, author of “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Long Energy Odyssey,” has an essay in today’s WSJ pinning the U.S. nuclear waste problem on decisions by Presidents Ford and Carter to abandon reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. The reasons for abandoning reprocessing – mostly …
Also in the Wsj: “There is No Such Thing As Nuclear Waste” Read More »
Michael Giberson Carbon tax and cap-and-trade fun, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and bloggers at Common Tragedies. In brief: on Monday the WSJ lead editorial complained about the distributional effects of cap-and-trade, correctly noting that the effect of pricing carbon would depend on consumption but misleadingly illustrated with a chart based on …
Because It is Not News Until It is on Comedy Central; Or, Carbon Taxes Their Brains Read More »
Michael Giberson For class tomorrow I’m reading up on things Enron and California power market melt-down related. I’m a fan, for example, of Jonathan Falk’s 2002 article in the Electricity Journal on the infamous “Smoking Gun” memo which detailed Enron’s colorfully-named trading strategies like “get shorty” and “death star.” Among other things, Falk points out …
Power Market Seams and the Role of Arbitragers in Market Design Read More »
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