Michael Giberson A few scattered stories: In testimony to the US House and Senate Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday, Fed chief Ben Bernanke said, “the one small silver lining” in $100/barrel oil is that “a lot of alternatives become economically feasible.” In fact, well before $200/barrel, biking to work would become feasible for a lot …
Michael Giberson On Monday night, Republicans in the Kansas House voted to apply a tax of $37 per ton of CO2 emitted from coal fired power plants for emissions in excess of 110 percent of the statewide average. Proceeds from the tax would be distributed to the large coal plants in the state with the …
Michael Giberson I was out in West Texas this past weekend and had a little spare time available Saturday morning. What better for an energy policy geek to do than visit the American Wind Power Center in Lubbock, Texas? The AWPC is a museum showing off about 150 years of windmill technology. Most of the …
Michael Giberson It is rare that these little “learning moments” come nicely packaged, but the two near contemporaneous power system emergencies in Florida and Texas on February 26, 2008 present such a package. Still, otherwise intelligent industry observers seem to miss the point. Example, the Smart Grid News of March 26, which presents an overly …
Reliable Power: the Winds of West Texas Vs. a Maintenance Worker Mistake in Florida Read More »
Michael Giberson Usually, with annual Spring price increases, we hear the perennial allegations of gasoline price gouging from politicians. Despite all the talk about high gasoline prices, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about price gouging this year. The precise meaning of the term “price gouging” is sometimes hard to pin down, but a …
Price Gouging: At the Intersection of Emotions, Ethics, and Economics Read More »
Michael Giberson Even in the Houston area, with an economy built on the oil industry, some consumers are looking for a little extra — and sometimes a lot extra — energy efficiency in their home purchases. Via the Houston Chronicle: Local builders for years have touted the energy efficiency of their homes, such as better …
Energy Efficient Homes Appealing to Buyers in Texas Read More »
Michael Giberson The title question, “Why are gasoline prices so high?”, or some variant has been the primary driver of new viewers from search engines to Knowledge Problem over the past three or four weeks. It is a topic we have done before (and before that, and before that, etc., etc.), but of course those …
Michael Giberson This could be one of the gee-whiz, how-cool-is-that posts about advancing technologies that we do here from time to time. The Arizona Republic has a story about how the new Phoenix Convention Center, which was finished in 2006, will begin to generate some of its own power courtesy of some gee-whiz technologies: peel-and-stick …
Peel-and-stick Solar Panels for Phoenix Convention Center Read More »
Michael Giberson From Scientific American online, “What Can Virtual-World Economists Tell Us about Real-World Economies?“: Eyjólfur Guðmundsson is the only economist on Earth who spends his days studying the fluctuating cost of warp-disruption batteries and T2 light drones. That’s because he’s the world’s first virtual-world economist. This past August, Guðmundsson took up residence in EVE …
Think Alan Greenspan–Only in Battlestar Galactica Read More »
Michael Giberson The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) announced today that the first allowance auction in the United States for a mandatory CO2 emissions reduction program will take place on September 10, 2008. A second auction will take place December 17, with quarterly auctions thereafter; the compliance period will begin January 1, 2009. The announcement …
Rggi Picks Uniform-Price Sealed-Bid Auction Design for First Regional Co2 Auction in US Read More »
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