Author name: Michael Giberson

Micro-hydropower Potential in Man-made Waterways

Michael Giberson Earth Techling reports on the release of the latest report in the U.S. Department of Interior’s efforts to identify opportunities to develop small-scale hydropower projects within the DOI’s current water delivery systems in the Western United States. The goal of DOI’s project was to inventory potentially valuable locations and then invite developers to …

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Zwolinski: “Is Price Gouging Immoral? Should It Be Illegal?”

Michael Giberson Five minutes of Matt Zwolinski on price gouging (from Learn Liberty). [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9QEkw6_O6w] If you think price gouging should be against the law, watch this video. Are you persuaded by Zwolinski? Let me know in the comments. MORE: Zwolinski has written serious philosophical works on price gouging,which makes the clarity of his position in …

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Oil Speculator Witch Hunt, 2012 Edition

Michael Giberson Steve Mufson at the Washington Post reports: President Obama proposed measures Tuesday to step up oversight of energy markets and boost by tenfold the penalties for market manipulation, in an effort to blunt political pressure over the 20 percent increase in gasoline prices since the beginning of the year. [Links in source.] Not that the administration has …

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Reducing the Size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Michael Giberson Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an essay by Austan Goolsbee in which he advocates reducing the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Even better, he suggests a rule by which the SPR could be managed in a transparent fashion: aim to be able to replace 90 days worth of imports from non-North American …

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Measuring Success by How Much You Spent on the Program: A Renewable Energy Example

Michael Giberson In general, in public policy analysis, you’d like to judge ultimate success or failure of a program by its net results, by actual benefits less the costs involved in achieving those benefits. Admittedly sometimes benefits are hard to measure, but ultimately the point of a policy change is to bring about some improvement …

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Greedy Oil Companies and Charitable Natural Gas Companies?

Michael Giberson Oil and gasoline prices are high and so it isn’t too tough to find complaints about skyrocketing greed at oil companies. Yet at the same time natural gas prices have fallen to incredible lows (about $2.10 per MMBTU on the NYMEX this morning for May 2012). Aren’t natural gas company executives greedy too? It …

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Rto Forward Capacity Markets Are Unlikely to Succeed

Michael Giberson The Gulf Coast Power Association meetings earlier this week included a debate over the future of resource adequacy within the ERCOT power system. Debate moderator Eric Schubert, BP Energy Company, introduced the issue with a critique of capacity market structures that is heavy on its reliance on Hayek’s knowledge problem. It is a …

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Current Oil Prices: Scarcity Rents, Political Unrest, Inflation Hedging, or Speculation

Michael Giberson An article by Sarah Kent in the WSJ, “Gulf in oil prices may set up market for a fall,” takes notice of wide gap that has emerged between the current price of oil on the world market and the futures price of oil a few years into the future. A variety of explanations …

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