Michael Giberson In the Christian Science Monitor, Robert Rapier wishes for a stable energy policy. It is an attractive idea. After all, policy uncertainty plays havoc with the ability of investors, managers, workers and consumers to coordinate plans in ways that usually work to make us all better off. He provides three examples–the production tax credit …
Not Your Grandfather’s Dysfunctional Energy Policy Read More »
Michael Giberson The question troubling some folks in Texas’s competitive power market: Will Texas consumers want to consume more electric power than suppliers are able to supply? A resource adequacy review by ERCOT, the power system and market operator for most of the state, suggests that consumer demand may outstrip resources available as early as 2014. …
Competitive Power Market in Texas Faces Supply Concerns. Now What? Read More »
Michael Giberson Loren Steffy, business columnist at the Houston Chronicle, is frequently a sensible guy. But his writing gig seems to require him to announce the sky is falling on a regular basis, so you have got to be a little careful when reading him. What else can you say about a column that cites …
From the Upside Down Market View of Houston Chronicle Columnist Loren Steffy Read More »
Michael Giberson A crisis is coming for the New Jersey solar power installation industry. Stringent solar power purchase requirements imposed on electric utilities (i.e. on electric utility ratepayers) has turned the state into the nation’s second largest for solar power capacity installed, behind only sunny California. But now that installed capacity is sufficient to meet …
New Jersey Solar Installers Seek “Endless Summer” at Ratepayer Expense Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Just a quick note to accompany the discussion in the comments on Mike’s post about Southwest Airlines, Delta Airlines, and fuel price hedging: a couple of weeks ago Virginia Postrel had a very good analysis of the reasons why the Delta-Conoco transaction is not a good idea, in her regular column at Bloomberg …
Michael Giberson “We don’t know where the price of crude is going to be,” says [Southwest Airlines’s Chris] Monroe. But, he adds, “I think we have to be generally bullish just because we’re trying to protect against an increase … So we have a little bit of a bias that prices may go higher.” He …
Michael Giberson Deep in the heart of the competitive wholesale and retail electric power market that is (the ERCOT system in) Texas lies a little island of small-scale socialism: the municipal electric utility called Austin Energy. While power prices are dropping all around the state due to low natural gas prices, in the Texas state …
Michael Giberson David Wessel’s economics column at the Wall Street Journal takes a look at an IMF analysis of commodities prices since 1973. In the process, he makes an odd claim about energy prices. Wessel writes: To help distinguish temporary trends from long-lasting ones, International Monetary Fund economists recently charted the inflation-adjusted prices of four …
The Energy Price Version of “This Time It’s Different” Read More »
Michael Giberson At Toronto’s The Globe and Mail, Nathan Vanderklippe reported, “Low natural gas price casts doubt on ‘proven’ reserves.” He explains how rapidly falling natural gas prices can cause reserves to disappear. And, by the way, with higher prices reserves can just as quickly reappear. It isn’t magic. But the nature of oil and …
Natural Gas Reserves May Rapidly Disappear (and Later Reappear) Read More »
If you must subsidize energy, subsidize wisely. Given the way public policy gets made, subsidizing wisely is much harder than you might think.
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