Michael Giberson Newsday reports that some consumers “feel ‘ripped off’ by LIPA’s alt-energy plan.??? Ratepayers who sign up for Green Choice permit LIPA to add an average premium of 1 to 2 cents a kilowatt hour, or $4 to $15 a month, to their bills. LIPA sends that to one of two green-power marketing companies …
Lynne Kiesling Yes, it does sound like it’s in environmental economics. From the Sun-Times: Two Americans and a French scientist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for developing a chemical “dance” that makes molecules swap atoms, a process now used to create medicines, plastics and other products with more efficiency and less environmental hazard. …
Lynne Kiesling I am teaching environmental economics this fall, and Tuesday was our first day of class. As I have structured the class, it focuses on common-pool resource allocation decisions. So I typically start the class with the example of a river, which I draw on the board. I ask students to name the different …
Michael Giberson Regulatory authorities and public policy goals have collided on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, just across from D.C. This has been a slow-motion collision, long in coming and probably weeks or months still to go, so pull up a chair and watch the show. Virginia state officials have caused the shut …
Regulators Clash on Air Quality and Electric Reliability Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Check out this Wired article about methane capture from a trash dump in Bangaledesh. Methane capture technology can serve three objectives here: generating power, improving the utilization of the dump, and creating fertilizer that can enrich the thin soil in the area. When it gets going, this system can produce enough electricity to …
Lynne Kiesling One of the beautiful and often-overlooked things about human action and exchange is not just comparative advantage. It’s the dynamic changes in comparative advantage as the environment changes. What you do relatively well (and relatively less badly, to really trigger the comparative advantage concept) changes over time, as you change, adapting to the …
Oil And Fuel Price Summary, And Musing On Comparative Advantage Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Last week Rob at Peak Oil Optimist commented on an environmental group’s position on the construction of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant in the Pacific Northwest. They contend that the technology is just not needed because of other available means of renewable power and demand reduction. Rob correctly and nicely …
“Le Parfait Est L’ennemi Du Bien” In Technology Choice Read More »
Lynne Kiesling A piece of evidence consistent with my hypothesis: the Wisconsin Farm Bureau welcomes the new energy bill, saying not only that increased ethanol production benefits Wisconsin farmers, but also that the state legislature should follow the Congressional example and pass bills to mandate ethanol use in fuel in Wisconsin. … deep sigh …
Lynne Kiesling One of the standard topics I discuss in summer workshops and in my environmental economics course is the benefits of tradable emission permits, including cap-and-trade programs such as the EPA’s Acid Rain program (yes, I know it’s not ideal because the cap is bureaucratically determined, but it’s better than the practical alternative, isn’t …
Lynne Kiesling Last week while I was off philosophizing, the Federal Trade Commission released a new report on the factors that influence retail gasoline prices (hat tip to Todd Zywicki). The FTC watches retail gasoline prices carefully, and every spring like clockwork when prices go up and my Senator (that would be Dick Durbin) rails …
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