Lynne Kiesling Macroeconomics and I have never gotten along, and for years I couldn’t figure out why — I’ve just never understood much of the underlying logic, why the analyses start where they do and make the assumptions they do (the only exception to this is my undergrad class with William Hart at Miami when …
Stimulus Failure: A Costly Lesson on Keynes and Say’s Law? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling As a coda to Mike’s post yesterday regarding the CRS study of the effects of removing oil subsidies on gasoline prices, here’s Ron Bailey at Reason reminding us that ethanol subsidies are almost triple those to the oil companies, and with little to show either environmentally, economically, or energetically. Courtesy of Dr. Vino, …
Things That Caught My Eye: Subsidies, Wine, Leds, Dismal Economists Read More »
Michael Giberson Casually scanning a solar resource map wouldn’t naturally lead you to think that New Jersey would be a good candidate for solar power, but state government policies have resulted in it leaping into second place in PV installations (after California) in 2010. More PV was installed in New Jersey last year than in …
Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal reports that a program to cut energy consumption by subsidizing consumer purchases of compact fluorescent light bulbs is not working out as planned. I think we can summarize this as: regulator approves cost recovery for subsidy program to reduce energy consumption, program doesn’t work as well as expected, so regulator approves …
Compact Fluorescent Bulbs Not Living Up to California Program’s Expectations Read More »
Michael Giberson From the IEEE Global History Network: With the opening of the Pearl Street station in lower Manhattan at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on 4 September 1882, Thomas Edison publicly presented a complete system of commercial electric lighting and power. The success of the Edison bulb created a demand for a source of power. …
The 128th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Electric Power Industry Read More »
Michael Giberson A Financial Times article discusses advances in the application of LED technology, both for television and other display technologies and for general lighting applications. Pete Moran of the DCM venture capital firm says LEDs have advantages such as longer life and greater efficiency compared with both incandescents and the energy-saving compact fluorescents with …
Taking out a Mortgage to Buy Led Lights for Your Home Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Want some evidence for why technology mandate legislation is fraught with difficulties? This New York Times article on innovation in incandescent light bulb technology is a datum: When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to …
Lynne Kiesling UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who alerted me that I mis-labeled my graph, and that equilibrium B should be at the intersection of S’ and D’. I may not get to update the graph Monday, my apologies. There’s been an interesting discussion going on this week building off of a Sean Casten post …
Lynne Kiesling Informing individuals about the resource use and environmental consequences of their energy consumption can be surprisingly difficult. Do you ever read the little flyers that your utility or your energy retailer puts in your bill? Nope, I don’t either. But in general we’re pretty clueless about our energy consumption, because we do not …
Informing Consumers About Energy Efficiency: Viral Communication Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Two recent news articles highlight the relevance of electricity price signals and intelligent end-use technology during a period of increasing fuel prices, and the juxtaposition of the two articles highlights consumers changing their behavior in the face of high energy prices. In short, the institutional change required to achieve thriving, healthy retail electricity …
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