The glut in solar power in Australia is so big that next year solar panel owners in Sydney will have to pay 1.2c a kilowatt hour to offload their unwanted energy between 10am and 3pm. Nearly a million homes in Sydney have solar panels, but only 7% of them have batteries, which means basically, thousands of homes installed hi-tech generators that aren’t very useful. Worse, other homes were forced to pay part of the costs for them. The only winner was China.
Finally, a tiny part of the strangled free market is re-asserting itself, which might slow down future installations, or trick a few people into installing a $9,000 battery. Naturally this unpredictable rule change will hurt the poorest solar owners, but benefit those wealthy enough to afford a battery.
The biggest electricity distributor on the east coast plans to charge households with solar panels to export their electricity to the grid during the middle of the day.
Ausgrid will impose a penalty of 1.2¢ a kilowatt-hour for any electricity exported to the grid between 10am and 3pm above a free threshold that varies by month. During peak demand times, between 4pm and 9pm, Ausgrid would pay 2.3¢ an hour as a reward to customers exporting solar to the grid.
The tariff will be charged by Ausgrid and the retailer will decide how to package it. It is opt-in from July this year, and mandatory from July next year.
The Sydney Morning Herald naturally thinks this is backwards and unfair, and in a sense it is, homeowners were led up the garden path. No one was given realistic information before they purchased another useless panel. But where was The Sydney Morning Herald? — it was selling the garden path. If they interviewed a few skeptics they could have told the hapless homeowners that the forced transition was artificial, unmanageable, and the conditions were doomed to be “adjusted” sooner or later.
Solar power at noon is electrical sewage
The wholesale market was trying to send the message. Negative spot prices show that solar is essentially a waste product at lunchtime which needs to be disposed off, a bit like electrical sewage.
You might wonder why any generator would keep generating during a glut so bad they had to pay for every watt they generated. But it’s logical in a screwed market — the negative prices are close to the value of the “Renewable Energy Certificates” the government forces us all to pay to solar and wind operators. So solar owners can produce a product the market essentially doesn’t want, but the government forces us to pay to make it profitable. See how this works?
The point of a free market is that stupid ideas are supposed to be free to lose their own money. That’s a signal to stop doing it.
And if there was some use for solar power at midday, negative prices would have found it. If there was an AI supercomputer that needed to sleep 18 hours a day and only work at lunchtime, the owners would have been beating down the door to get paid to use that solar juice. It didn’t happen.
Here’s the solar power contribution to the NSW grid this month.
During the solar spikes, hundreds of tons of exquisitely tuned infrastructure that could have kept running, just sits around and waits in case a cloud rolls over. And efficiency gained by solar is lost by the rest of the system.
“Great work, Institute for Economic Affairs! May the honor of being on DeSmog’s hit list raise awareness of your noble mission and attract new donors.”
DeSmog’s enemies list has grown so long and distinguished that it refutes its “hit-piece” mission. Fact is, there is a vast scientifically literate middle that exposes the flawed case for climate catastrophism and forced energy transformation.
Here are some rebuttals that mostly reprint what DeSmog has to say about its enemies as correct–and even heroic against the termite aspirations of the governmental Climate Industrial Complex.
The latest from DeSmog, IEA Think Tank Contributes to Climate Science Denial Documentary, by Sam Bright (April 5, 2024), mentions a lot of good analysis and conclusions from the Institute for Economic Affairs (London). The quotations below speak for themselves, leaving out the ad hominem and guilt-by-association paragraphs that assert rather than debate. [My reactions are in bold.]
In the documentary [Climate The Movie: The Cold Truth], [IEA’s Stephen] Davies claims that climate activists want to impose an “austere” life on ordinary people. “Behind all the talk about a climate emergency, climate crisis” is “an animus and hostility towards” working-class people, “their lifestyle, their beliefs and a desire to change it by force if necessary,” he says. [Correct] …
The film suggests that we shouldn’t be worried about greenhouse gas emissions, because plants need carbon dioxide. “We’re in a CO2 famine,” one interviewee claims. [True]
Climate The Movie producer Thomas Nelson told DeSmog that “I see the misguided fight against carbon dioxide as being as crazy as fighting against oxygen or water vapour, and I think scaring innocent children about this is deeply evil”. [True … and fantastic]
The IEA has extensive influence in politics and the media. It was pivotal to Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership as prime minister, and has boasted of its access to Conservative ministers and MPs. During the year ending March 2023, the IEA appeared in the media on 5,265 occasions, a figure 43 percent higher than its previous peak in 2019. [Bloody Good!]
The group has also received donations from a number of philanthropic trusts accused of channelling funds from the fossil fuel industry and helping to support climate science denial groups. The IEA is a member of the Atlas Network – an international collaboration of “extreme” free market groups that have been accused of promoting the interests of fossil fuel companies and other large corporations. [True … good going]
The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that a ban on new North Sea oil and gas would be “madness,” has criticised the windfall tax imposed on North Sea oil and gas firms, and said that the government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s fossil fuel reserves is a “welcome step”. [Correct!]
“Clearly the IEA is now ramping up its climate culture war and the Conservative Party has been following suit. The cross-party consensus on climate action we used to have in Parliament is under strain like never before.” [True … great deliverable]
During the documentary, Davies suggests that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is being used to limit the freedom of individuals. He claims that climate activists want to impose “a much more austere simple kind of lifestyle” on people “in which the consumption choices of the great bulk of the population are controlled or even prohibited.” [True]
Davies adds that: “What you have here is a classic example of class hypocrisy and self-interest masquerading as public spirited concern. You could take these kinds of green socialists more seriously if they lived off grid, they cut their own consumption down to the minimum, they never flew. Instead you get constant talk about how human consumption is destroying the planet but the people making all this talk show absolutely no signs of reducing their own.” [True]
The documentary also features an interview with Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s leading climate science denial group. Peiser has previously claimed that it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis,” while the GWPF has expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet.” [Sound] …
The documentary also features Claire Fox, a member of the House of Lords who was nominated for a peerage by former prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020. Fox used the documentary to claim that, by tackling climate change, people will be forced to pay more “to simply live the lives that they were leading.” She suggests that supporters of climate action are trying to “take away what we consider to be not luxuries but necessities.” [True]
The brochure also lists the IEA’s chief operating officer Andy Mayer, who has said that the government should “get rid of” its target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which he called a “very hard left, socialist, central-planning model.” [Correct]
Great work, Institute for Economic Affairs! May the honor of being on DeSmog’s hit list raise awareness of your noble mission and attract new donations.”
A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas September 15, 2008. A big chunk of U.S. energy production shuttered by Hurricane Ike could recover quickly amid early indications the storm caused only minor to moderate damage to platforms and coastal refineries. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi ( UNITED STATES) – RTR30K4U
“There is a strong intellectual case against the view that ExxonMobil ‘knew’ that CO2 was a threat to human betterment versus the continuous growth of consumer-desired, taxpayer-neutral oil and natural gas. In fact, Enron, not Exxon, was the bigger culprit in the climate-change-and-business saga.”
Geoscientist Lindsey Gulden speaks for the Climate Industrial Complex, not the average person who depends on oil and gas every minute of every day, when she portrays herself as a martyr for the cause of climate alarmism/forced energy transformation.
It is not easy to get fired by ExxonMobil, but there are underperformers and just bad apples in every batch. Lindsey Gulden appears to be one. On social media, she tells of just this experience, invoking climate alarmism.
But she does note one thing of interest: the company’s overhyped political play of carbon capture and storage, which is correct. But it is climate exaggeration that has created the political winds to allow ExxonMobil to get its piece of the taxpayer-subsidy pie. Dialing back politics would right-size the very technology she decries.
Her Story
“It may not be advisable to talk on LinkedIn about the time I was fired by #ExxonMobil,” she begins. “But here goes.”
I am a #climate scientist…. I started out as Ms Rebecca Grekin, a climate scientist who earnestly, naively believed that the ExxonMobil of today is a trustworthy actor in the energy transition. I spent more than a decade working for ExxonMobil, occasionally (but not often enough) advocating for combatting #climatechange .
In 2020, I was fired—yes, fired—by ExxonMobil because I reported what amounted to a $10 billion fraud. To put it mildly, that experience fundamentally altered my opinion of whether present-day ExxonMobil can be considered an honest broker in anything, but most especially in the realm of the energy transition, which is a far-greater-than-$10-billion threat to the Exxon’s bottom line….
What is good for oil and gas re ExxonMobil is good for energy consumers worldwide. And the less climate politics, the better. But Gulden will have none of this.
Despite what smooth-talking spokespeople will tell you, ExxonMobil continues to fund and be an active member of organizations that are—today—working to decrease political support for government action to curb climate change and decrease the public’s access to and trust in readily available replacements for #oilandgas.
They fund PhDs and national labs to burnish their reputation and influence what questions researchers address.
Then a very good point is made by Gulden: the rent-seeking and greenwashing of ExxonMobil with carbon capture and storage, a mistake in the making.
#industry lobbyists have convinced large swaths of the public (and most of their own well-meaning employees) that technologies like carbon capture and storage are legitimate recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for combatting climate change.
Those taxpayer dollars are urgently needed for existing, proven, ready-right-now solutions but instead are funding a massive campaign to enhance oil recovery. Carbon capture and storage is, at its core, a technology for producing more oil. It requires more carbon to be expended to inject #co2 at pressure than it keeps out of the atmosphere. It is not and will not be a viable solution to climate change.
She blames herself with her half-truth conscience.
ExxonMobil executives can continue this deception in large part because so many useful idiots, myself included, willingly lend their personal reputations to the propping up of a lie. They can continue this deception because they make an example of people like me (I’m not the only one) to ensure that their employees are afraid to truly challenge the ethics of the company line.
She concludes:
I wish I could tell my younger self that the cynical Mr Yannai Kashtan is right. That idealism and/or a paycheck can lull you into trusting those who say one thing and do another. That we must stop allowing ourselves to be used by a few people who care more about their reserve shares than about doing the right thing. And, most important, that we must, without delay, find the unflinching political will to turn off the #fossilfuels tap as fast as we possibly can.
Social injustice and carnage on a global, massive scale, Ms. Gulden? If she is in turmoil about her time at ExxonMobil and the way forward, a fundamental rethink is in order. Whole new ideas to quell ‘climate anxiety’ as the world’s energy needs continue to be met, increasingly so, by oil, natural gas, and coal.
Exxon and ExxonMobil: The Road Not Taken
More fundamentally, Exxon and (after 1997) ExxonMobil abandoned the moral high ground when it substituted appeasement for principle, which began around the time of President Obama’s election in 2008.
There is a strong intellectual case against the view that Exxon – ExxonMobil “knew” that CO2 was a threat to human betterment. Just the opposite, the company smartly understood that continued growth of consumer-desired, taxpayer-neutral oil and natural gas was good business and morally imperative. (“Big Oil, Exxon Not Guilty as Charged” offers a six-part rebuttal to the simplistic, errant arguments of the ExxonKnew legal campaign.)
What about employees at ExxonMobil whose take is opposite of that of Lindsey Gulden? Glen Lyons offers an opposite take:
Here’s my two cents on the general concept of “What Exxon Knew” as a retired employee with more than 36 years of experience there.
First, Exxon doesn’t “know” anything. It’s a collection of people and just like any other organization with many people, there are many views and understandings on almost every topic imaginable. I worked with Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Libertarians.
I worked with people who believed 25 years ago that climate change was a concern and I worked with people who still don’t believe that climate change is a concern. One of the great features about working at ExxonMobil is that it gives employees a fair amount of latitude to think “outside the box” by studying and proposing ideas that their management may not agree with.
There was always disagreement and tension among talented people. Lyons continues:
I did plenty of that during my career, and sometimes it was well received by my management and sometimes not. Just because I made a presentation on a particular topic of my choosing doesn’t mean that my management was fully aligned on the front end or after the fact.
One thing is very true about ExxonMobil – the company has a long history of hiring brilliant people who are original and creative thinkers. Sometimes the output of these people finds broad support among management and sometimes it doesn’t. No one who knows ExxonMobil is surprised to learn that some employees were studying the link between CO2 emissions and global temperatures. However, that does NOT mean that his/her management agreed with the findings.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Glen Lyons has a maturity and open-mindedness that a Lindsey Gulden does not.
I choked on my coffee when I read the headline: “Democrats raise specter of Trump dictatorship to boost Biden.” What a textbook example of “projection,” I laughed, referring to the psychology term for deflecting attention away from one’s own blatant behavior by claiming someone else is doing it.
Partisan media and politicos parroted the accusation, and the Biden campaign doubled down.
In the interest of fairness and accuracy, it’s appropriate then to revisit ways the Biden Administration, Democrats, and their allies have battled wannabe dictators and defended freedom, democracy, and viewpoint diversity in recent years. (Or not.) For example:
* Incessant Antifa rage, riots, rampaging, and legal warfare against “Russia-colluding” President Trump from his election and inauguration throughout and after his term in office.
* School, park, and restaurant lockdowns, “social distancing” and mask “advisories,” mandates for “safe and effective” inoculations with vaccines approved with minimal study under “emergency use authorizations,” and endless misrepresentation and censorship by Biden officials, Democrat governors and “journalists” – in the name of preventing Covid.
* Opening our southern border to untold millions of “undocumented noncitizens” – mostly Latin Americans but also Chinese agents, drug smugglers, sex traffickers, terrorists, and disease carriers.
* Billions in “student debt forgiveness,” forcing taxpayers to pay off huge loans to graduates who struggle to get six-figure jobs despite prestigious degrees in gender studies or community organizing.
* Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Environment Social Governance (ESG) programs, from K-12, college to law school, and into government and corporate arenas – to ensure that every component of society reflects racial, ethnic and gender proportionality, but never viewpoint or political diversity.
These and many other authoritarian actions impacted American society, freedoms, health, and prosperity in countless negative ways. Far worse, many progressives and leftists hope they will pave the way for obeisance to even more dictatorial mandates promulgated in the name of saving our planet from supposed cataclysms inflicted by fossil-fuel-driven climate change.
Few will quibble that President Biden directed federal employees to take public transportation, ride bikes or rent electric vehicles for work travel, and hold virtual meetings instead of in-person gatherings.
These rules certainly won’t apply to private-jet globe-trotters like Climate Czar John Kerry, and EVs mostly transfer emissions from tailpipes to distant countries where toxic pollution and child labor accompany the mining and processing of raw materials to make EV batteries. But at least some federal workers will now suffer the inconveniences they’re imposing on us commoners.
However, Team Biden’s endless torrent of executive orders, regulatory mandates, and twisted legal reinterpretations for electricity generation, vehicles, appliances, agriculture, housing, and other matters are already impacting our industries, livelihoods, living standards, and basic rights and freedoms.
These diktats are designed to force us to convert everything we now operate with coal, gasoline, diesel, or natural gas to electric models. The United States will soon need 3-4 times more electricity than today – and still more to power the AI revolution.
But the same bureaucrats are shutting down coal, gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric generators – ensuring that electricity will be in short supply, generated primarily by weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels, backed up by massive grid-scale battery systems, and thus unavailable or unaffordable during the coldest and hottest days, when electric heat or air conditioning becomes a matter of life or death.
In fact, just the batteries to back up nationwide electricity would cost up to $290 trillion (13 times US 2021 GDP)! Add that to wind, solar, and transmission costs, and the juice to run your all-electric home, business, hospital, school, or transportation will likely cost 30-40 cents per kilowatt-hour instead of the 12-15 cents the average American is paying now.
It’s a prescription for repeated blackouts, economic disaster – and unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats micromanaging every aspect of our lives: what size home we can have; how warm or cool we can keep it; what cars we can drive and how far, or whether we too will be forced to walk, bike or take a bus; how many trips we can take in jetliners, in our lifetime; what foods we can eat (hint: not beef); maybe even how many new clothing items we will be “allowed” to purchase each year!
Earlier this month, every House Republican voted to block President Biden’s electric vehicle mandates. They were joined by just five Democrats. That means 197 Democrats say Team Biden should be able to dictate what kind of car or truck you can drive. And Donald Trump has dictatorial proclivities?
The US and global ecological impacts will be equally harmful and widespread. Here are just a few.
Wind and solar installations, transmission lines, and enormous battery complexes would sprawl across millions of acres of now scenic wildlife habitat and agricultural land. A single solar facility proposed in Virginia would involve 3,000 acres of panels on 21,000 acres (over half the land area of Washington, DC). It’s just one of dozens of Virginia solar plans – on top of onshore and offshore wind turbine projects.
The installations “will power millions of homes,” supporters insist. Perhaps – but only when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining at optimal intensities … maybe 15-30% of the year in northern latitudes, considering winter snow and sunlight, clouds, nighttime, zero wind, and other factors.
Many local residents and other citizens don’t want these massive installations in their backyards, the habitat and scenic vista destruction, bird and bat killings, health problems, and electricity costs and disruptions that go with them, or being turned into energy colonies for progressive urban centers. They’ve already blocked more than 500 wind and solar projects on environmental and other grounds.
That’s why Michigan, California, New York, and Illinois have already enacted laws that give state bureaucrats authority over land use – the ability to exercise eminent domain and other powers over local governments that want to slow or stop the onrush of enormous, heavily subsidized industrial wind, solar, transmission line, and other “green” projects. More are likely to follow – depriving rural communities of their rights, property values, and autonomy – to serve corporate interests that bankroll Democrat pols.
The federal “deep state” is likely to seek similar legislative authority – or simply assert authority – to implement President Biden’s national net-zero “renewable” energy transformation agenda.
UN and Biden “30×30” plans to “conserve” (make off-limits to development) 30% of US and global lands and waters by 2030 will massively increase all these impacts and usurpations of power. Any areas not made off-limits by 30×30, wilderness, park, refuge, and other actions will be developed and desecrated to the hilt by wind, solar, transmission line, mining, biofuel, and other “green energy” projects.
Meanwhile, international climate alarmists and bureaucrats are telling African and other impoverished nations how much they will be “permitted” to develop and improve their health and living standards – using only “sustainable, renewable” wind and solar power. It’s dictatorial colonialism at its worst.
And amid all that, China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other rapidly developing countries are burning more coal, oil, and gas – and emitting more greenhouse gases – than most developed nations combined. That means US and EU economic suicide on the climate altar won’t make an iota of difference.
What might a Trump dictator do? Roll back or cancel these dictatorial decrees. Stop fast-tracking wind and solar projects. End abusive environmental justice, DEI, and ESG programs. Return America to energy independence and affordable energy. Build the wall and control immigration. Above all, follow the law and Constitution. How revolutionary, tyrannical … and refreshing … that would be!
“I assume you think the earth is flat and dinosaurs never existed and the sun rotates around the earth and vaccines don’t work? I mean, since science isn’t real…” (Durand to Bradley)
“The ‘settled science’ is toward the benefits of CO2 fertilization. The middle-way science in the face of climate models and other uncertainties is global lukewarming, with positives as well as negatives.” (Bradley to Durand)
Patty Durand is a candidate for the Georgia Public Service Commission special election. She is rightly critical of Plant Vogtle #3 and #4 but falls off the cliff when it comes to climate alarmism and forced energy transformation. Patty is in the tank of the climate industrial complex, the sea of cronies not unlike her enemy, Georgia Power Company (Southern Company). [1]
Do you care about climate change? How about inequality – is that your issue? What about democracy and election integrity- or racism? We’ve got it all going on right here in one state agency: the Georgia Public Service Commission!
I assume you think the earth is flat and dinosaurs never existed and the sun rotates around the earth and vaccines don’t work? I mean, since science isn’t real…
The ‘settled science’ is toward the benefits of CO2 fertilization. The middle-way science in the face of climate models and other uncertainties is global lukewarming, with positives as well as negatives.
Climate alarmism is a species of deep ecology that sees nature as fragile and optimal. Free market energy is necessary to adapt to change, natural or anthropogenic. (Industrial wind, solar arrays, and batteries are full of eco-sins, another story.)
Are you keeping up with the debate from both sides? I challenge you to do so…. Might begin with Judith Curry and continue with Alex Epstein.
The more you explain the worse it sounds. There is no both sides to climate change. 99% of climate scientists and experts not only say that global warming is happening, it’s accelerating faster than predicted. You find 1 or 2 who disagree and call it both sides. Nothing both sides about it.
Incorrect again. You are just not following the real debate.
The “consensus” of Malthusianism has been the same and wrong since the 1960s with Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. From the MIT/Club of Rome model in 1972 to climate models today, exaggeration based on worst-case scenarios have become part of the narrative. And repeatedly falsified.
Global greening from CO2 fertilization is laboratory understood and empirically observed. Climate models do not know and cannot incorporate the microphysics of climate (clouds).
Incremental warmth has strong positives to climate economists. Warmer winters (the GHG ‘signal’ is oriented toward winter, night, and high latitude) are net positive, to make one point.
It is up to you to study the case against climate alarmism and forced energy transformation. And read the Climategate emails if you want to know what is driving climate ‘science.’
In her quest for election to the Georgia Public Service Commission, Durand wants to replace politicians with politicians, cronies with cronies. It is high time she broaden her perspective to 1) question climate alarmism; 2) reconsider forced energy transformation (to wind, solar, batteries); and 3) study the free-market option of de-franchising public utilities and eliminating rate regulation. Her motto “let’s regulate utilities better” is age-old tried-and-failed.)
To not do her homework and hide in the Climate Industrial Complex turns ignorance into bad public policies for ratepayers.
Patty Durand is the founder of Cool Planet Solutions, LLC and candidate running for Georgia Public Service Commission. There will be a special election in 2023, date TBD. Learn more at pattyforpsc.com. Patty has expertise on consumer engagement and education around the topics of energy technology and climate change.
In her years as President of the Smart Energy Consumer Collaboration, she has focused on helping energy stakeholders understand consumer motivations, values, and knowledge in order to provide consumers the products & services they need.
And also has experience as state director for the Georgia Sierra Club and worked at Georgia Tech on smart grid research projects.
Durand is the founder of Cool Planet Solutions, LLC. She is a consultant offering services to utilities and regulators with a focus on consumer engagement/education around the topics of energy technology and climate change. Her expertise includes organizing and hosting workshops, presentations, facilitation and reports/research.
“The idea that the ‘man of system’ would be so enamored of his own system that he would impose it on others without much regard for their preferences or, to use the phrase of one of the participants, for their moral autonomy, continues to be a power criticism of interventionist approaches to government. To put it in my girl-next-door vernacular, how arrogant are you to think that you should impose your system on me?” – Lynne Kiesling on Adam Smith (and herself?)
Oh how the author of the above quotation needs to look in the mirror with an impartial observer at hand. Oh how this person has fallen into the collectivist/planner trap so well recognized by Adam Smith. Stage one was her embrace of mandatory open access for electricity … Stage two was remaining quiet on climate alarmism/forced energy transformation … Stage three was silence on the wind/solar takeover in Texas … Stage four was blaming natural gas for the Texas debacle … Stage 5 is pushing for a ‘virtual powerplant’ approach of more wind, more solar, more batteries, and demand-side control.
If you were hoping for some mid-course correction from an alleged free market, classical liberal electricity specialist (see yesterday’s post), it did not happen. And until she gets back to the basics, and takes classical liberalism to heart and mind, shows some spine against electricity’s road to serfdom, expect more of the same.
Her story is the intellectual version of the Mises interventionist thesis where the embrace of one intervention has led to ‘another and yet another’. Alfred Kahn in the Economics of Regulation noted:
One interference with competition necessitates another and yet another, and an industry of ‘rugged individualists’ becomes more and more tightly enmeshed with the government to which they originally turned in hope of protecting themselves from competition.
In our subject’s (intellectual) case, this could read:
One recommendation of interference with the electricity market necessitates another and yet another, and a classical liberal becomes more and more tightly enmeshed with the government to which they originally turned in hope of promoting economic efficiency.
————-
Here is how a recent exchange unfolded:
Bradley: This sounds like central planning to me–the experts advising the wholesale electricity monopolist on how to ‘engineer’ supply/demand solutions to the politicized grid. Private property rights and a free market in electricity, anyone?
Kiesling: Rob, if you listen to the podcast and ask specific questions based on the conversation, I’d be happy to hear them.
Bradley: I just read the transcript. The whole conversation ignores that a free market person would say is the elephant in the room: Wind and solar wounding the grid (with more and more coming).
The whole demand-side exercise of which you are engaged is trying to centrally plan for consumers to cope with high prices and supply deficits. If your ‘architecture’ was done within a for-profit private company in a free market, that is one thing. But in the government ISO/RTO, you are in central planning mode.
Tell me, if a person gets a ‘smart meter” that can be controlled by a central government agency, is big brother in the home? How can further intrusion (such as CO2 rationing schemes) be prevented?And she disappears (per usual)
———————-
So I now turn to herpost at Knowledge Problem back in August 2005 on on Adam Smith. The question is: Is Lynne Kiesling a Woman of System when it comes to electricity?
Adam Smith And The “Man Of System”
I spent last week attending Liberty Fund’s annual Adam Smith conference, as one of the two discussion leaders. It was a total blast…. One of the most interesting threads that ran throughout the discussion was the dimensions of Smith’s reference to the “man of system” in Theory of Moral Sentiments (paragraph VI.II.42):
The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
Smith captures a lot of very nice ideas in this passage. The idea that the “man of system” would be so enamored of his own system that he would impose it on others without much regard for their preferences or, to use the phrase of one of the participants, for their moral autonomy, continues to be a power criticism of interventionist approaches to government. To put it in my girl-next-door vernacular, how arrogant are you to think that you should impose your system on me?
In addition to the arrogance and conceit, Smith’s passage points to a particular type of knowledge problem (or “epistemological problem”, as one participant referred to it): “in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it”. Every individual has his/her own preferences, own view of the good life, own objective function. The “man of system” cannot know, cannot experience the wants, the needs, the social context in which each individual makes choices (individual and collective choices). To the extent that the imposed system creates an environment that does not honor the knowledge problem, it makes both the individual and society worse off. The “man of system” approach to institutional choice is not consistent with that epistemological constraint. Is this an argument for representative government, even with they “tyranny of the majority” problem?
The chess-board metaphor raises the fallacy that our social institutions are so directed and so instrumentalist that they can point us to a specific, shared goal. In chess the objective is shared (and is zero-sum, actually, which points to another interesting aspect of Smith’s writing …), but in human life with the variety and individuality of human action and human knowledge, can we really be said to have a shared social objective? The best shared goal I can imagine toward which we can strive is to be free and responsible people living together in civil society, but that’s an objective at an abstract and meta level, not a directed objective as is implied in the chess metaphor.
One very interesting conversation we had throughout the week relating to this passage revolved around this concept of “system”. In some way, Smith was himself a man of system; Theory of Moral Sentiments laid out a framework for a moral system, Wealth of Nations laid out a framework for an economic system, his essay on astronomy and his essay on the formation of languages both highlight and rely on the importance of system, and systematic analysis. But I think this is a different understanding of the word “system”, and I think a lot hinges on what kind of obligations the system imposes on others.
Note in particular the following part of the passage:
He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.
This “man of system” can enact his system over the objections of others. In the moral system/economic system/scientific system of Smith’s analyses, though, one cannot compel participation unless it’s mutually agreeable. In other words, in these systems there is no force, no compulsion, no obligation on an individual to follow against his/her will. An interesting twist on this comes in the account of scientific analysis, because you are not obligated to agree, but as research advances and evidence mounts for a particular theory, it becomes the predominant theory (until disproven and replaced by a better theory, that is).
Perhaps it’s instructive to compare this “man of system” to the man of humanity and benevolence, as Smith did (paragraph VI.II.41):
The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies, into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating, what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to subdue them by force; but will religiously observe what, by Cicero, is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy as well as he can, the inconveniencies which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the people can bear.
“The supply-side reliability fix offered by the Texas Senate is a direct response to the February 2021 carnage created by, yes, wind and solar taking over a once reliable grid. It is a hard-wired governmental solution to a soft-wired governmental problem. But there is an alternative. Free markets, anyone?”
The big guns of climate alarmism and forced energy transformation are out to prevent Texas from shoring up its grid from the cancer of wind and solar. Out of the blue, the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter (Substack) appears, with the message that renewables are not the problem but the solution, complemented by, in Doug Lewin’s words, “Fast-acting reciprocating engines, batteries, geothermal power, and demand response [to] help with both resource adequacy and operational flexibility.”
In denial about the wounded supply side–where the obvious solution is to demote (government-enabled) intermittent resources–the answer is “smart meters” in the home so Big Brother can oversee demand. “In fact,” states Lewin,
there are 1 million smart thermostats on Texans’ walls right now that are not being used at all! Creating incentives for Texas families to reduce their power use when supplies get tight would create a massive dispatchable resource that could help this summer.
For students of political economy, this is the process of regulation (the Mises interventionist thesis) whereby the problems of intervention lead to more intervention. And in the case of Texas (and California and other states), a wounded supply side raises the call for ever-greater demand-side intervention–all from a centrally planned wholesale market (such as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas).
Texas’s cancer is continuing to grow with wind and solar being added to the system, thanks to 1) extended government incentives in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and 2) take rules by ERCOT based on marginal cost (wind and solar have higher total costs and very low marginal costs). And the worsening reliability of the grid from expanding intermittency is leading to (first voluntary, then mandatory) “conservation orders,” such as summer temperatures in the home or business of, say, 76 degrees.
The amount of money available to the Energy Statists is overwhelming, and the sudden entry of the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter is part that. They want central planning to reach a total government power market rather than 1) stop and reverse the cancer of spreading wind/solar and 2) work toward abolishing a centrally planned wholesale market.
The supply-side reliability fix offered by the Texas Senate is a direct response to the February 2021 carnage created by, yes, wind and solar taking over a once strong grid. It is a hard-wired governmental solution to a soft-wired governmental problem. But there is an alternative that is obvious and necessary.
“Delegitimization is a favorite tactic of the climate alarmist/forced energy transformation lackeys. They cannot conceive that a moral, reasonable person can be against a scheme to impose ‘clean’ energy on townships (really ‘machine up’ the great outdoors). Kevon Martis proves them wrong, and they cannot accept it. What will they come up with next?”
Kevon Martis has been profiled numerous times at MasterResource. His grassroots-truth-to-wind-power has been a game changer in Michigan and elsewhere. And he is a regular fellow, the epitome of the hard-working, successful American.
A news story by Michigan Capitol Confidential (Mackinac Center for Public Policy) tells the backstory of an attempted ‘hit job’ on Martis by a Leviathan. The article by Jamie Hope (March 28, 2023), “Wind industry declares war on Michigan man,” is one that should resonate with every citizen of every town threatened by government-enabled industrial wind turbines and/or solar arrays.
Hope reports, you decide:
Kevon Martis is presented as a master manipulator by Yale Climate Connections. Wind energy activists believe they have found an explanation for the waning popularity of wind projects in Michigan and around the county: a cult of homeowners whose objection to turbines is, according to a new video clip, wholly irrational.
‘Like a Cult’, a documentary-style ten-minute video from environmental activist Peter Sinclair and Yale Climate Connections, attacks local residents and officials in Michigan who express concerns about wind energy projects in their townships.
The video singles out Kevon Martis, Deerfield Township zoning administrator and a recently elected Lenawee County commissioner. Sinclair pieces together a shadowy network of brainwashing and gaslighting, with Martis as the cult’s high priest — or “Big Cheese,” according to an intertitle.
The video attempts to tie Martis to April 2020 COVID-19 shutdown protests at the Michigan Capitol in Lansing and the January 6, 2021, riot in Washington, D.C.
Sinclair blames Martis for the unwanted participation of residents at townhall meetings, which has revealed deep opposition to and shallow support for landscape-altering wind turbine projects. Popular opposition to wind turbines in Michigan is part of a national trend that has dealt ballot-box defeats in several states to wind giants like NextEra and Apex Clean Energy. But Sinclair believes he sees the fingerprints of Martis everywhere.
“Time and again, when Mr. Martis becomes involved, formerly low-key meetings become settings for anger and division,” Sinclair says in the video. The video had 5,200 views as of March 28.
Sinclair, who admitted in a Saginaw County meeting that he has been paid by energy companies, nevertheless slams Martis for his work with E&E Legal, which he says has also received money from many of the same companies.
The video also neglects to mention that its three most prominent subjects — former local elected officials Jed Welder, Phyllis Larson and Terry Anderson — were all recalled by voters in elections where turbine opposition was the main subject of campaigning.
Welder was the sole vote against an ordinance in July 2021 to protect Sidney Township from an industrial-scale wind turbine project. He signed a wind energy easement agreement with Coral Wind I, LLC, an affiliate of Apex Clean Energy August 2020. Douglass Township Supervisor Anderson was forced to apologize to local resident Cindy Shick after removing her from the planning commission over rumors she had divulged documents to someone outside the commission. Shick was elected to replace the recalled Anderson.
Phyllis Larson was a Winfield Township supervisor who signed two wind leases and voted for a wind-friendly ordinance. Residents later voted that ordinance down in a referendum. Michigan State Police investigaged Larson and other officials last August over their tactics for publishing notices of the proposed wind ordinance, according to a story in the Daily News of Montcalm County. Though local residents accused Larson and others of violating public notification laws, no charges were filed.
Unseated but unbowed, the three politicians now critique the false consciousness of the voters. “It’s almost like a cult-type deal,” Welder says of his neighbors and former constituents who opposed the turbine project. Ashlyn Newell, identified in the video as a resident of Maple Valley Township and a science teacher, says township officials were threatened and that there is still fear in the community. She did not provide evidence of those claims.
Newell declines to mention that she and her husband signed a wind lease with Apex for their property. A memorandum of the wind lease was recorded Oct. 23, 2020, according to the Montcalm County Register of Deeds. “Depending upon the terms of the contracts, typically hosting a wind turbine will bring $8,000 to $12,000 per year or more, depending upon the size of the turbine,” Martis told Michigan Capitol Confidential.
Final Comment
Delegitimization is a favorite tactic of the climate alarmist/forced energy transformation lackeys. They cannot conceive that a moral, reasonable person can be against a scheme to impose “clean” energy on townships (really ‘machine up’ the great outdoors). Kevon Martis proves them wrong, and they cannot accept it. What will they come up with next?
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Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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