Commentary

Congress and various states are considering a fundamental restructuring and regulation of our energy policy. Any such effort should be based on facts, but legislators, unfortunately, incline to myths, such as the notion that most of our energy comes from oil.

Is management a science? An enormous intellectual construct developed over the past century—by business schools, consultancies, and major staff components of business firms and government agencies—is dedicated to that proposition.

What’s the real “tragedy of the commons?” It is legal, regulatory, cultural, or political? And is there is way out?

Financial derivatives make sense for the electricity business, providing protection against price swings, and don’t require additional regulation.

President Dwight David Eisenhower built the interstate highway system more than 50 years ago. Is it time for the U.S., when it comes to the electric power grid, to be like Ike?

Once upon a time, climate change felt like a distant threat on the horizon. Now it is happening in front of our very eyes. Across the world, global warming is sparking more intense heat waves, more flooding, and more droughts. If climate change continues at its current pace, the social, environmental, and economic costs don’t […]

Certain small utilities with some of the nation’s highest carbon dioxide emission rates want to change the climate bill pending before Congress to give themselves more allowances to emit carbon dioxide (CO₂). This would be the ultimate “cash for clunkers” program for dirty power plants, with one key difference: Unlike the real program, in this case the clunkers would get to stay on the road. The Senate should reject this change.

The commentary "No ‘Cash for Clunkers’ in Climate Bill" creates a fictitious history of climate change and seriously harms good faith efforts within the industry to address the legitimate issues many utilities have raised with the Waxman-Markey bill.

If the basic science related to man’s contribution to a warming planet is based on flawed fundamental science, a conscious circumventing of the peer review process, political expediency, and refusing to release the fundamental data used by a computer program that has yet to replicate actual ambient temperatures, then it’s time to pause, take a breath, and regroup.

As director of public policy analysis in my last seven years at Enron, I participated in many legislative and regulatory debates involving electricity, although the public policy thrust of the company was the opposite of what I believed. While I favored free markets, the business model of Ken Lay (a PhD economist with years of Washington regulatory experience) centered on special government favor. Enron, for example, had seven profit centers geared to government pricing/rationing of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. And in the 1990s, the company was squarely behind a Btu tax. Today, Enron would be pushing cap and trade.