Category Archives: Policy Issues

(Originally posted at www.mbcdfw.com) Winter Wind Credited With Record Power Generation | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said winter winds that brought low temperatures also contributed to a wind power generation record. At 3 p.m. Christmas Day, 8,638 megawatts of power was provided by Texas wind farms.  ERCOT said 6,600 mw were created in West Texas windfarms and another 1,600 were created along the Texas coast. “This output represented nearly 26 percent of system load in ERCOT at the time. This new record is 117 MW higher than the previous 8,521 MW record set on … Continue reading this post →

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Andy Bowman, the President of my company.   Time for Texas’ leaders to support important wind-power tax credit.    What if our leaders spent $7 billion on a new superhighway that would better connect key parts of Texas to create trade, jobs, investment and tax revenue — but then decided, after all the money was committed and the highway had been built, to take steps to make sure it wouldn’t be used? Most people would say that makes no sense at all.    But that is exactly what is happening with Texas’ new electricity transmission … Continue reading this post →

Editor’s Note: Buried deep in this Salon.com article is this very disturbing point:  Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.” This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their … Continue reading this post →

An excellent report released in September 2011 by private equity firm DBL Investors sheds new light on the history of federal subsidies for various energy sources and technologies.  One unique finding was particularly instructive in today’s debate about renewable energy tax credits and other investments in renewables: The below graph shows investment in various technologies as a percentage of the federal budget in the first 15 years of subsidies for each technology, allowing for a comparison of subsidies for renewables in the first 15 years of renewable subsidies with subsidies for other energy sources in the first 15 years of those … Continue reading this post →