Energy Policy Act of 2005

Reforming PURPA Energy Contracts

Despite no obvious geographical distinctions from the other U.S. states that would explain it, North Carolina is awash in solar energy facilities, more so than every other state except California.…

CWIP: Corporate Welfare in Progress

Well, that isn’t exactly what CWIP stands for (it’s “Construction Work in Progress”), but in a sense it’s what CWIP is. North Carolina has had CWIP on the books since…

How to soak ratepayers: play favorites on electricity sources and shield big utilities from risk

View in your browser. The importance of affordable electricity used to be obvious and nonpartisan. It has been subsumed by the perceived importance (also nonpartisan) to politicians of currying favor…

The Federal Renewable Fuel Standard: A Bad Policy With Perverse Results

Higher energy prices for nothing: Resistance is futile?

View in your browser. Corporate welfare for energy, whether it’s for renewables (nationally or statewide, directly or indirectly through "crucifixion") or nuclear, is at such a high pitch that choiceless…

North Carolina ratepayers can’t afford corporate welfare going nuclear

View in your browser. The scuttlebutt is that the General Assembly could see a proposal to allow utilities to hike electricity rates automatically in order for them to recover the…

Energy policy control – the latest grab, aka House Bill 1481

As this legislative session begins to wind down, there is an urgency to pass certain legislation before adjournment.  And this session many of those urgent bills are to take advantage…

US, UN nabobs confused over biofuels’ impact on food prices

A topic that has been discussed here often (one example) is now being talked to death at the United Nations, per the Associated Press: The merits of increasing biofuel production…

Meet the new Big Energy, worse than the old Big Energy

Astute Locker Room readers (all of them, naturally) will have had a preview of my latest TownHall column: Look what has happened in the few short years since Congress passed…

Food costs rising fastest in 17 years

This news is no surprise: USDA economist Ephraim Leibtag explained the jumps in a recent presentation to the Food Marketing Institute, starting with the factors everyone knows about: sharply higher…