Category Archives: Energy

(March 15, 2008) After scores of bankruptcies and bailouts, many if not most energy analysts recognize nuclear electricity for what it has been: the single biggest business disaster in history. But nuclear power’s failings extend beyond the red ink on the balance sheets to the limitations in the technology. The nuclear reactor, though efficient in medical and military applications, is ill-suited for the production of electricity in a sophisticated power market of diverse customers with diverse needs. Continue reading →

(March 8, 2008) The world is whooshing to nuclear energy. Just this week, Britain announced 18 new nuclear reactor sites in its bid to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on a Mid-East nuclear-selling spree, to cash in on interest in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, and Libya. Continue reading →

(February 7, 2008) Since Maggie Thatcher broke up the United Kingdom’s dysfunctional energy monopolies two decades ago, costs plummeted, as did prices for consumers, as a wave of new entrants into the energy business led to a textbook example of the benefits of competition. Today, the typical household has several thousand options in purchasing power that come to it courtesy of six dozen different licensed merchants. Compare that to the choices your local power monopolist provides you. Continue reading →

(January 16, 2008) Arthur Cecil Pigou, the celebrated 20th century economist who created a discipline over externalities, has developed a large following over the notion of taxing “bads” such as gasoline, and not just among economists. Environmentalists have taken up the theme over the last decade, and so, too, have many conservatives. Why tax meritorious activities such as earning an income, or purchasing a product, many argue, when taxing activities without merit can instead raise tax revenues? Continue reading →

(December 7, 2007) Coal, chock-full of substances of known toxicity, epitomizes dirty fuel. The perils in coal burning – and this is an abbreviated list – include fly ash and heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, mercury, sulphur, vanadium, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, molybdenum, zinc, selenium, radium, uranium and thorium. If these substances and their byproducts are not controlled in coal burning, to keep emissions within safe levels, human health and the environment can suffer. Continue reading →