Repealing the oil-export ban in 2015 was a good idea. The U.S. would be foolish to reinstate it. A number of perverse Beltway ideas never seem to die despite their underlying fallacies. The latest such nostrum is the argument that a renewed ban on the export of crude oil and refined products would reduce domestic fossil-energy prices, as ...

The common economic arguments for taxing greenhouse gases aren't persuasive. Proposals for carbon pricing and a border-adjustment tax on imports and credits on exports — the central ancillary policy needed to preserve the competitiveness of U.S. companies given the implementation of a tax on carbon — are back in the news. Various observers, ...

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is reaching well beyond its mandate to punish fossil-fuel energy producers. Sometimes you really do have to hit the mule between the eyes to get its attention. The mule of interest here is not a drug smuggler, but instead the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, whose the legal mandate is ...

The Biden administration is fine with fossil-fuel production, as long as it happens overseas. Incoherence is nothing new in the Beltway, but it's still quite something to see the Biden administration simultaneously pursue new constraints on U.S. production of fossil fuels as a central component of its "climate" policies, while at the same ...

Why are Virginia lawmakers stifling competition in electricity markets? Sometimes localized controversies highlight an issue of far broader significance, a truth illustrated well by the ongoing battle over electricity policy in Virginia. The central question in a nutshell: Will power consumers be allowed to purchase electricity by choosing ...

Why international competitors are eating the U.S.'s lunch in oil markets. The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is brightening, in substantial part as a result of the global inoculation effort, however slowly and unevenly. With this improving public-health outlook comes a prospective renewal of worldwide economic growth generally, and ...

A new approach to ESG rules should not overlook the role of proxy advisory firms. In an age characterized by the politicization of virtually everything, it is unsurprising to see political pressures exerted upon the managers of investment funds established for the financial benefit of current and future retirees. These funds are large ...

The policy is a political nonstarter, and it wouldn’t do much anyway. Various news reports and self-serving political pronouncements would have us believe that imposition of a tax on “carbon” — emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) — now enjoys growing support among Republican policymakers and conservative observers, a political premise ...

Residential consumers of electricity in California pay almost 17 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), a price higher than those of every other state in the lower 48, except New York and five of the New England states. The average for the nation as a whole is about 12.7 cents per kWh. Neighboring states in the Pacific Northwest, the Mountain region ...

The plan will ensure that energy plants operate like cars in stop-and-go traffic, cutting efficiency. ‘Flexibility” is the advertised hallmark of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which by 2030 would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30% from 2005 levels. The central feature of the plan is ...

An Earth Day conversation about global warming. Global warming/climate change unsurprisingly is the central topic of attention on this Earth Day 2014, and Mr. Tom Steyer of NextGen Climate has taken a leading role — to the tune of a reported $100 million — in terms of using his free-speech rights to promote the policies he supports and ...