Oil and gas prices are up. This results from federal polices of credit expansion and electronic printing of new money.

It raises nearly all commodity prices.

Also, the current administration is taking action after action to restrict domestic oil production to deliberately increase gasoline prices in the hope of making electric vehicles more attractive.

The shale producers had several tough financial years and are cautious about new investments. At the same time today’s high prices are bringing capped-off well production back to market with a few months’ lag. Much of the investment in the futures market is with options which could lead to a dramatic price correction in the fall.

OUR UTILITY monopoly-regulatory system is that it rewards failure. Utilities can do well by doing badly. They raise costs, fail to use new technology, waste resources and in other ways maximize inputs which are passed through to their ratepayers.

By maximizing costs, regulated utilities can obtain higher prices for less production, something that cannot happen in the presence of competition. Subsidies in existing rates send false signals to consumers.

This inefficient cost on top of the cost of subsidies places even more burdens on all who are trying to compete in world markets. The uncompetitive regulated economy is a parasite on the productive sector.

For decades the innovation, cost cutting and productivity gains of the competitive sector of the economy have been offset by this regulatory premium which is siphoning resources into less productive use. The whole economy will be stronger when utility regulation is abolished.

“THE ELEPHANT in the room” is an idiom describing an obvious problem or truth that no one wants to discuss. That’s the situation in discussions of solar power. Energy discussions and articles on solar power rave about how much it has increased, which state is doing this or that and what the future holds for solar expansion. “Success” stories abound in the energy press and the general media. To the uninitiated all of this enthusiasm could give the impression that solar power is a great development and boon to mankind.

The solar power phenomenon for on-grid electricity is wholly a result of tax credit subsidies that no one wants to talk about.

If you are out in the boonies, then solar power beats having no power at all. But the production of solar power to compete with traditional sources of power is a phony, government-created industry.

If there were no subsidies, one would be a fool to invest in the technology – and fools usually have little money to invest,

The big winners in the solar business owe their success to political connections and gaming the myriad of complicated governmental programs. The real economics do not support the huge investment being squandered on solar production;

It is a pretty safe bet to predict it will come crashing down like previous government energy industries. Renewables won’t create q new energy economy.

Jim Clarkson is an energy adviser and CEO of Resource Supply Management.