Ten years ago today, on December 2, 2001, Enron declared bankruptcy. The company is now liquidated, but Enron’s intellectually insolvent “green energy” model is alive and well in the Obama Administration. Cap-and-trade rationing of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and “green jobs” with wind and solar — Enron was there first.

Under its founder and chairman, the late Ken Lay, Enron set out to become the world’s leading renewable energy company. The company entered the solar business with a half stake in Solarex in 1994. And it entered wind manufacturing and project development with the purchase of Zond Corporation in 1997, which was described by the American Wind Energy Association as “a tribute to the foresight of Enron…one of the most aggressive and strategic-minded players in the energy market.”

Enron, the leading market maker in air emissions trading with sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx), sought to do the same with the much larger CO2 emissions market. This was why Enron became the first major U.S. energy company to endorse cap-and-trade as climate-change policy.

Enron even became a favorite company of Al Gore, and the admiration was reciprocal. Stated Ken Lay: “In Earth in the Balance, Senator Al Gore stated: ‘Higher taxes on fossil fuels…is one of the logical first steps in changing our policies in a manner consistent with a more responsible approach to the environment.’ I agree.”

And so it was all smiles at the company with the Kyoto Protocol agreement in late 1997. “This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!” exclaimed Enron’s climate lobbyist in a memo emailed from Kyoto, Japan. “If implemented, it will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States,” he explained. “The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous. In addition, a carbon emissions trading system will be developed.”

Enron also embraced corporate social responsibility (CSR) in its green imaging. “We believe that incorporating environmental and social considerations into the way we manage risk, govern our projects, and develop products and services will help us maintain our competitive advantage,” Ken Lay stated just months before his company imploded. “As we move forward, we will leverage our intellectual capital and innovative capabilities to promote sustainable business practices around the world.”

But Enron’s solar and wind investments were never profitable. CO2 trading never got off the ground, and the company’s planned multi-million-dollar CSR program was abandoned with Enron’s bankruptcy filing.

Enron’s green initiatives, in retrospect, were more about exploiting taxpayers and consumers than saving the planet. Enron CEO Jeff Skilling said as much when he deadpanned to an exasperated coal executive at the company. “We are a green company, but the ‘green’ stands for money.” (Enron was quietly increasing its stake in coal operations, but that’s another story.)

A decade post-Enron, we have seen the overwhelming political rejection of cap-and-trade for greenhouse-gas emission reductions, as well as the crackup of so-called green-jobs policy, thanks in part to the administration’s friends at Solyndra. Rent-seeking by political entrepreneurs — and Ken Lay was a master — is in disfavor.

One even wonders if Occupy Wall Street is more upset with political capitalism than with market capitalism.

The Obama Administration is in the throes of revisiting its energy and climate policy. The true lessons of “green” Enron call for fundamental mid-course corrections. Free markets and consumer-driven energy policies are surely better than crony capitalism.

— Robert L. Bradley Jr. is the CEO & Founder of the Institute for Energy Research and author of Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies.