Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking
The Cross-cutting Politics of AI Servers and Load Growth
Like much of the rest of the country, the ERCOT region of Texas is projecting massive growth in electricity demand, driven mostly (though not exclusively*) by new data servers. The servers are part...
How to Support the Energy Transition in Difficult Times
Every once in a while, on a whim, I decide to assemble all of the stories in my energy news feed from a single month regarding local opposition to energy transition projects -- new wind farms,...
Don’t watch, read
The poet Robert Burns once wrote, "Be merry, I advise. But as we be merry, may we also be wise." As Republicans aim to roll back climate policy progress it is increasingly difficult for the climate...
Might Market Pricing Make Clean Power More Expensive (or, “Can Geothermal Power Get Its Due?”)?
When people think of renewable energy they usually think of wind and solar power first, and then maybe hydroelectric power. And those three sources of electricity, along with biomass, constitute the...
Pooling Risk in the Age of Bitter Partisanship
One of the most distressing aspects of today’s politics is the way it has reduced the willingness of people to come together in an emergency or disaster. Even as the wildfires in Los Angeles...
How About a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?
One source of frustration for the climate coalition – and the ideological left more generally – is the amount of money and coordinated effort that the ideological right has put into political and...
Eyes on the Prize
This month's energy transition worries focus on AI servers and what energy sources will power them, the details of subsidizing clean hydrogen production, and how much damage the Trump Administration...
Energy service is a collective good, Part 2: Appreciating Option Value
[Part 1 of this post is here.] This will be the last blog post for 2024, so here's a gift suggestion for the holidays. Consider helping someone you love develop a greater appreciation for "option...
Energy service is a collective good, Part 1: Price Discrimination
Because affordable, reliable electric service is an essential element of our lives, voters tend to worry about it, and to react strongly to the risk of its loss. The provision of energy services...
Ubiquitous Petroleum Products
I have learned that there is one sentence in Climate of Contempt that, more than any other, seems to grate on the the ears of some in the climate coalition. It is found on page 166: “[O]ur economy’s...
Engineers Are Problem Solvers
While we anxiously awaiting the inevitable MAGA assault on climate policy progress and the regulatory state, it doesn't do much good to react to or comment on it until it actually takes shape. So...
Be a Savvy, Multi-directional Learner, Part 1 — Markets vs Regulation
[Reader warning: This is a wonky post that is aimed at people who have read Climate of Contempt or who otherwise have a deep and granular understanding of how electricity markets work.] ------...
Learn to Manage the Shpilkes
The word “shpilkes,” which refers to a state of agitated anxiety, is probably unfamiliar to most non-Yiddish speakers. I am not a Yiddish speaker, but like many of us above a certain age I learned...
“Kindness don’t ask for much but an open mind”
For some people, complex ideas resonate more when conveyed through artistic expression than through narratives or numbers. Many readers will have heard of energy historian Daniel Yergin’s book, The...
Climate Change and The Electric Grid — Wildfires
We have known for some time that climate change can increase the intensity and frequency of wildfires. And in recent years wildfires sparked by electric utility infrastructure have become more...
Climate Change and the Electric Grid — Severe Weather
Dangerous heat, more frequent and intense flooding and wildfires, and more violent hurricanes are constantly in the news cycle. What we know about the relationship between climate change and severe...
Where to Get the Full Story About Energy Transition Tradeoffs
Modern information flows shield the good news about the energy transition from conservatives, and the bad news from liberals. Our insulated realities make us too certain too quickly that our...
Why My Book’s Political Predictions Might Turn Out To Be Wrong — “The Inflation Reduction Act will transform climate politics”
[Note: This is the second in a series of posts looking at how the political analysis (and corresponding prescription) in Climate of Contempt could turn out to be wrong. The first post was here.]...
The Chasm Between Invention and Commercialization
Steve Levine's 2015 book, Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, tells the story of one of the laboratories competing for federal (2009 ARRA) stimulus money targeting...
What Is “Capture”?
In chapters 2 and 3 of Climate of Contempt I describe the gap between folk wisdom about corporate dominance of the policymaking process and what empirical political science research says about that...
The Biden power plant rule’s uncertain prospects
Most plans to stabilize atmospheric carbon in time to avoid the worst effects of global warming rely heavily on rapid reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector. We...