Eyes on the Prize

Jan 10, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

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 will do to the energy transition. In the heat of policy or...

Energy service is a collective good, Part 2: Appreciating Option Value

Dec 20, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking

[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 value” as a public good. It sounds complicated and...

Energy service is a collective good, Part 1: Price Discrimination

Dec 15, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking

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 over a centralized network of transmission lines is a collective service,...

Ubiquitous Petroleum Products

Nov 20, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking

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 deep reliance on petroleum products is due less to that industry’s...

Engineers Are Problem Solvers

Nov 15, 2024 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

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 let me distract you with another observation about a type of...

Be a Savvy, Multi-directional Learner, Part 1 — Markets vs Regulation

Oct 10, 2024 | Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

[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.] —— Chapters 3 and 5 of Climate of Contempt discuss expert disagreement...