“Predictions are difficult, especially about the future”

Jul 20, 2025 | Blog, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

To my mind, some members of the climate coalition spend too much time and energy fighting with one another about which carbon-reducing technologies to support or oppose. Particularly in these politically problematic times, we ought to be humbly agnostic about those...

Partisan Energy

Jul 10, 2025 | Blog, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

Many writers and pundits (me included) have noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act will make electricity more expensive (by shifting project development costs from taxpayers to ratepayers) and slow growth in energy supply, just as future demand for...

Tipping Points, Uncertainty & Climate Politics

Jul 2, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

Climate “tipping points” are events that could rapidly accelerate warming or suddenly change the climate in ways to which humans would have trouble adapting. I list a few of those potential tipping points in a note in Climate of Contempt, including “the...

Tipping Points, Uncertainty & Climate Politics

Jul 2, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

As the tragedy that is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act works its way through Congress, let’s talk about something equally cheery: namely, fears of climate disasters. Climate “tipping points” are events that could rapidly accelerate warming or suddenly...

What’s with the pivot toward natural gas?

Jun 15, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate, News, Partisanship, Elections and the Energy Transition

So far 2025 has seen a lot of “pivoting” away from clean energy and toward natural gas. Los Angeles Times writer Sammy Roth recently documented one such pivot, by wind energy champion and conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz. Tech industry giants who led the charge...

Certainty (about energy policy) closes minds and inhibits learning

Jun 1, 2025 | Blog, Energy Transition Policy & Policymaking, Framing and the Energy Transition Debate

Why can’t we be transparent about tradeoffs?  The task of delivering power that is reliable, affordable, and clean is complicated. Anyone who wants to understand it can do so, but they must travel along a lengthy learning curve. When you get far enough along that...