Today on Volts: how can we get data centers hooked up without screwing over the grid or other ratepayers? Two of my favorite thinkers, @astridatkinson.bsky.social & @jessedjenkins.com, lay out a new model whereby data centers bring some of their own generation & utilities offer flexible connection.

We are launching a big project today with MIT — The Electricity Price Hub! You can view monthly electricity prices per kwh and avg. bills for every major utility in the country going back to Jan 2020. electricity.heatmap.news

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Encountered several coffee places now where I’ve got a small iced americano and thought “hey this tastes great”. Barista has subsequently confirmed that yes their default is 4 shots ☕️☕️☕️☕️. Gonna be a day of high highs and low lows

People do not appreciate what a vast, fundamental sea change batteries are bringing to the electrical system.

I have seen lots of enthusiastic posting about what a great idea this is. And don't get me wrong, I get the frustration with electricity prices spiking so high when gas prices rise. But so far I've seen far too many half baked solutions being thrown around that don't really add up. 🔌💡 (1/12)

Environmental levies fall disproportionately on electricity bills rather than gas bills, so electricity is artificially expensive relative to gas. In this commentary, Shefali Khanna and John Cui argue it's time to reform energy bill structure.

Highly recommend Ezra's conversation with Jason Bordoff, about the global energy dynamics being driven by this war. If the straight stays closed, "prices need to rise high enough to destroy 10 million barrels a day of global demand." That's in the $200 range. Things are about to get real bad.

I would say the spread of sports betting in the US is a slow motion disaster, but it has been anything but slow motion. Full on speed running to catch up (and surpass?) places like the UK where this has already been a long-running problem for decades.

UK grid looking very clean today with prices down in the single digits. Strong wind and solar pushing fossil fuel generation pretty close to record lows. Expect this to become increasingly the norm as renewable and storage capacity keep increasing. 🔌💡

Funny that this kind of thing is sufficiently mainstream that biofuel fraud was even a plotline in the latest season of The Lincoln Lawyer

The final report on last April's Spain/Portugal blackout is out. A few takeaways: - Lack of "inertia" due to too few fossil/nuclear generators - the thing anti-renewable pundits immediately blamed without evidence, then reporters breathlessly endlessly repeated - played essentially no role.

Fantastic news!

Good policy can produce good news

UK energy: about 14m households getting ‘above average’ service.

Really nice, thoughtful piece on the rapidly evolving landscape when it comes to LLMs and academic research

"[T]he current system [in the EU] is arbitrary and inefficient. It also intrinsically punishes smaller countries, which was not the intention of the policy." Lucas Davis's new blog post on research by Charlotte De Cannière. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/03/16/s...

I’m hiring for a full-time one-year Research Assistant (“pre-doc”) position Come work at LSE doing research on energy markets and environmental economics. Great opportunity to build research skills ahead of applying to PhD programmes Deadline March 27th, apply here: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Applications open for our @cep-lse.bsky.social summer internship programme.

I’m hiring for a full-time one-year Research Assistant (“pre-doc”) position Come work at LSE doing research on energy markets and environmental economics. Great opportunity to build research skills ahead of applying to PhD programmes Deadline March 27th, apply here: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

At the risk of boring everyone,a little context. $100 oil in isolation isn’t that bad. It averaged around that level from 2011-2014 without severe economic ramifications*. It’s the pace of the rise that has people spooked. And not knowing where it might stop.

This is objectively a very dumb take and kind of sad to see @theguardian.com engaging in this kind of unfounded scaremongering.

Solar is cheap, exhibit 3,141,592,653.

As a rare climate scientist working in Silicon Valley, I've been drinking from the AI firehose a lot more than my peers. I thought it would be helpful to lay out my experiences of both the promise and pitfalls of using AI to accelerate scientific research:

For anyone looking for postdocs for their students, over the next few months LSE “fellow” positions will start being listed. Research + teaching but 2-3 year runway. The new Global School of Sustainability has 5 new ones posted now! jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

5️⃣ x LSE Fellow positions now open at the Global School of Sustainability at LSE! 💡 We are seeking to appoint up to five fixed-term LSE Fellows with expertise in the social science of sustainability. 🗓️ Closing date: 12/03/2026 🤝 Apply today! jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Here here. Great piece from @iandunt.bsky.social on a really terrible set of reforms. The whole “delivery” boilerplate doesn’t hold water here either as basically none of this was in the manifesto. I really do hope the government bin these immigration changes and go back to the drawing board.

Have seen a lot of takes about how Claude is great for coding, and this is certainly true. But I think an underrated research application is using it as a sort of endlessly patient co-author to bounce ideas off and test arguments with, especially when working through thorny conceptual issues.

Such a good piece today from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com which shows that the declining graduate premium is very much a UK problem rather than a general (or inevevitable) consequence of more people going to uni www.ft.com/content/649d...

New series of the Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics begins this Thursday at 8am Pacific Time. A great lineup of speakers for the spring series. Register here for the zoom link: cepr.org/events/event...

Ha! Excellent headline. No notes.

Please share with potential solid candidates for this postdoc (academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31576). We start reviewing application next week! A data-savvy economist or data scientist with interest in agriculture and environment would be a good fit.

Kind of wild that in the same year China installed 10x this amount. Puts US and European efforts in perspective. Nevertheless, encouraging to see the US is still adding lots of new clean capacity.

Climate change is a defining challenge demanding strategic agility. The 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦: 𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘴, 𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘜𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘺 course explores how climate science, economics and policy shape decisions, and how leaders can respond effectively. Find out more ⬇️

BREAKING: UK govt auction secures 4.9GW new solar at £65/MWh and 1.3GW new onshore wind at £72/MWh, 13% and 21% below the price cap respectively. All due online by 2029.

One of the most important statistical packages made in Econ in the last decade

Don’t forget to submit your paper by this Sunday!

I have now wasted many hours trying to get a revision submitted due to Editorial Manager's absurd latex compilation setup. Garbage service from a publication industry that offloads all the work onto authors and pockets some ridiculous profit margins. Hate that we are trapped in this bad equilibrium.

Can confirm I’ve had the experience of saying I live in London and getting a concerned/worried response, almost certainly due to all the online nonsense out there. Don’t believe the lies!

Editorial Manager is the absolute worst. That is all.

Best workshop, best keynote and best time to visit London! Submit your paper/abstract. Deadline Feb 1.

This was posted by @mambarlife.bsky.social in the Other Place and it’s too good not to share it.

Working with energy units for gas is the worst. It's like they really spent some time thinking "but how else could we make it confusing..." (just wasted a bunch of time relearning this after seeing "mcf" in some code and worrying I had done a unit conversion wrong)

HM Treasury is requesting input into its Green Book Discount Rate Review, and we need your help. If you have an interest in Social Discounting, please complete the following survey: york.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... 2) Forward this link to interested parties. Deadline: Feb 27th

@britishacademy.bsky.social International Fellowships are now open Applications are welcome across the #humanities and #socialsciences from early career researchers anywhere in the world to come to 🇬🇧 for 2 years The deadline is 11 March www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

When choosing a company to manage vast quantities of sensitive UK healthcare data for the NHS I’m not sure “software that dominates” is the vibe I’d go for.

BBC More or Less doing what it does best. Junk stats beware!

I was 20 when HS2 was announced. Great to know i’ll probably be in my late 60s when the Birmingham-Manchester section starts work let alone finishes. Seems like a country doing things the right way!

Some interesting commentary on the results of the latest UK offshore wind auction 🔌💡