Is there still a chance for "chaos with Ed Miliband"...

Persistent, terrible air quality from wildfire smoke is such a miserable, worrying new reality. I remember how bleak the California Bay Area was in 2020 - the red sky with street lights on at midday. I remember NYC in 2023. And now this morning I've woken up to find it has descended on DC.

NEW: Eight facts about air conditioning amid an overheated global debate KEY FACT: Many European cities, on the world's fastest-warming continent, never needed AC in the past For some strange reason – I can't imagine why – many commentators prefer to ignore this

As Europe bakes in another heatwave, the AC discourse rumbles on. To add some data to the debate, here's a map of residential AC uptake around the world from some forthcoming research. Given the temperatures now regularly being experienced, people in Europe really just don't have a lot of AC.

Discouraging an activity with a benefit-to-cost ratio of nearly 10:1. A triumph of policymaking.

A striking electricity fact I only clocked today. 💡🔌 The PJM grid in the eastern US serves the same population as the UK with both ~70 million people. Yet PJM electricity demand is 3 times the UK! - PJM annual demand is ~850TWh vs ~300TWh in the UK - PJM peak demand is ~160GW vs ~50GW in the UK

Heatwave on the US east coast testing the grid these last few days. Not clear if PJM will hit a record peak but should get up above 160GW again today.

Hear hear! This entire set of reforms needs to be junked. The changes to settlement rules are morally indefensible and economically illiterate. Recent noises about a few minor concessions are mere window dressing and should not distract from the imperative to put an end to this whole sorry saga.

If I were in government I'd be scoping an announcement to have solar, batteries and air conditioning (heating and cooling) in every school and hospital by 2030

This feels… portentous?

California (CAISO) since January 2024.

This chart is bonkers. I think there's two possible explanations for why the UK runs so far ahead of other European countries – neither of them good. And the annual April price jump speaks to a wider issue. For more detail, see my column in this weekend's Observer. observer.co.uk/news/busines...

Fuel duty moves, Russian sanction tweaking and talk of voluntary supermarket price caps are just a total mess of a response to an energy price surge.

Had been somewhat encouraged by UK gov response to Iran energy shock up until now. This plus the weakening of sanctions on refined products from Russian oil is a real one two punch of bad policy backsliding.

- Subsidising consumption in the face of a supply shock - reducing incentives to drive less/switch to EVs - using up limited fiscal space to help better-off drivers rather than the most vulnerable. Hard to think of a worse policy right now.

This is a situation the UK (and other countries) really should try and fix.

My paper on utility regulation with Karl Dunkle Werner is now published in @jpube.bsky.social. We examine whether energy utility companies have been allowed to earn excess profits and what the implications are for both utility investment incentives and consumer costs. (1/6) 🧵 🔌💡

Some train stations in the US really are wonderful buildings. Wish there was a nationwide, high speed rail network connecting many more stations like these ones.

Reciprocating internal combustion diesel engines are probably the dirtiest, most expensive way of generating electricity. They’re used in moments of absolute peak electricity demand and usually require special environmental waivers because they produce so much local pollution. For 1 of them.

Everyone—including robotaxi companies—should pay a fine if they violate a traffic law

Nice 🧵 on the new climate scenarios on the way in AR7

I'm in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today looking at why so many unis are in financial trouble and what the government needs to do to save HE. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Nice piece in the @financialtimes.com from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com. While new AI tools may seem novel/unprecedented right now, there's a lot we can probably still learn about their likely effects by looking at past technological innovations.

Great news! This is a really excellent opportunity for doctoral students in environmental economics.

Refineries have a big inertia problem. They do not want to stop - if throughput drops off and the refinery is in effect mothballed you incur big costs to re-start. So refineries will bid *anything* for physical delivery to keep going *if* there is a chance the situation will revert in the near term.

Burn this prediction market crap down

It tentatively looks as if the more sensible route has prevailed here, with windfall taxes on select generators doing the heavy lifting. Will have to wait and see what the final proposals are, but glad that some of the more exotic calls to mess around with the core market rules haven't been heeded.

Lots places cutting fuel taxes (Spain, Ireland, Canada) or facing calls to do so (UK, Germany). But subsidising fossil fuels during a crisis caused by supply scarcity is a poor use of gov funds. Doubling down on electrification and clean energy (+ some targeted low-income support) is the way to go

In France, if you want to build a home above a certain size, you’re legally required to use a licensed architect. Can you guess what that size is

Weirdly blasé piece on clothing basically coated in PFAS. Even links to a seperate article that says "Avoid textiles that advertise their waterproof and stainproof qualities but don’t claim to be PFAS-free". To say nothing of reducing the manufacture of these chemicals in the first place.

Beautiful day in dystopian London

Went for a walk by Heysham nuclear power plant yesterday. Big piece of kit that’s been cranking out a whole lot of low-carbon power for 4-5 decades. Lots of offshore wind and a proposed 1GW battery project connecting in this area too. Impressive. 🔌💡

Such a good chart. economist.com/britain/2026...

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...