MTG talked shit and now she’s bouncing. I don’t trust any of it.

huge news: a key house committee just advanced a major bipartisan permitting deal that would block future presidents from rescinding permits for political reasons good for anyone who wants to build renewables, bad for anyone who wants to block pipelines via @heatmap.news

"DOE has been using its powers to keep dispatchable plants from retiring under President Trump. Those efforts could cost ratepayers about $3.1 billion a year in 2028 ..." This isn't the "energy dominance" anyone signed up for ... www.utilitydive.com/news/xcel-co...

Hi all! I’m opening up speaking slots for 2026, especially for universities, conferences, and orgs interested in just energy transitions, public institutions under pressure, and career pathways at the intersection of humanities/social sciences and energy policy. /1

Hi all! I’m opening up speaking slots for 2026, especially for universities, conferences, and orgs interested in just energy transitions, public institutions under pressure, and career pathways at the intersection of humanities/social sciences and energy policy. /1

The greatest part about remote work is sitting in a chair with my feet on the ottoman sending emails in front of the fireplace after two days of getting rained/snowed on in the backcountry.

Just gave a talk about my career trajectory from humanities academia to state and regional energy policy with a focus on my time at NREL during DOGE/Trump cuts and man, it felt cathartic/a trauma dump, I hope it wasn't weird. It's been a wild two years.

Thinking a lot about how so many big name senior academics I’ve encountered also tend to email this way 👀

Epstein stuff moving fast but this isn’t our first rodeo, not gonna be all giddy about this being the cause of his spectacular downfall.

"I'm sorry there were consequences for my actions that negatively impacted my personal aspirations"

Opened my dissertation with a quote from Larry Summers arguing that the Global North should just offshore all industrial waste dumping to Africa. Yes he is and always has been a piece of shit, weird that he's been taken seriously only until his name has been attached to Epst*in.

Spent 12 hours in the mountains today, then got treated to the Northern Lights tonight. Not bad.

NGL, still grappling with the post-academia identity crisis.

I want to live in NYC now

Headed to Boise tomorrow to teach state legislators from four red states in the west about transmission. Fourth work trip in five weeks and fifth trip overall since late September (Seattle, Portland, Santa Fe, Denver). I am tired af and just want to play cozy video games and drink tea.

It’s like, there’s fascism here but also there are places like New Mexico that exist.

Rooftop solar guy's sales pitch yesterday: act now and get some panels up so when the data centers drive your rates up you'll be able to mitigate the impact by selling power back to the grid. First time I've been pitched DERs as a defense against large industrial users.

The narrative that hope/joy = cringe and is a reflection of undeveloped and naive politics is stupid and harmful. The dichotomy of hope = unserious and cynicism = radical/committed needs to die.

To put a finer point on it, people on the left who shit on rural communities without ever spending time in them or talking to the people who live there are constantly guilty of this.

Learned a good friend, an HB1 holder and refugee, was tackled by ICE outside a grocery store in broad daylight and detained for a few hours in Colorado. They were ultimately released. This friend is brilliant and kind and contributes so much to their research field and community. Feeling rage.

I miss teaching but also very glad I don't have to answer questions from motivated students about how to fix the many things that are broken because my answers would be way less optimistic than they were just a few years ago.

Starting next week I’ll be traveling once/week to Santa Fe, Denver, Boise, and Helena facilitating discussions with state legislators, governors’ staffs, NGOs, etc. on transmission permitting, large loads/data centers, the importance of early community engagement, etc. Hoping to learn a lot.

Mariners! I was emotionally exhausted after the Phillies lost yesterday but super stoked for my PNW friends.

This story was inspired by a conversation with a fossil fuel exec in Paris a few days after the big outage in Spain. He blamed too much renewable energy as the cause. Was that really it? Turns out: No. @npr.org takes you through a new report on what happened + impacts of renewable misinformation.

Happy to share my new personal website! I'm available for speaking engagements, esp. related to my academic and post-ac career trajectory as a humanities/social science scholar working in national lab and policy spaces, possibly of interest to grad students/ECRs. Get in touch! www.matthenryphd.com

Two years ago I was teaching Climate Change and Colonialism and working on a book proposal. A year ago I was leading a national lab social science research team to understand DER adoption. Now I’m working with regulators and NGOs on transmission permitting in the west. Weird trajectory.

At the risk of angry-posting, I hope we learn something from this given the *extensive* environmental justice and environmental concessions that were made to "protect" the programs

The data center angst feels like a leading indicator of a broader economic development question about if the public will ever support high-value industrial activity that: -uses a lot of power -doesn’t create many jobs Because that seems like the future of manufacturing.

I don’t post much on here anymore, or on social in general. The returns from networking/building an audience at the expense of participating in the latest Discourse are not what they once were; touching grass and maintaining relationships in other, more meaningful ways seem to pay more dividends.

Everything is terrible but the Phillies are in the playoffs so I’m gonna lean into that for a bit.

At CREPC-WIRAB in an elevator with a red state public service commissioner not to be named: “Are you Matt Henry, former University of Wyoming professor? I’ve read your book.” 😳

To clarify (not that anyone cares) but I do think EH has immense value, but also in some quarters has become too shoegazey.

In academia this is also known as the environmental humanities tbh (no shade intended).

Headed to Portland next week to talk transmission. 😬

I would love to know to what extent the rapture stuff has been fueled by ChatGPT/is a version of mass AI psychosis. I imagine we’ll find out.

Academia dot edu licensing agreement says it can use your likeness and voice and publications in any manner they want, world wide.

A thing I'm grappling with: it is possible to show your disapproval/dislike of a person or event by refusing to even acknowledge or comment on it; on the other hand, it's important not to let false narratives run rampant. When to speak, when to say silent?

I'm generally very happy I left academia (better work-life balance, better pay, learning a lot) but I am still very much figuring out how to decouple my identity from my profession. I know it'll never fully happen because my politics inspire my work, but still... a ways to go.

Found: hydration bladder with water filtered from the backcountry on the last backpacking trip I took in August. Drink or dump?

Idk I think the worst part of being a parent is the other parents. For whatever reason it’s been really hard to find other parents with shared interests/values the past few years.

So I guess 99% of the time time it’s just some guy

I'm friends with a ton of lefties, from academics to organizers to rural anarchist types. None are happy about yesterday.

I keep thinking about all the places I’ve been that have later been the site of gun violence. I used to stay in Orem and walk my dog on UVU’s campus during drives between AZ and MT. I stayed in the Mandalay Bay hotel, walked down Boylston St, was a toddler when my dad went to Virginia Tech.

The shooting of Charlie Kirk will have almost exclusively extremely negative consequences for American society in general, the stability of society in specific, and the safety of everyone living in it.

My kids did lockdown drills today; a colleague’s child had a real lockdown last week because of an actual gun in school; today there was a school shooting and political violence on a college campus. We live in hell.

I think this is partially true, but if we’re being honest, a lot of otherwise super bright, high-achieving people are using AI for relief from overwork. I saw it in academia. I saw it in the national labs. I have seen it in policy spaces; it’s rampant in the legal profession.

"Do more with less" long enough and the system *will* collapse, likely in ways you'd never anticipate.

I think this is partially true, but if we’re being honest, a lot of otherwise super bright, high-achieving people are using AI for relief from overwork. I saw it in academia. I saw it in the national labs. I have seen it in policy spaces; it’s rampant in the legal profession.

So many people talked about *jobs* as far and away the biggest social value-add of IRA and Biden-era clean energy build-out. But that's a message for policymakers, not the general public, for whom being employed is necessary but not exciting, a baseline expectation of a functioning society.