TIL that there are fusion reactor designs that use induction to extract energy directly from plasma expansion. I have been pessimistic about other fusion designs because they still require a steam cycle and conventional generator, making them unlikely to compete with solar panels and batteries.

This isn’t what the American public want. It isn’t even what the fossil fuel companies want. It’s just a few petulant extremists finally getting their chance to cancel climate protections, even if that means making everyone in the country and the world worse off.

What if the government said the best way to fix a failing dam was slapping duct tape on its cracks? That's what the House "Power Plant Reliability Act" would do for America's grid - keep our least reliable generation online instead of fixing the actual problem. www.utilitydive.com/news/congres...

Why is it that Trump can sue the IRS for leaking his tax details but DHS can’t be sued for assaulting or killing regular people?

Over and over again, federal agents are seizing and deporting people who are following the legal process to immigrate. This isn’t “immigration enforcement”, it’s rounding up any dark-skinned immigrant they can find, canceling the legal process and kicking them out of the country without cause.

For those looking to deepen your climate and energy skills, my wife @kamalkapadia.bsky.social just launched an awesome new course on Climate Solutions & Strategies. Check it out at skillup.earth! 🔌💡

In the Energy Institute blog, Meredith Fowlie is out today with an important analysis of California's legislative accomplishments on electricity affordability as the session wrapped up last week. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/r... 💡🔌

The current administration has claimed renewables are making the grid less reliable. If that were the case, I'd expect states adding the most renewables over the past decade to have the largest increase in outages. However, the opposite seems to be true!

A clever way to shift loads from times when electricity is scarce and expensive to times when it is abundant and cheap. This can make better use of renewable power at a lower cost than batteries.

It’s always been weird to me that the people with the biggest phobia about intermittent renewables are often the tech folks. This is a tech problem with a tech solution—well chosen portfolios of wind, solar and batteries, plus a little fossil, bio or hydrogen for the tough days. Trust the math!

The most important U.S. climate legislation over the next few years is out! ASM Irwin's draft California Assembly Bill 1207 reauthorizes California's ground breaking GHG cap-and-trade (C&T) program. Here are 5 key takeaways from AB 1207 1/

@catalyst.coop Is there a recommended way to ask questions about pudl data? I noticed that interest expenses in `core_ferc1__yearly_balance_sheet_assets_sched110` (ferc_account 427-432) don't seem to make it through to `out_ferc1__yearly_detailed_balance_sheet_assets`. Am I missing something there?

New piece: @matthiasfripp.org and I break down the big flaws with DOE's reliability report. The report's alarming claims of reliability risk exclude the majority of new resources expected to come online by 2030. All the demand, without all the supply. www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-gri...

My first Utility Dive byline! @brendan.bsky.social and I show that DOE's 7/7 reliability report created a fake supply gap by ignoring most new generation planned by 2030, then only considered filling it with expensive coal plants instead of the cheaper renewables, storage and gas utils have planned.

Every czar can have their own Rasputin!

5th grade nuclear weapons drills (hide under your desk). 10-year-olds biking to the mall to try the new video games. Schedule a phone call to schedule a time/place to meet up. Mail a check and a catalog order slip, then wait a few weeks for something to come in the mail. Or call and get it COD.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is actually One Big Expensive Bill that, if passed as is, will do major damage to the U.S. economy, harm workers and families, and put the U.S. in the backseat when it comes to global competitiveness. The team at @energyinnovation.org modeled it, here's what we found:

🔌💡 Our @silviomarcacci.bsky.social's recent piece analyzes how the #energy provisions of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” would cost our #economy years of growth with 830,000 lost jobs, $1.1 trillion less GDP, and 50 percent higher power prices 👇 www.forbes.com/sites/energy... #energysky #greensky

Hey #EnergySky, are there any good explanations of why voltage would rise after the first generation trip in Spain as ENTSO-E reported? Best I can think of would be that loads were light, so transmission lines were producing reactive power which was being consumed by those generators to hold V down.

If the U.S. blocks imports from all the other countries and then all the other countries block imports from the U.S., umm, where does that leave us? Something like Iran and Cuba? Great, we just imposed sanctions on ourselves.

Saudi Arabia can pump oil for $20/bbl but U.S. fracking costs $70/bbl. We may be seeing a glut that shuts the U.S. out of world markets, especially as the world decarbonizes.

Journalists, please stop calling them “reciprocal tariffs” without quotation marks. That is taking the administration’s propaganda as fact. The formula does not consider existing tariffs in the other countries at all.

Coming next in the U.S.: lots of black market phones, computers, jewelry, etc.

FYI: Difficulty siting new transmission lines is not an important barrier to new, cheap, clean power. Long-distance lines are nice to have but *not essential for integrating renewables*. The real barrier is interconnection permission, due to slow technical review and unpredictable connection costs.

Outdated views on grid reliability and slow-moving institutions pose a far greater threat to a resilient grid than any single technology. We should stay focused on building a diversified electric grid capable of responding to a rapidly changing world. www.latitudemedia.com/news/a-diver...

@sarabaldwin.bsky.social and I cover the basics of grid reliability and how clean energy can contribute to a reliable grid in a new report, which comes with a handy summary of key takeaways and policy recommendations. check it out here!

If we are really willing to accept high prices to boost manufacturing, we should weaken the dollar rather than raising tariffs. Tariffs just get matched with other tariffs, launching a trade war that hurts everyone. But a weak dollar slows imports *and* boosts exports.

The U.S. is moving into a leading position in solar panel manufacturing. We are now installing the equivalent of 27 Hoover Dams a year—and doing it all with U.S.-made panels. The U.S. is the third largest solar manufacturer in the world, with great jobs for 263,000 people. seia.org/news/united-...

It makes sense to shift fixed costs from the per-kWh part of electricity bills to the base charge. But doing it only for solar customers is unfair and misses an important opportunity to encourage electrification. www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/01/vote...

The headline on this (paywalled) article misses the main point: "The near-term solution is renewable energy and battery storage, [NextEra CEO John] Ketchum said. 'It is more important than ever to unleash all forms of electric generation starting with renewables, which are ready now.'"

Spooky to see Github Copilot jump in with some fairly specific economic concepts as I write comments in my code. I was calculating willingness to pay for a bundle of power across several hours, and as soon as I wrote "relative wtp" it filled in a mostly correct description from scratch.

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee (ITIAC) released our first report containing recommendations on how DOE can accelerate a transition to clean, competitive U.S. #manufacturing. Check it out at: www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...

I think steel blast furnaces could use a solid oxide fuel cell to convert CO2 back to CO for reuse in the furnace. Somewhat similar to this project, but just recycling CO2, not producing synthetic fuels. Is there any reason this couldn't pencil out on a large scale? www.catalisti.be/en/news/esss...

The problem with trying to catch up on academic reading is that each paper cites 3-4 other interesting-looking papers, which each cite 3-4 more interesting papers….

Check out that drop in evening gas generation! Storage (+ solar) is crushing the evening peak in California. 🔌💡

This is an important point. Slow chargers are useless in places where you’ll park occasionally (malls, libraries, etc.). But at work or home, even a 120V outlet can be all you need to make the leap to an EV.

Awesome induction range uses a battery boost to give full-power cooking from a normal wall outlet—a drop in replacement for a gas stove. Can’t wait till batteries get cheap enough to make this a little more competitive. (120V gas-replacement water heaters are also coming to market.)

I wish articles like this would point out that carbon dioxide removal only makes sense as a last-5% solution. We should do all the things that are cheaper first (e.g., 95% cleaner power, avoid contrails, decarbonize most steel). Then maybe use CDR for the last bit.🔌💡 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/22/c...

Air travel uses a lot of fuel, but the impact is doubled by contrail effects. It will help a lot if they can be avoided and we use sustainable fuels or DAC. (This is one of very few sectors where those may make sense.) Are there feasible policies that could do this?

What should policy priorities be for decarbonization? Economists have chanted "carbon pricing" my whole career, and I don't disagree. But there are many market failures that need addressing. A rarely emphasized piece: rate reform. Ideal electricity prices are real-time marginal cost, RTP.

How does the New York Cap and Invest law relate to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative? Will New York power plants have to obtain credits from both? Can they use a NYCI credit in RGGI or vice versa? 🔌💡

Very cool job alert #climatejobs: cruxalliance.org/policy-direc...

#EnergySky (🔌💡)

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but renewables never get built without a secure PPA that covers all their capital cost. Anything else—relying on spot markets, asking them to bear curtailment risk, 20 year contracts instead of 30—will just raise the sticker price or leave deals unmade.

Just published a paper with @mikejrob.bsky.social and Imelda showing the benefits of using dynamic pricing of electricity to help balance high-renewable systems. This could lower costs and help incorporate more renewables. Win-win! (adding GreenSky tag 🔌💡) www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

A gentle reminder that if we miss the 1.5°C target (and we certainly will), the next target is 1.51°C and not 2°C. We need to keep fighting. Every tonne of CO₂ emitted makes the job of future CO₂ removal harder, and every 0.01°C of temperature increase makes the world more chaotic and dangerous.

Just published a paper with @mikejrob.bsky.social and Imelda showing the benefits of using dynamic pricing of electricity to help balance high-renewable systems. This could lower costs and help incorporate more renewables. Win-win! www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

@kyrib.bsky.social this looks like it would interest you.

For people in the wind and solar business: are interconnection queues and costs reducing the amount of capacity you build? Or are they just a cumbersome way to decide where to connect projects, but overall volume is limited by other factors? 🔌💡

Problem #453 caused by allowing utilities a rate of return that is double the market rate: gas utility shareholders will be wiped out by an energy transition while electricity shareholders will get a windfall boost in share value. 🔌💡