We often leap from “every tenth of a degree matters” (basically true) to “all incremental climate progress matters equally” (not true). We’re no longer pursuing the major economic shifts needed to sustain emissions reductions over decades. heatmap.news/ideas/trump-...

Join us on Friday (tomorrow!) for our next Resilient Energy Economies brownbag discussion with Brandon Dennison about economic development in coal country us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

The Biden-era climate strategy involved trying to make households, communities, and the U.S. economy less vulnerable to a decline of fossil fuels (with limited success). That strategy has been abandoned. heatmap.news/ideas/trump-...

I have lots of opinions, but here's a published one with @noahqkaufman.bsky.social. Energy modelling, when done properly, can be scientific, but isn't "a science". At best, it's an iterative learning tool that should be used combined with real world experiments. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

And, the key takeaways from their deep decarbonization policy lecture. Thoughts?

Dumb question: if the Trump admin isn't going to regulate GHGs regardless of the endangerment finding, and the real risk is that supreme court rules in a way that hamstrings future presidents that want to regulate GHGs, why would climate groups want to litigate this decision?

Red alert @paulkelleher.net

We’ve got a new report out assessing Biden-era federal efforts to boost economic resilience in fossil fuel-reliant parts of the country. The findings are a mixed bag 🧵 www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/wp-content/u...

I've been privileged over the years to write a sequence energy modelling methodology papers with (now Professor 🥳) Steve Pye of UCL, along with a rotating cast of amazing people. The latest dropped today in Nature Energy ➡️ rdcu.be/e2tt6

At the end of a 2 hour lecture on technologies for deep decarbonization (polices are next week) I left my students with these 5 takeaways. Thoughts?

I learned a ton from this podcast with David Sandalow and Peter Fox Penner on power prices and the new PJM agreement podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

I’m a big supporter of putting monetary values on death risks caused by pollution. But imagine you are one of the many (most?) people who dislike this practice but still want regulations. How would you feel about this framing? www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/c...

How are state governments building economic resilience amid a transitioning energy landscape? Tune into our Resilient Energy Economies brownbag this Friday to hear about lessons from Arizona and New Mexico, featuring Kayla Lucero-Matteucci! Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

I'm grateful for the responses to this. I also understand the pushback, even if I don't agree, that highlighting the limits of our capabilities will only add ammo to those stripping away climate protections. It may also be worth noting that nobody has seriously pushed back on...🧵

Great conversation with @danielraimi.bsky.social here: energythinks.com/podcasts/tri...

Even tho we disagree I’m really grateful to Bob for engaging. In my experience people don't want to have these debates about aggregated climate damage estimates due to concerns that legitimate disagreements will be weaponized by opponents of climate action. I think we really need these debates now.

NOW ONLINE: Heatmap’s 2026 Climate Insider Survey This is our annual questionnaire of climate academics, business leaders, engineers, and former officials… …answering some of the biggest open questions in the field. And you can find it all online now: heatmap.news/insiders-sur...

Most economists disagree with extreme voices on debates about climate risks, and yet we keep providing fuel to both sides. This article tries to explain why. www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...

Here's a few things I learned digging into electricity affordability and decarbonization in Connecticut 🧵

Big fan of Jigar but I hate this comparison. Lomberg fraudulently claims there's empirical evidence to show climate risks are small. Gates may have somewhat different priorities or expectations about future tech evolution. If we can't differentiate between these two, I think we're in trouble.

🚨A new funding opportunity from the Resilient Energy Economies initiative! For research projects that will help communities facing acute economic risks from the energy transition. Check it out: www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/resilient-ec...

Fascinating stuff is happening in Minnesota. Tomorrow (Fri) at 2pm ET we have Carla Vita, who directs the Energy Transition Office, discussing efforts to diversify the state economy and support fossil fuel workers affected by the energy transition. Register here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

I wrote an article about the policy irrelevance of the social cost of carbon in the hopes of prompting an uncomfortable conversation about the future use of the metric. So I was excited to see that @Revkin asked @CassSunstein about my critique 🧵 revkin.substack.com/p/a-fresh-lo...

@noahqkaufman.bsky.social has a very interesting, and certainly controversial, take on trump administration abandoning the SCC. I strongly agree with many of his SCC critiques, but the alternative is also unclear, and very well could be worse. 💡🔌 www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/the-social-c...

Question for state climate policy folks: digging into how RGGI operates in CT is depressing me. A carbon price should be making clean energy more attractive than dirty energy, but as far as I can tell, we don’t really let RGGI do that here (1/2)

ICYMI, I wrote about ending federal support for regional economic development, including diversification efforts in fossil fuel communities. A fossil fuel behemoth like the USA will not decarbonize if doing so will wreck local economies. heatmap.news/ideas/trump-...

“Communities that depend on fossil fuel industries will be vulnerable to severe economic shocks when demand for their products eventually declines,” writes @noahqkaufman.bsky.social. How Trump’s budget bill would wreck fossil fuel communities:

I wrote about how we were finally helping fossil fuel-reliant communities build more resilient local economies. And now we're taking that support away. heatmap.news/ideas/trump-...

Our next Resilient Energy Economies virtual brownbag is tomorrow featuring Wade Buchanan who directs the Colorado Office of Just Transition. Register here! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Our next Resilient Energy Economies virtual brownbag is tomorrow featuring Wade Buchanan who directs the Colorado Office of Just Transition. Register here! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

I was lucky to part of this amazing group exploring Oklahoma's plans for future economic resilience given its heavy reliance on the oil and gas industry. Here's our summary report (1/3) cdn.prod.website-files.com/65f9f863036e...

Seems like energycommunities.gov, which provided resources to help enable economic revitalization in fossil fuel dependent communities, has been taken down by DOE

When policymakers claim expertise that isn't real, it degrades trust in actual expertise. Here @bataille_chris and I provide some guidance on when NOT to use energy-economic modeling tools to support climate change policymaking www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Solar panels! You can put them on a hill, you can put them on a mill, You can put them on a barn, You can put them on a farm, You can put them on a field and still get some crop yield, You can put them on a lake, Makes it slow to evaporate, Solar panels!

I'm thinking we need to stop saying "solar" to mean rooftop and utility-scale. Just like we shouldn't say "nuclear" to mean fission and fusion. The differences are too large. We need to use separate words.

For lawyers: is "nonaquiescence" just a fancy way to say ignore court rulings? www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Our next Resilient Energy Economies virtual brownbag is tomorrow featuring Chris Knittel of MIT and his fascinating work mapping vulnerabilities to the energy transition across US regions. Register here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

P.S. come work with us! www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.p...

Nailed it. And we've created the Resilient Energy Economies initiative to help avoid repeating the mistakes of the China Shock with the inevitable shocks caused by an energy transition.

This terrific new book explains in painstaking detail why EPA's social cost of carbon estimate is not a policy relevant metric

Support for these actions in coal communities make little sense if we view energy solely thru the lens of costs/prices -- coal is expensive and dirty -- but we often fail to account for energy production being core to local economies and cultures. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

I spoke with @jtemple.bsky.social before the tariff announcement so I probably wasn't pessimistic enough here www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/03/1...

My amateur pundit take on the abundance debate is the critiques are correct but the outrage/blame is an anti-establishment shtick by establishment critics

"The bedrocks of successful climate action are limits on greenhouse gas emissions & cooperation with countries where emissions are growing fastest. A myopic & imperialistic focus on domestic energy production will take the world in the opposite direction"

We wrote this to push back against suggestions that an energy abundance strategy is, in itself, a climate strategy nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-...

Count me as a fan of the abundance agenda. Tim Boersma and I explain why it's a pretty limited climate solution: t.co/4QJiTJLdYI

Trump is aiming for geopolitical benefits from fossil fuels the same way Biden’s Green Industrial Policy tried with clean energy and yet nobody is calling it Brown Industrial Policy - what’s up with that?

Why are local economic development professional and economist two entirely different professions with seemingly no connection with each other?

Please join our Resilient Energy Economies monthly brownbag this Friday to chat with Betony Jones about how policy has (or has not) helped fossil fuel workers manage transitions. Register here! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...