Wild symptom of a broken epistemic environment: in 2015 the evidence showed the Clean Power Plan to be a weak, inexpensive regulation. But climate opponents said it would have huge costs, and climate advocates said it would have huge benefits. And the Chief Justice was fooled.

The diverse coalition against useful emissions targets: -Opponents of climate policy -Advocates who insist on infeasible targets -Economists who think we can value damages instead -Advocates who think we just need to make clean energy cheap And they’re all wrong 🙃

Fights in the northeast over emissions targets remind me of fights with my kids when they’re already late for school. Governors: We can’t make it to school on time! Advocates: You must make it to school on time! Meanwhile, nobody’s making a plan to get to school… www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/c...

Howarth and Jacobson respond to Zeke's post. They ignore his substantive argument about the merits of GWP-20, focusing instead on the importance of near-term climate action. But the case for GWP-20 shouldn't rest whether we like the policy outcomes it produces. www.howarthlab.org/docs/GWP20_i...

Great new Resilient Energy Economies policy brief from scholars at the U of Wyoming about fiscal shocks to energy producing states: cdn.prod.website-files.com/65f9f863036e...

Great discussion here, including the age-old question of how to properly scope industrial policy. I have a view on this that I've recently learned is unpopular (but, as it turns out, is also entirely correct 😊) A 🧵 www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/daleep-singh...

Listen to Bob on this

What's so frustrating about the New York climate policy situation is that the loud propaganda on all sides seems to be getting in the way of fairly clear and good compromises that state policymakers could pursue. Maybe I'm missing something, but... 🧵

This suggestion that we should ignore climate impacts beyond 20 years (the premise of GWP20) because we implement policy over that time horizon is a very misleading defense of GWP20. The long term impacts are what make climate change scary!

One point from our new blog: the GWP metric is supposed to put CO₂ and methane on equal footing, but GWP-20 does this by counting 80% of methane's lifetime climate impact against less than 10% of CO₂'s

New York is genuinely in a difficult spot. Our new blog tries to lay out some key facts to help stakeholders forge a pathway that balances climate, economic, and other concerns www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/new-yorks-cl...

A newly published Resilient Energy Economies policy brief assesses the place-based support from the federal government to fossil fuel-reliant communities during the Biden Era. Take a look and let us know your thoughts! cdn.prod.website-files.com/65f9f863036e...

Advocates for more domestic production or electrification will always use global shocks to argue for preferred policies, but these are 2nd order solutions. More international cooperation/integration and less geopolitical conflicts are the ways to avoid these shocks.

Such an important point made on this pod: work like @gruberte.bsky.social's on the mid-transition is the natural consequence of actually taking the energy transition seriously...something far too few people in the energy world do www.volts.wtf/p/the-fate-o...

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.