the inability of public intellectuals in energy to quit the platform owned and shaped by someone who took public pride in condemning the most vulnerable people on earth to death (this year!!!) does not leave me inspired for the future

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

Data center loads are driving enormous uncertainty in load forecasts, and utilities and ratepayers are bearing a lot of the risk. Great resource on large load forecasting - problems with current approaches and ways utilities can do a better job going forward. 🔌💡 www.esig.energy/large-loads-...

Interesting

Great to see this approach to solar, battery and EV charging installation gain steam!

😡

Hey utility regulatory wonks! Who has done good thinking about the potential of PURPA 111(d) standards to improve state utility regulatory approaches? Any good research / resources out there?

This bill would trample states' sovereignty over their energy policy, and punish ratepayers, rather than acknowledging premature interconnection of data centers as the real reliability problem: www.eenews.net/articles/hou...

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

Westlands approves plan to convert a quarter of its California farmland to solar: Growers in the Central Valley see solar panels as a way to keep their business afloat in a more water-strapped future. ☀️🔋 🔌💡 #EnergySky #CAwater subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

This is precisely what natural gas utilities did between 2013 and 2020, when declining gas prices coincided with a significant acceleration of pipeline replacement programs.

Personal hypothesis: when gas price spikes retreat, utilities fill the “headroom” in rates with other regulated costs, raising the floor for the next gas price spike.

Ok the “coal for Christmas” thing is pretty funny but otherwise this is unnecessary and expensive. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

#BREAKING: New drone video from Pacific, WA, on Tuesday morning following a levee failure on the White River at Pacific City Park. Whole neighborhoods are underwater as water continues flowing out of the failed levee. #wawx #flood #drone

Why are we bad at building mega-projects? Excellent thread right here! 👇

NEW: How cheap are grid batteries?🔋🔋🔋 Grid batteries are now only c.$125/KWh connected🤯 This assessment is based on a series of expert interviews and storage auction results as of October 2025. 🧵

In 100 years people are going to look back and marvel that we pumped explosive gas into our homes

You would think that 100k people under evacuation orders from flooding would feature more prominently in national news? www.kuow.org/stories/go-n...

BloombergNEF: "Lithium-ion battery pack prices have dropped 8% since 2024 to a record low of $108 per kilowatt-hour." about.bnef.com/insights/cle... 🔌💡

Update from EIA confirms a decline in natural gas use in California with 2025 data. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

Our infrastructure isn’t ready for what’s coming.

EVs beat petrol cars on lifetime emissions — even on “dirty” grids. Battery production is carbon-intensive, but EVs quickly repay that debt and end up 21–71% cleaner over 250,000 km. We can’t wait for perfect grids: electrify transport and clean the grid now.

If you needed a reminder to actually read the citations when you're using genAI for research, here's your reminder. www.cjr.org/tow_center/w...

Great addition to the literature on drivers of rising electricity costs. 👇 🔌💡

Today in "natural gas is a volatile commodity and maybe we shouldn't lock consumers into long-term exposure to this risk": tradingeconomics.com/commodity/na...

Utility equipment can start wildfires, and wildfire risk is a huge driver of rising utility bills. But it's a much much bigger problem than the utility sector alone. Really valuable insights in this new report via Gridworks: gridworks.org/wp-content/u...

Camus has a new white paper out today! Following on from earlier work on the potential to leverage existing grid capacity to connect large loads faster & more cheaply, we took the next step to model load flexibility at a set of real sites with real utility data. www.camus.energy/flexible-dat...

How do we connect data centers to the grid quickly and avoid driving up costs for other electricity consumers? The solution: a 2-part combo of flexible interconnection agreements & bring-your-own-capacity (BYOC) arrangements, according to a new report out today from Camus, my ZERO Lab, and encoord.

We've got 2 great stories today in our series about drivers of the affordability crisis. First up by James Baratta: Electricity rates are set by public utility commissions. But that process has become captured, with corporate utilities pushing through rate hikes and extracting profits.

My snarkier take is that someone should introduce this comment in the next rate case as evidence that their cost of equity is equal to their current dividend yield.

KQED breaks down a Bay Area customer's $600/mo utility bill. www.kqed.org/science/1999...

Surprise, surprise... Fewer data center proposals are moving forward than expected in Georgia. www.utilitydive.com/news/georgia...

"The cost of running coal plants rose 28 percent from 2021 to 2024, nearly double the rate of inflation over that time, forcing consumers to pay $6 billion in unnecessary energy bills," writes @energyinnovation.org's @silviomarcacci.bsky.social: thepowerline.substack.com/p/coals-not-... 🔌💡

🚨job alert🚨 I'm looking to hire at least one PhD student for next year, looking at decarbonization-oriented technology deployment within an ethical frame of resource allocation and justice outcomes. Full ad attached! Pref for CEEES admissions; deadline is 1 January.

I'm dense when it comes to finance, so the fact that I got to a point of understanding how utilities earn profit and why they should or shouldn't earn less means you can too. I stayed up till 3am trying to explain in an accessible way. Hopefully it was worth it! heatmap.news/energy/calif...

Shocked to hear that data center load forecasts may be over-stated by as much as 25 GW. www.utilitydive.com/news/some-lo...

Increasing gas generation does not strike me as a responsive long-term affordability strategy.

Ok apparently this is actually not widely known: Gov. Shapiro withdrew Pennsylvania from RGGI today as part of a deal to pass a now-4month overdue budget.

Solar keeps blowing past expectations, but expectations are catching up. The latest IEA WEO now has PV topping 600 GW per year, though this year's scenarios are actually lower than last year's.

Launched today: the State Economic Power Project! This dives into cost of living + climate, on 2 pillars: (1) household budgets and (2) state budgets. Thank you Sarah Bloom Raskin, @jordanhaedtler.bsky.social @kostyack.bsky.social @advitt.bsky.social climatecabineteducation.org/state-econom...

new from me today: not all data centers are created environmentally equal — and building them in states with cleaner grids and more access to water could go a long way in preventing environmental catastrophe

NEW: Rad Power Bikes has told employees it will go out of business in January without new funding. The company said in a staff email that it had a "very promising" option to stay alive, but whatever that was, it fell apart. Story with @kirstenkorosec.bsky.social techcrunch.com/2025/11/10/r...

Has anyone done the math on whether this approach stores more energy per cubic meter of concrete than EnergyVault’s idea of lifting that cubic meter to the top of a tower?

One reason taking the train is awesome is that it gets you off the highway and out of the airport and takes you through small town centers and landscapes (both natural and man made) that you wouldn’t otherwise see.

😬 www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ferm...

Want to know how to reduce power prices in PJM? Let clean energy projects connect to the grid. Great report from Gridlab and Aurora Energy Research 👇 gridlab.org/portfolio-it...

He’s basically daring the world to tax extreme wealth and create a universal basic income so the productivity gains from AI go to everyone… right?

Hold your wallets, everyone, OpenAI is talking about taxpayer backing so it can continue its data center building craze without having to show profitability. www.wsj.com/video/openai...

Great run down of Tuesday's election results.

Is the capital markets money spigot drying up or something?