NEW: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? Make yourself a tea (or grab a beer??) and enjoy my Friday longread on marginal pricing, ideas for market reform – & how to break the link btwn gas & power prices for good www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/8

Who needs PowerPoint when you have Quarto and @emilhvitfeldt.bsky.social's extensions?! I wanted to make an image-heavy presentation. Usually, I'd reach for Keynote. But Emil shared quarto-revealjs-editable, which let me stay in Quarto land 🥰 Thanks, Emil! Find it here: github.com/EmilHvitfeld...

I've largely stopped posting #HydrogenSoufflé because it seems distasteful to dance on the graves of so many dreams. But... Aberdeen is flogging its hydrogen bus fleet for scrap. How much money was wasted on this 100% predicable outcome? Will heads roll? aberdeenbusinessnews.co.uk/aberdeen-hyd...

A tax economist put his entire life savings into a prediction market bet that DOGE wouldn’t cut spending. His wife read the Kalshi comments from the people on the other side and grew *more* confident because “they didn’t seem to understand what they were buying.” He made a 37% return

🚨 New paper: Coupling integrated assessment and energy system models 🚨 Planning future energy systems requires bridging two fundamentally different scales: long-term transformation pathways spanning decades, and short-term power system operations unfolding hour by hour. #EnergySky #PyPSA 🧵

In today's edition of "Datasets from Hell": The UK ONS switches from Financial Year (April to March funnily) to Calendar Year and then again back to Financial Year in one dataset. #datasetsfromhell #rstats #EconSky

Excellent point!

It was carbon prices, that prevented a surge in coal-based power generation in 2025 in the EU.

“A year after the $1.1 billion overhaul,” which added a new lane each direction, “the 405’s rush hour drive times were a minute slower than they were before the workers broke ground. Five years later, traffic was worse at all times of day.” www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

As expected, in the final rule, EPA's Endangerment Finding repeal backs down entirely from challenging the science, choosing to focus on statutory arguments regarding EPA's authority. Good work, everyone who contributed to the @andrewdessler.com review!

The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory www.cell.com/one-earth/fu... @williamripple.bsky.social

It may be surprising that the EU's Climate Law - including the net 90% target for 2040 - passed in the European Parliament. A closer look at the adopted text explains why those in the EPP who favour weaker climate ambition could support the deal and did not vote with the far-right parties. /1

🆕 Several Earth system components may be closer to destabilisation than previously thought. Crossing key temperature thresholds could trigger feedback loops, pushing the planet toward a “Hothouse Earth” trajectory. Study by @oregonstate.edu, @iiasa.ac.at & PIK: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Energiewende in a nutshell: "Wir tragen die Lasten, haben das Kabel in unserem Boden und nichts davon außer einer einmaligen Entschädigung" Jetzt ist sogar ein unterirdisches Kabel für eine PV Anlage eine "Last"... Ich versteh's wirklich nicht mehr...

UK not messing about: In two months the gov agreed to bids for 4.9 GW Onshore, 1.3 GW Solar and 8.3 GW Offshore 🤯 The Q&A by @carbonbrief.org on this is excellent!!

Population ageing places pressure on public finances, squeezing out funding for long-term endeavours • Spending on seniors' health and pensions is rising across developed economies • In turn, low productivity growth and decaying infrastructure fuel popular dissatisfaction www.ft.com/content/b4d2...

O'Leary (Ryanair): "We’re not going to get to net zero by 2050" At least the airline industry is honest in what they expect. The car industry claims the new rules are compatible with net-zero...

Holy moly this chart: Cumulative US measles cases

There's a predictable approach to denial that we're already seeing, which I call the Four Pillars of Disordered Doubt, which allows actors to constantly question evidence that don't fit their preferred narratives.

#Fridaydeepdive 💻: This week PIK Director Ottmar Edenhofer was kindly invited to present a lecture at the Oxford Martin School on carbon dioxide removal as a 'third pillar' for climate action. Tune in to watch the lecture and QnA in full. www.youtube.com/live/c0omzp_...

After a few months/year and a half of quite difficult news for offshore from around Europe (Hornsea 4 cancelled, auctions without bids in Germany and Denmark, etc), this is fantastic news and shows the industry is still alive and kicking - despite rising costs!

Which economy is more productive - Germany or the US? It seems the answer would be clear, but it's not. The mood in Germany is so deeply negative, even aggressively pessimistic, that I thought we had fallen behind by a lot. But here are the facts - they surprised me as well:

This chart documents one of humanity’s greatest achievements, in my view. We just lived through the fastest population growth in human history. It would have been impressive if food supplies had merely kept pace — but on every continent, they grew even faster than the population.

1 Jahr Citymaut in New York: 11% weniger Verkehr, Kaufkraft ist NICHT zurückgegangen (die Leute kommen jetzt öffentlich), massive Mehreinnahmen für den öffentlichen Verkehr. Autoverkehr fließt 4,5% schneller, öffentliche Busse fahren 2,5% schneller.

Fantastic thread!

"In 2004, it took the world a full year to install 1 gigawatt of solar power capacity. Today, twice that amount goes online each day."

Im niedersächsischen Mehrum ist eine einzigartige Anlage zur Netzstabilisierung in Betrieb gegangen, die Stabilität ohne fossile Grundlast sichert. "Niemand hat zuvor ein superkondensatorbetriebenes Statcom gebaut. Das setzt Maßstäbe für die globale Energiewende.“ www.pv-magazine.de/2025/12/10/w...

Shiny for R v1.12 is here with built-in OpenTelemetry support! 🎉 Trace sessions and reactive calculations in production with zero code changes. Just install {otel}/{otelsdk} and set your env vars. Learn more: shiny.posit.co/blog/posts/s... #RStats #RShiny #OpenTelemetry

We love to say "costs fall X% every time capacity doubles." This paper looks at 87 technologies and says: actually, no. Past learning rates are not reliable predictors of future learning.

"Studies have shown that long-distance electric ships with up to 5,000 km of range can be successfully utilized using today’s battery capabilities, without significant weight and volume." cleantechnica.com/2025/12/05/c...

🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨 Many things are changing before our eyes. Others are harder to see Like the US economy Americans are spending more 💲 recovering from disasters and preparing for the next one. 36% of US GDP growth since 2000 is related to climate disasters. Welcome to the Disaster Industrial Complex 🎁🔗

PyPSA v1.0 is officially here - 10 years and 2 days since the first git commit. This milestone release brings major new features, completely new documentation, and a fresh landing page - congratulations to all the PyPSA team! 🎉 🔗 New Documentation: docs.pypsa.org 🔗 New Landing Page: pypsa.org

💰👇 Who really decides where federal money goes? A new study uncovers how seats on the Bundestag’s budget committee can make all the difference. 📑 Anina Harter @hertieschool.bsky.social 🔗 berlinschoolofeconomics.de/about-us/new... #politicaleconomy #publicspending

Useful comparison

Läuft noch nicht so mit der Digitalisierung am Amt in Österreich...

🚨 Big News! Die Förderung für den Ersatz von Öl- und Gasheizungen kommt wieder! Maximale Bundesförderungen für Ein-/Zweifamilienhaus: 🌡️ Fernwärme: 6.500 € ♨️ Wärmepumpe: 7.500 € 🪵 Biomasse: 8.500 € Zusatzboni für Solarthermie (2.500 €) und Tiefenbohrung bei Erdwärmepumpen (5.000 €). /1

"Spain’s rapid renewables build-out means its power prices were set by fossil generation just 19% of the time, down from 75% in 2019. As a result, wholesale electricity was almost a third cheaper than the EU average" Imagine having cheaper power Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

my takeaway from climate week nyc is that "climate storytelling" is a little too much "we must reimagine our deepest souls in relationship to mother nature and the moral abyss of the polycrisis into which we must now stare" and not enough "ok but get a heat pump"

Was Hannah Arendt sagte über die deutsche Gesellschaft, die sich dem #Rechtsextremismus der Nazis ergeben hatte.

This is a direct result of EU's carbon tariffs. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

In the lead up to the Overshoot Conference @iiasa.ac.at Sep 30-Oct 2, the organizers had a fantastic nerdy idea to get the leading experts in their fields share their perspectives on the key themes. Highly recommend for your daily commute, background to cooking etc.: open.spotify.com/show/5MpXqh1...

Yay, finally able to save posts in #bsky - thanks @bsky.app ❤️

Achtung. Laut MSN ist es heute dezent kalt in Wien

This paper synthesizes both successes and challenges in the implementation of renewable energy auctions. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🧐

To borrow another example, taken from the `dbreg` README: github.com/grantmcdermo... Here I am running a fixed-effects regression on 180 million(!) row parquet dataset... and it completes **< 2 seconds**... on my laptop 🤯 This is powered by @duckdb.org under the hood. #rstats #econsky

BNetzA: Statistik zur Stromerzeugungsleistung ausgewählter erneuerbarer Energieträger – Juli 2025 [Stand 13. Aug. 2025] www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachtheme... www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Fachtheme...

Not sure how many scientists here have tried Claude Code or similar command line coding assistants. I had a complicated family property tax problem that was best solved by a brute force Monte Carlo simulation approach, so I spent a few days coding up and analyzing a model with Claude Code.

Only a couple days left to register to the Tilburg Replication Games on August 21. Virtual participation is possible and coauthorship to a meta paper is granted. Register here: www.surveymonkey.ca/r/Replicatio...

"MASSIVE SLOWDOWN IN CHINA'S SOLAR IN JUNE" Context:😶😂