I don't think I'd ever heard about this 1989 dam failure near St. George, Utah. Thanks, @erinalberty.bsky.social ! www.axios.com/local/salt-l...

I'm glad they're taking some steps to help the lake, but this article by @leialarsen.bsky.social really oughta mention that Gov Cox is an alfalfa farmer. When he says CA should build nukes to run desalination plants to free up more water for Utah, he means more water to put on his alfalfa fields.

Going to work on an update to my annual solar opinions thread over the next few weeks, when the baby isn't complaining to management. Any particular topics you'd like me to comment on? No promises, but I'll consider questions.

The reason to phase out fossil fuels is their emissions—not their "inefficiency" according to some arbitrary physics definition. Efficiency comparisons help us choose between different technologies for exploiting a *given* resource. Lower "efficiency" is not a reason to leave a resource unused. 🔌💡

In celebration of Sun Day, here are some photos of Utah's largest solar farm, >600MW, called Faraday. It should be online by now or very soon (promised Q3 2025). Still waiting for it to appear in EIA's list of power plants. Another 700MW of new solar is coming online in Emery County in 2025-26.

Big if true! 🔌💡

The US version of this book won't be out until next March but I couldn't wait and ordered it here: blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro... Feels a bit illicit but I think it's actually legal! And affordable, though it won't arrive for a couple weeks.

"Who knows were science will flourish most highly a hundred years from now? Perhaps in Japan; perhaps in China. We know nothing about these things.” Niels Bohr in 1933 after hearing it suggested that US science would reign supreme in a few years.

This week, @MLiebreich talks to @hannahritchie.bsky.social about her new book 'Clearing the Air', busting 50 climate myths and digging into what really works (and what doesn’t). Out now 🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=voLb...

I’m in Delta, Utah, this week, doing a story on California’s last coal plant. It’s been one of L.A.’s largest electricity sources for 40 years, and under CA law it needs to shut down by the end of 2025. Gas and green hydrogen to come.

In 1976, after Southern California Edison announced the withdrawal of plans for the largest coal fired power plant in the USA atop of the biggest undeveloped southwestern coal deposit, some people in Kanab, Utah burned an effigy of Robert Redford who was part of the coalition opposing the project.

Solar panels now cost peanuts (under 10 cents per W) in most of the world. Carbon dioxide emissions in high-income countries are now falling, and there's reason to believe other countries will be able to develop much more sustainably than those did. ourworldindata.org/grapher/annu...

Is there a hell of a lot of work to do to keep the planet habitable? Yes. Is there at least a believable pathway for doing this now? Yes, and I'm not sure there was 20 years ago, when I would not have believed accurate forecasts on the rise of solar and electric vehicles.

Great thread on the uncertainties in where China's electric power sector is headed.

Death, taxes and Chinese domination of the global clean tech market.

The #PragmaticClimateReset is a two part-essay calling for a reset in our approach to climate action. Part I shows why narratives trumpeting the failure of efforts to date are wrong. Part II says that, nevertheless, the climate community now needs to change its approach. 1/n

Death, taxes, and solar growing to 25% of world electricity generation.

Just learned that Peter Scott, prof. emeritus of physics at UCSC, died last Oct. at 91. In the 1970s he and William Burke wrote an unpublished text booklet called Special Relativity Primer. I got my hands on a copy in 1981 and couldn't put it down. RIP. #iTeachPhysics web.archive.org/web/20250504...

Some of this is too specialized and technical for me to have an informed opinion. But all of it seems worth considering, and much of it seems quite sensible and correct. Read it! 🔌💡

My state senator was once president of the university where I teach. Soon after she voted to mandate that Utah public colleges allow guns at all campus venues, I asked her whether there could be exceptions to protect the free speech rights of high-profile speakers. She said absolutely not.

Here are 10 provocations on climate and energy. Tell me if you agree, disagree or have a nuanced take. Drop your own provocations in reply or quote post. Start: 1. By 2030, the use of air conditioning will lead to greater increase in electricity demand than data centers. And it's not even close!

With only four months of the year still to report, I estimate that 2025 will be either the second (~33% chance) or third (~66% chance) warmest year on record. There is effectively zero chance that it will set a new record or be lower than the third warmest at this point.

I hope enhanced geothermal pans out but it'll be at least another decade before we have any idea whether they can keep the "low-cost" promise or the "almost anywhere" promise. Meanwhile we need to build build build wind+solar+batteries+transmission.

Look on the bright side. The second half of what he says is correct!

Global solar capacity installations are up 64% in the first half of 2025 over 2024. Global installations in 2025 reached 380 GW as of June. The pace in the second half of the year might slow down somewhat, but we're still on track to eclipse 2024 by a lot.

In this piece for Aeon, I argue that, while nanotechnology is now a very real and mature field, a popular early vision of it was an example of what I am calling an "oneiric technology": a fantasy of the sort that Silicon Valley loves. aeon.co/essays/no-su...

A website that lets you select a country or state and move it around a Mercator projection map to yield better size comparisons. thetruesize.com, created by James Talmage and Damon Maneice

🧐

Will solar generation overtake wind before or after wind overtakes nuclear? 🔌💡

"What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role of 'measurer'? Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system...with a Ph.D.?"

Nice list of housing reforms from @ebwhamilton.bsky.social and others in this new report. Ironic that Utah's governor and his housing guy have their names on this report when they've helped undo one of these reforms in the city where I live.

"Operation Gigawatt is about adding capacity from diverse sources—nuclear, natural gas, geothermal and more—so families and businesses have power that is affordable, reliable and clean." As usual, "clean" means whatever sources he likes. And he still can't bring himself to say the word "solar". 🔌💡

It's just an MOU, but TerraPower is a serious company so we should probably pay more attention to this one than to some of Utah's other nuclear-related MOUs. The big questions, though, are the same: When could this actually happen, and who would buy the power?

Unsurprisingly, @tednordhaus.bsky.social doesn't like @billmckibben.bsky.social 's new book. FWIW I agree with most of TN's detailed criticisms. The book is packed with misleading factoids. Yet I think McKibben's broad take on solar is the more correct one. 🔌💡 www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

2.5 Now happening to Revolution Wind by Rhode Island www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/c...

This is progress. (Though some of it is driven by a slowdown in construction. And in the past, emissions from the power sector have been substantially determined by rainfall and therefore hydro generation over the summer in southern provinces).

@nicolasfulghum.bsky.social did the US electricity data explorer just break? When I try to load it, the chart and controls blink into place for less then a second, then vanish, leaving a blank white space.

Two strikingly different statements in corresponding passages of @billmckibben.bsky.social 's new book and last month's New Yorker article drawn from it. The claim in the book is probably correct but not so notable. The claim in the article is startling but, I think, incorrect. 🔌💡

Good summary of peak oil demand projections from six different sources, and the current dispute between IEA and the Trump Administration (gift link). 🔌💡 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/c...

This is nuts. The US Forest Service doesn't provide firefighters with masks or warn them about long-term health impacts. There was no tracking of health impacts until 2023 and now Trump's CDC layoffs have disrupted the tracking program. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/u...

Now that the guidance from Treasury is out can we talk about the 1.5 MW threshold? There are 450,000 flat, open, sunny roofs of medium and large warehouses and distribution centers are perfect locations for solar panels with almost 16.4 billion square feet of rooftop space.

How dispatchable is hydropower? It depends. New York and California generate about the same amount of hydropower on average. But in California it's subject to big seasonal swings and multi-year drought cycles. 🔌💡

Did some hiking in Colorado last week.

🤯 #physics

This photo isn't recent but it tells a story. My late father, a retired Lutheran minister, moved to DC at age 80 and spent 13 happy years there, living in a senior residence near Thomas Circle, with no need for a car. He walked far and wide and was treated with kindness everywhere he went.

Quite a mixture of insight and misdirection in this article. Geothermal currently provides 0.4% of US electricity, not 1%. Its future is still a big question mark. Even if it does scale up to 12 projects/year, at a typical 50MW that'd be just 0.6 GW. And the big holdup is cost—not permitting.

I found one paragraph of @billmckibben.bsky.social 's recent New Yorker book excerpt so astonishing that I couldn't resist digging into the numbers. Solar really is soaring! But how fast, exactly? especiallyfuture.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-...

Peak oil!

I guess we could argue over which is worse: building clean energy tech without trying to shut down the dirty stuff, or campaigning against fossil fuels without building anything to replace them. Isn't it obvious that we need both, and abstract pronouncements won't solve the tricky timing problem?

Comparing land used for producing solar power w/land used for generating power from *already mined fossil fuels* is like comparing the time it takes to earn $100 at work w/the time it takes to get $100 out of an ATM. Farcical. www.doi.gov//document-li...