And solar in the US employs roughly 6 Broadways or 80 coal industries

lots to be constern'd about with AI, but i can't help thinking much of the labor consternation stems from the engineering tendency to model problems as min cost given fixed output vs the econ tendency max output given fixed input for more nuance see: substack.com/home/post/p-...

It is shocking (intended) to think what's going on here is that the world has other options besides oil, unlike in 1973. And that's why the price shock is 1/3 while the supply shock is 3x. Looking forward to your papers in 2029 :p

Average residential electricity rates compared to inflation. While prices for goods are surely downstream of energy costs, it is notable that inflation spiked first and rates followed. Gray are individual states, black is US average, blue is CPI.

A decade of average residential retail prices.

A decade of average monthly residential electricity prices ($/kWh). A figure that defies a simple story.

Truly fascinating. While BLM keeps wind permitting on ice, they’re giving a green light to geothermal on public lands. Is this the beginning of a new ideological split split? www.blm.gov/press-releas...

Some version of this point has been made for at least 20 years. And I guess economists still need to make it! The biofuel/renewables hokey pokey.

Spurious correlations, surely

Final EIA-860 is out, and 2025 really did it: 54 GW of new U.S. electric capacity, 96% clean. Solar again carries the offense, and we built more storage in 2025 than the cumulative total through 2023. More and more and more additions... but also record low retirements.

$7.4M per life may be wrong, but $0 is extra super wronger. Hard to square with Section 812 of the Clean Air Act which requires EPA to conduct scientifically reviewed CBA that includes "overall health, welfare, ecological, and economic benefits".

Mild take: 'Electrons' is simply a popular metaphor and that's fine 🤓 Electricity is profoundly unintuitive for most of us. Like water flowing through pipes is helpful, but wrong.

New in Nature Climate Change: @asawatten.bsky.social and I show how common marginal emissions methods can miss system effects and substitution. Using hourly, long-run modeling can materially alter emissions benefits, which we show for rooftop solar. Paper + summary 👇

🚨Oh hey @bistline.bsky.social and I have a short piece in Nature Climate Change out today. It's a response to a great study on global rooftop solar, but it's *really* about the misuse of marginal emissions rates. Something we've been thinking a lot about. #energysky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Good news / bad news on U.S. solar in the new LBNL report: • Utility-scale solar >50% of 2024 nameplate additions • But solar's average costs are up ~25% vs. 2022 Record build, rising costs. Two things can be true at once. emp.lbl.gov/utility-scal...

📢 Just launched: Our REGEN energy systems model is now open source! REGEN is a detailed and flexible energy systems modeling platform designed to explore a wide range of long-term scenarios. Check out the code, data, and documentation at the links below.

New Energy Institute Blog Post: Winners and Losers from Interregional Transmission - by Lucas Davis energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/04/07/w...

I’m for some things and against others

In the Energy Institute blog this week, Meredith Fowlie has an excellent explainer about what the IRA is really likely to cost per ton of GHG reduction based on a new paper from EPRI. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/a... #EnergySky

My working paper with @bistline.bsky.social is the subject of today's @ucenergyinstitute.bsky.social blog post by Meredith Fowlie. Honored! energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/a...

BTC is a computation treadmill. Jensen's paradox (⬆️efficiency=>⬆️demand) is weak for many things (cars, lights) bc demand is inelastic. Not so for crypto mining! Makes sense. Miners mine until marginal cost=marginal benefit. ⬆️eff=>⬇️mc=>⬆️mining=>⬇️mb. An EPRI brief: www.epri.com/research/pro...

It's important to cover all the bases

As expected, the Trump team is already deleting climate info from government websites. In anticipation, our team at Urban Ocean Lab created a permanent archive of 100+ key resources and published a permanent archive: www.urbanoceanlab.org/resource-hub 👩🏽‍💻

Check out my new working paper with amazing ND grad students Bill Kakenmaster and Ben Francis We show, among other things, that climate attribution among R House candidates depends on district-level climate vulnerability and fossil fuel employment reliance osf.io/preprints/os...

Waste of paint! Guernica has stopped exactly ZERO wars.

I like art. It makes me think and feel things. I don't expect single works to have measurable effects on opinions. But! In the case of don't look up it did (in a non-peer-reviewed RCT). Which is cool and leaves more questions..

I may be too literal

I didn’t realise BlueSky has no algorithm (so you see what’s actually there) - and that you can choose your own filters for feeds. This one’s lovely: people you follow but post infrequently, so it boosts quieter, interesting types. I’ve added it to my feeds and it’s great. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Are low-cost car rental companies just a scam to get folx to buy overpriced insurance? The hours of waiting in line, agents who disappear for 20 min in the middle of checking u out feel designed to wear u down when they threaten financial ruin. And u don't need it if u have almost any credit card.

Remember when Howard Dean ended his political career by making a weird noise

If any researchers need an IV for lack of confidence in government, may I suggest: time since jury duty summons..

Today at EIA, we released the Wholesale Electricity Market Portal: www.eia.gov/electricity/... It gathers hourly and sub-hourly electricity production, demand, interchange, and price data from seven U.S. electricity markets. It’s a great example of how we’re making data easier to access. 🔌💡

Thoughts after attending Yale Generative AI Sociology workshop today: Think researcher degrees of freedom is a problem now? Just you wait.

New paper at Regional Science and Urban Economics How is rooftop solar capitalized in home prices? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Here's a brief 🧵 🔌💡 📈📉

Look at all those electric trucks in TX!

I've seen some reporting in Texas on this, but agree it hasn't gotten a lot of air time. In this case, a crypto mine was paid over $30M by ERCOT to turn off, made under $9M in actual mining.

We're working on a grant to support grad students studying energy systems develop open data & software skills. We made a short survey help us understand their needs. If you're a student, we'd love if you'd respond. If you have students, would you share it with them? 🔌💡 forms.gle/eyG9ViWj4DAU...

Deja vu

Electric motorcycles!

When home heating prices are lower, fewer people die each winter, particularly in high-poverty communities. That's the punchline of my paper with Janjala Chirakijja and Pinchuan Ong on heating prices and mortality in the US, just published in the Economic Journal. 📉📈 academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...

#EconSky what are some good papers/who is thinking about EVs in India? I'm retrofitting an old motorcycle to electric and many of the youtube videos are retrofits in India. Highly polluting rickshaws and scooters seem like an obvious thing to electrify.

Cool to see 2 papers on technology change and climate come out in REEP today. More pls! First on ag, the second on adaptation. Moar pls! t.e2ma.net/click/l87lhn... t.e2ma.net/click/l87lhn... (Looks like @arielob.bsky.social is the only author on bsky)

Feeling called out

It is, er, awkward writing a DEI statement that will, statistically, be read mainly by White men. Imagining it is more awkward for applicants who are not white men themselves and don't want to alienate the hiring committee.

Idk. Whenever I've tried to improve my writing with GPT, I get back pleasant vague nonsense. Everything is "complex" or "subtle" or "intricate." Mb I'm doing it wrong?

See this is the problem with electrification. Where am I going to get the exogenous variation for my papers if not from swings in the global oil market?

People complaining about e-scooters littering public spaces obviously haven’t seen cars.

As I get ready to go on the job market, I have a new website design that I'm proud of. Tufte with a twist. asawatten.net

"I feel like the power and benefits of our current civilization are like two orders of magnitude greater than our ability to understand/forecast/control the consequences" -a thing a fried just said