There's a literature in political economy on bureaucratic rigidity and the pacing problem. Classic work here comes from Anthony Downs, and it's striking how relevant his bureaucracy life cycle model is to electricity regulation. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/the-rigidi...

CBO's new long-term budget outlook. It's...not good. Record debt, record deficits, record interest. Debt spiral (interest outpacing GDP growth) begins in 2045. www.crfb.org/papers/analy...

Half of all new US EV registrations, 2012–2023, went to the top 10 percent most Democratic counties, from Lucas W. Davis, Jing Li, and Katalin Springel https://www.nber.org/papers/w33591

On this week's Boiling Point podcast, I moderate the Great Rooftop Solar Debate! The leader of CA's solar trade group and a UC Berkeley economist debate solar incentives, and things get intense. My attempts at finding common ground do not work. Listen in: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Growing demand for electricity and the adoption of renewables are transforming the U.S. grid. Join @nationalacademies.org for a webinar series to explore emerging challenges for the future electricity system, with a focus on improving subnational decision-making, innovation, and supply chains.📉📈 🔌💡

Innovation is the key to a clean and prosperous future. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/innovating...

#EnergySky friends, we are releasing a set of papers today outlining how #SurplusInterconnection can unlock GW of new resources. Surplus is a way to plug wind and solar into existing thermal plants. Check out our papers, along with a cool interactive dashboard, here: www.scarcitytosurplus.com

Power systems are transforming—but outdated regulations are holding back innovation. 📢 Innovating Future Power Systems: From Vision to Action explores how to drive a clean, reliable, and consumer-driven energy future. 🔹 Read the full report: www.aei.org/research-pro...

crazy good and detailed explanation of the transmission problems we face here in the good old U.S.A....

If electricity transmission is so important, why is it so hard to build? 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/regional-t...

If there is any doubt that tariffs are passed through to consumers, the cost of propane to heat my house just went up by the amount of the tariff

Modern supply chains don't look like trade theory 101! They involve constant border crossings, each now hit by tariffs. Tariffs raise prices, but the more important thing they do is disrupt supply relationships. 1/

What could possibly go wrong, you ask? 😬

The combination of monopoly regulation and RTO governance creates perverse transmission investment incentives. A slight diversion from my RTO series to provide useful background to those new to electricity policy. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/regional-t...

Want to see what data center demand has done to power demand forecasts in just 12 months? Check out PJMs forecast for summer and winter peaks in 2025 compared to 2024. The difference between the 2032 forecast this year and last year is almost 40,000 MW. 🔌💡

I'm starting off 2025 by writing a series about RTOs as wholesale market platforms. Part II: institutional path dependence entrenches the governance power of incumbents. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/regional-t...

New at The Hill from my friend @sabineec.bsky.social thehill.com/opinion/fina...

Fueled partly by energy demand for AI, power utilities projected last year that electricity demand would grow FIVE times faster over the next five years compared to forecasts made two years ago. www.ciphernews.com/articles/dat... by @catclifford.bsky.social in Cipher News

I'm starting off 2025, a year when I'll write a lot about the role of markets and innovation in enabling our future power systems, by writing a series about RTOs as wholesale market platforms. Part I: economic history. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/regional-t...

In my second post on grid defection: Since 2014, has it become more feasible, and more likely? 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/economics-...

Long overdue super 🧵on why residential grid-interactive V2X is not (yet) a thing in the US. 1) Interconnection (IX) 2) Rate design 3) Vehicle capabilities & standards adoption #energysky

Elon’s ambitions should not serve as cover for Dems to abdicate responsibility for thinking seriously about government reform, says @pahlkadot.bsky.social "Let’s not pretend that change was going to come from Democrats if they’d only had another term." www.eatingpolicy.com/p/bringing-e...

A decade ago the talk of electricity policy was grid defection. The underlying economic concept: contestability. The first of a four-part series on grid defection's decade. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/economics-...

A lot of people still don’t realize that dramatic cost reductions in geothermal is something happening *right now*, not theoretically in the future. Here is a look at the cost numbers published by NREL every year for Deep Enhanced Geothermal. A 50% improvement in 2024 with a lot more to come.

The Management Singularity - LLMs aren't going to transform the Fate of Mankind but they will remake how big organizations work. www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-manage...

Climate advocates might feel hopeless with Pres-elect Trump returning to the WH. They shouldn’t. I wrote about how to make progress for NYT 1. Focus on innovation and industrial strategy 2. Be pragmatic about fossil fuels 3. Expand the interests that gain from decarbonization

US power demand now projected to grow by 128 GW by 2029! Last year, Grid Strategies broke the news that utilities and system operators had doubled their forecasts for electric demand growth from 2022 – a sudden jump driven by data centers and industrial load, among other factors.🧵 1/4 🔌💡

Brian Arthur’s theory of combinatorial innovation provides a framework for analyzing Brian Potter's history of lithium ion battery technology. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/recombinan...

A really insightful and informative essay on Elinor Ostrom's work on community self-governance in commons situations.

What do the antitrust people think about the Texas AG's lawsuit against the big asset managers for pressuring coal producers to reduce output, thus reducing competitive pressure www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Fascinating. Secondary literature (and presumably press reporting and social media) have been over-estimating the contribution of tyre wear to air pollution. Good news (though all that tyre rubber must still end up somewhere in the environment). pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thanks @pauldockery.bsky.social! I really enjoyed our conversation so, so much.

“Complexity is not the same as chaos”. There’s a nice chapter from Alice Calder in here that unpacks Ostrom’s idea of polycentricity. Public officials often think they need to tidy up institutions that seem messy - overlapping remits, etc. 1/2

Creating relevant quantities of high-quality is an early step to modernizing the electrical grid. Data + machine learning and computational power ='s augmented intelligence to support grid planners, operators, owners, and users. An article with accessible early examples tinyurl.com/yfpyf6nu

🧵 How did Texas interconnect ~70% more capacity than any US market btwn 2021-2023? The answer explains, in part, why 25 parties just filed w/ FERC supporting streamlined interconnection service (ERIS), with no clear opposition—signaling a promising area for bipartisan reform. (1/15) #EnergySky

AES sits in a unique position in the AI era. The company is one of the leading adopters of AI in the power sector, while also serving GWs of data center capacity. Stephen Lacey sits down with Chris Shelton, the chief product officer of AES: www.latitudemedia.com/news/aes-exe...

Hey @tnorris.bsky.social, how do I get added to your great data center energy use starter pack :-)? go.bsky.app/AsSqsfJ

Digital twins are the next step in the photovoltaic simulations. As I commented before here on Bluesky, we could have a total virtual immersion and proceed with any test, "see" failures, predict degradation with different scenarios etc Like a video game. 🎮 🔌💡 🧪

Yessss! Let's go PG&E. Headline mentions data centers, but early progress is on high-powered EV charging and FTM batteries. Flexible interconnection / service connection is the way. 🥰 #EnergySky www.latitudemedia.com/news/pg-e-is...

I started an economics of science and innovation starter pack, let me know who to add! go.bsky.app/HETnNr5

Using some economic history of technology to suggest the parallels between kerosene and natural gas. knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/history-of...

To kick off our NSF POSE grant, in July and August we did more than 60 interviews with a wide variety of energy data users, and we learned a lot, so we thought we'd share some of our high level takeaways. 🔌💡 🧵 catalyst.coop/2024/10/01/i...

This year's Institute for Regulatory Law & Economics Workshop for Regulators starts tomorrow. Here's my articulation of the intellectual framework that has made our workshop so highly valued for 20 years. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/the-instit...

Balancing data center electricity demand and corporate GHG targets is a challenge in such a complex context. This is not a new or unique challenge. Innovation and a focus on efficiency can manage tradeoffs. knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/data-cente...

Fascinating site to pan and zoom around in. "A large-scale research visualization exploring how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries."

I enjoyed this conversation so much! What a treat. Thanks to @pauldockery.bsky.social, Farhad, @conleighbyers.bsky.social, and Ahlmahz for inviting me.

In electricity, part of the current AI hype cycle is the justifiable concern that data centers will wreak havoc on the grid. The "make or buy" literature in transaction cost economics helps us understand why that may, or may not, happen. 📉📈 and 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/data-cente...

AI and its applications are booming which means data centers are proliferating, and they use a lot more electricity than their predecessors. This qualitative change is an unsettling challenge for the electricity industry and its regulators. 📉📈 🔌💡 knowledgeproblem.substack.com/p/data-cente...