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December 20, 2024
Did the Courts Just Nuke Environmental Review?
Description AEI fellows James W. Coleman and Adam J. White join Santi Ruiz of the Institute for Progress and Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan Law School to discuss two court cases that could have huge ramifications for how we build things in America.
December 19, 2024
Economics of Grid Defection III
The discussion of grid defection has reemerged with the changes in the technical capabilities of distributed resources, the growth of data center demand, and questions about whether utilities are up to the task of being nimble enough to adapt to these fast-changing circumstances. In parts I and II of this series I discussed the 2014…
December 17, 2024
Economics of Grid Defection II
Last week I wrote about the grid defection discussion circa 2014, motivated by Elisa Wood’s webinar with Seyyed Ali Sadat and Joshua Pearce of Western Ontario University on their new paper in Solar Energy. Let’s pick up the story from 2014 and discuss the research leading up to their paper. Evolution of the Research In the ensuing…
December 16, 2024
How to Get Rid of a Tenured Professor
I am the answer to a trivia question. Who is the only person to appear in the leaked 2009 Climategate emails and in the 2016 Hillary Clinton Wikileaks emails? That’d be me. At the time, in both cases the leaks revealed efforts to censor my research and damage my career. In both cases I thought…
December 12, 2024
Economics of Grid Defection I
Yesterday Elisa Wood hosted a webinar with Seyyed Ali Sadat and Joshua Pearce of Western Ontario University, who have a new paper: The threat of economic grid defection in the US with solar photovoltaic, battery and generator hybrid systems(Solar Energy, November 2024). Grid defection occurs when electricity customers generate and store enough power locally to become fully self-sufficient…
December 3, 2024
Message from Voters: Remove Politicized Constraints on Fossil Energy Production
On Election Day, voters delivered at least one clear message: Remove the policy roadblocks standing in the way of greater fossil energy production, American oil and natural gas in particular. The reason is obvious: The efficient production of more fossil energy yields huge economic benefits for millions of working Americans and for the productivity of…
November 19, 2024
Energy Realism and Climate Pragmatism at the Department of Energy
He’s a climate denier! That is the standard reaction of many in the climate lobby when encountering views on climate and energy deviating from the monomaniacal view that climate is the world’s single-most important issue. Reactions from climate advocates to the nomination of Chris Wright,1 CEO of Liberty Energy, to serve in Donald Trump’s cabinet as Secretary…
November 15, 2024
Should State Laws Determine National Energy and Climate Policies?
Opponents of fossil fuels claim to oppose pollution, but they are all too happy to pollute our legal and constitutional institutions in pursuit of their climate-policy agenda. The latest manifestation of this trend is a litigation campaign against fossil-energy producers in state courts under state laws, alleging that the energy producers “knew” decades ago that…
November 12, 2024
A Memo for Trump’s Energy Czar
Last week, the Financial Times reported that President-elect Donald Trump is considering appointing an “energy czar,” described as: The new energy tsar role and its powers are not yet finalised, but people familiar with the plans said it would co-ordinate Trump’s deregulatory agenda across a patchwork of agencies including the Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Federal Energy Regulatory…
November 7, 2024
History of Technology: Cheaper, Cleaner, Easier
Every fall since 2020 I have been teaching energy economics in Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) program. I team teach with my friend Mark Witte, and my part of the course is backloaded—natural monopoly theory and regulation in theory and in history, new generation technology invention and adoption, wholesale power markets, digitalization…