July 10, 2025
The Science vs. the Narrative vs. the Voters: Clarifying the Public Debate Around Energy and Climate
Key Points Read the full report here. Download the crosstabs and topline here.
July 10, 2025
What Americans Really Think About Energy and Climate
Right before the 2024 election, my AEI colleague Ruy Teixeira and I engaged YouGov to conduct a survey of how Americans view various topics of energy and climate. Today at AEI, the full survey and our summary report is published, including the survey’s toplines and crosstabs (all are directly linked from the bottom of this post). Here are…
July 2, 2025
Cheerleading is Dumb Energy Policy
Any moment now, we will be releasing the full results of the AEI Energy/Climate Survey of the American public that my AEI colleague Ruy Teixeira and I conducted right before the election. The survey provides a fascinating snapshot of what Americans think about a wide range of climate and energy issues. Today, I share some what the…
June 26, 2025
When and How Markets Think for Themselves
Markets as Minds Man, it’s been hot this week, and hot all over. Heat waves are like petri dishes for observing power systems and electricity markets. Every evening, just after the Texas sun dips below the horizon, the electricity market does something remarkable. Prices jump, batteries discharge, gas turbines spin up, and lights remain on…
June 26, 2025
Trump Is Half Wrong and Half Right: Eliminating FEMA, The U.S. As a Common Currency Area, The Professional Bureaucracy, and The Separation of Powers
Read the full paper below.
June 20, 2025
The Invisible Price Tag of Yesterday’s Regulation
Two snapshots, one static institution In 1915, Kansas City Power & Light convinced regulators that stringing copper wires across the prairie would bring “abundant, cheap light for every home”. Today, a data center developer requesting 300 MW for a new facility is instructed to join a five-year interconnection queue. While the physical infrastructure has expanded…
June 16, 2025
The Most Amazing Climate Policy Figure
You’d be hard pressed to find a more fascinating straight line. The figure below is one of the most amazing graphs in all of climate policy.1 It shows the decarbonization of the U.S. economy from 1992 to 20252 — with decarbonization is defined as the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions (from fossil fuels) to GDP (in 2025$). I was…
May 29, 2025
Twenty‑Five Years of Lessons on Electricity Competition in the United States
Why the Electricity Competition Debate Just Flipped—Again In 1998 California’s Power Exchange wholesale power market went live, symbolizing the then-new impetus for efficiency through electricity markets. The promise then was disarmingly simple: generation prices that reflected actual costs, customer choice, and an information revolution that would make your toaster as smart as your telephone. California, Pennsylvania, New…
May 27, 2025
Taking Institutional Neutrality Seriously on Campus
In 2024, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called for colleges and universities to formally adopt institutional neutrality, defined as: “When a contested social issue arises that does not directly concern the academic mission of our college or university, institutional leadership will not issue a position statement on that issue. On…
May 14, 2025
The Future is Already Here Somewhere
One of the challenges, even for experts, in making sense of climate projections is that the scenarios underlying the projections are so complex as to be impenetrable without a lot of effort and expertise. Opaque assumptions make interpreting climate projections fraught with challenges and consequently, they are easily misinterpreted and misused. Today, I try to…