January 22, 2025
How Would Changes to Infrastructure Permitting Affect the US Economy?
Event Summary On January 21, AEI’s Michael R. Strain and James W. Coleman welcomed two panels of experts to discuss the policies and regulations for building physical infrastructure in the US. The first panel analyzed the trajectory for when new infrastructure building projects and permitting requirements such as environmental impact surveys will interact in terms…
January 21, 2025
California’s Insurance Crisis
Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2018, explained California’s growing insurance crisis in 2023: Due to the failure to substantially reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. and globally, we are marching steadily to an uninsurable future. Jones sentiment is widely shared — Climate change is causing more and more intense extreme events, which are…
January 13, 2025
EPA Should Reject California’s Locomotive Electrification Regulation
The California Air Resources Board last November requested from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a waiver under section 209(e) of the Clean Air Act for implementation of its “In-Use Locomotive Regulation,” an effort to electrify the cargo trains operating in California and therefore across the entire country. As of early January, EPA still has not acted, a…
January 12, 2025
The Collapse of Offshore Wind Power Is Only the Beginning
The “clean energy transition” — the wholesale replacement of conventional (for the most part fossil) energy with such unconventional technologies as wind and solar power — has been the raison d’être for great masses of the well-off living in comfort in Western economies for many years. And they now are grieving. Why? Because that transition, aided with…
January 10, 2025
Regional Transmission Organizations as Market Platforms I
2025 is already shaping up to be a year of change for many reasons related to the economics and technology of energy. Between the uncertainty arising from a political change in presidential administration and the dynamics of technological change in the economy, the only prediction I’d hazard is that change will happen. Some of these…
January 8, 2025
The Interests of the U.S. and the Honolulu Climate Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court
The Office of the Solicitor General — part of the Department of Justice —was created by the Statutory Authorization Act of June 22, 1870. The Act states that there shall be an officer “learned in the law,” to be called the Solicitor General, to assist the Attorney General in the performance of his or her duties. The…
December 23, 2024
Big Tech’s Data Centers Won’t Get Far Unless the Power Grid Is Regulated Less
The United States holds a commanding lead in data-center capacity, hosting 37% of the world’s facilities, and being home to the largest data center providers — Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Alphabet. These data centers are more than just infrastructure; they are the backbone of artificial intelligence (AI), driving innovations from personalized healthcare to automated supply chains. They are…
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…