And we recommend broader changes in the understanding among policymakers and technocrats of what economic analysis is for.

We highlight some key specific barriers, like the outdated (and inexcusable) continued reliance of Kaldor-Hicks benefit-cost analysis.

Thanks to the @rooseveltinstitute.org for publishing my essay with @hboushey.bsky.social that describes why the federal government has failed to usefully incorporate climate change and the energy transition into economic modeling, based on our experiences at the White House 🧵

What can oil-reliant communities learn from the OG oil community, Titusville and the surrounding Oil Region in Pennsylvania?

With most industries journalists know not to pass along advocates’ propaganda as fact but for whatever reason this happens all the time with energy efficiency (EE programs are sometimes expensive and sometimes cheap)

Wild symptom of a broken epistemic environment: in 2015 the evidence showed the Clean Power Plan to be a weak, inexpensive regulation. But climate opponents said it would have huge costs, and climate advocates said it would have huge benefits. And the Chief Justice was fooled.

One point from our new blog: the GWP metric is supposed to put CO₂ and methane on equal footing, but GWP-20 does this by counting 80% of methane's lifetime climate impact against less than 10% of CO₂'s

And, the key takeaways from their deep decarbonization policy lecture. Thoughts?

Red alert @paulkelleher.net

Also, Trump-era reversals. OBBBA rescinded programs, federal agencies have canceled funding for largescale projects in CCS/H2/etc., and proposed budget cuts threaten others. This table shows efforts designed to help these communities get grants and implement them effectively.

1. Unprecedented funding. The fed government is uniquely positioned to support local efforts to build resilience before/when major industries leave. Programs of the early 2020s (see table) authorized support for fossil fuel–reliant regions at a scale that dwarfs prior efforts.

At the end of a 2 hour lecture on technologies for deep decarbonization (polices are next week) I left my students with these 5 takeaways. Thoughts?

...this basic claim here about the limits of our capabilities. That may be because it's the direct implication of other claims that are simply considered common sense, like our inability to foresee how technologies will evolve or how climate threats will cascade over centuries (2/x)

The core critique is in that same paragraph

Combined, cap-and-trade emissions permits and the RPS credits cost a typical household about $10-$15 per month. The price signal from the emissions permits is effectively doing nothing to reduce emissions due to context in which the program operates.

In contrast, rooftop solar is expensive. Per kilowatt hour of electricity, rooftop solar in CT is compensated at rates around three times higher than grid-scale solar.

Trends on load growth mirror other parts of the country, mainly due to expectations about electrification (not data centers here). Demand actually fell ~13% over the past decade and is expected to grow by about the same amount in the next decade (tho highly uncertain)

You might think more population dense places should have lower electricity prices because they can spread the fixed charges of the grid across more customers. But there’s a pretty clear correlation between population density and higher prices among US states.

The lack of local fuel sources is huge. Prices (and emissions) spike each winter due to infrastructure constraints. Natural gas prices at CT power plants averaged $2.50 per thousand cubic feet last November, and over $14 in January

Retail electricity prices in CT are ~2x those in PA, and not for any single reason. Generation, transmission, distribution, ratepayer-funded policies -- they all contribute to high prices in CT

Here's a few things I learned digging into electricity affordability and decarbonization in Connecticut 🧵

I was lucky to part of this amazing group exploring Oklahoma's plans for future economic resilience given its heavy reliance on the oil and gas industry. Here's our summary report (1/3) cdn.prod.website-files.com/65f9f863036e...

Seems like energycommunities.gov, which provided resources to help enable economic revitalization in fossil fuel dependent communities, has been taken down by DOE

OIRA is justifying its unreasonable guidance to (effectively) ignore climate damages in regulatory decisions using this fairly reasonable critique of social cost of carbon estimates

For lawyers: is "nonaquiescence" just a fancy way to say ignore court rulings? www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Nailed it. And we've created the Resilient Energy Economies initiative to help avoid repeating the mistakes of the China Shock with the inevitable shocks caused by an energy transition.

This terrific new book explains in painstaking detail why EPA's social cost of carbon estimate is not a policy relevant metric

I spoke with @jtemple.bsky.social before the tariff announcement so I probably wasn't pessimistic enough here www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/03/1...

Today I'll be more provocative. If we put meaningless modeling results into reports like IPCCs and position them as scientific findings, how can we expect people to trust the other findings, that are based on very good science, in these same reports? rdcu.be/ecSMX

Terrific working paper on place-based policies. I can't remember the last time I learned so much from a single paper. And a great point here: www.nber.org/system/files...