Emily Grubert

ya -- important aspect for sure

BUT WHERE WOULD WE PUT THE STREETCARS

A streetcar rail and street paving bricks are visible alongside a bus lane on asphalt street in two potholes

some good streetcar rail action in the potholes today

Thank you! I'm kind of obsessed with the idea that that last producer might be the low volume, expensive marginal cost one (because low volume becomes more important than cost) -- but we're trying to get some meat on this in very concrete settings

Thank you!

I dont want to use my one precious life to talk to the ai in my air fryer

The fate of fossil fuel systems in the "mid-transition" I talk with Emily Grubert about the hidden dangers of letting the free market manage the decline of our legacy energy infrastructure.

thanks to @volts.wtf for having me on to talk about coordinating and planning fossil phase out to build a better and actually decarbonized world. there‘s a lot we can do if we imagine a people-centered, service oriented future — and a LOT we miss if we don’t.

It must change because the real-world is ripe for fossil fuel industries to exploit a very real fear Americans have - based on our past history! - about societal abandonment. They talked about many good cases of this. Fossil fuel companies exploit this fear, and have limitless resources to do so.

Most of the direction for climate has come from modelers who, on average, are not dealing in the real world where forecasts of prices and flows of physical goods meet the actual physical systems carrying them meet the real world and real people who live around those systems. This should change.

danny it is your fault I am the way I am

You are far, far too kind 🙏

No shit tho I actually was just thinking a few days ago I could use your advice on something (spoiler: generating equipment inventories from satellite images) — will bug you at some point if you’re down?

Minimum viable scale lol

(No but really)

(Some folks think if this happens it might never come back)

(Lake Mead too)

FOR EXAMPLE

see also: basically no one treats state law as law

I think also sometimes too much physical science! Not that we don’t need any but I think we overcommit on “can we estimate cloud cover scenarios in 2050” vs “do we think it would be useful to have a risk factor for someone blowing up a pipeline“ sometimes

IMO it’s a decision support tool that needs to be informed by science but a lot of what’s out there is maybe informed primarily by the wrong disciplines of science to be useful for what it’s used for

Omg this has been my rant about capacity expansion papers since ca. 2019, yes

Episode 27: Managing the Decline of Fossil Fuels with Emily Grubert and Joshua Lappen Podcast Episode · The Rift · 02/15/2026 · 55m

the recording of today's episode of THE RIFT is now online, in which @gruberte.bsky.social and @jlappen1.bsky.social deliver a fascinating conversation on their new paper, what getting off of fossil fuels actually entails, and the hard work of energy transition: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

In any case I’d rather see the prioritization done separately from making individuals opt in to incentives, especially bc poorer people respond more to incentives and are likely taking higher risks. But understand you might view my view of regulatory solutions as a form of DSM!

The thermostat thing in particular I think is too often divorced from the context that when heat / cooling is running flat out it might very well not be keeping up with the set point

There are edge cases obviously but the absolute peak loads the grid needs to be built for tend to coincide with periods when demand is pretty inelastic in a fully electrified system. The third very hot day and night in a row, the third very cold day and night in a row, that kind of thing

I really need these headlines to stop being like IT’S ILLEGAL TO REGULATE GHGS NOW instead of what’s actually going on, which is that we’re no longer required to consider them in scope of a 56 year old law that didn’t contemplate climate change as an issue

I get that — many different focuses turn out to be too urgent!

I think what I’m concerned about is whether this remains true under full electrification, and whether the concessions needed to allow for residential DSM are worth it in the long run case where the emissions and use profiles are very different

Yeah like in practice we know that the times the grid is actually stressed are the times people can’t do DSM safely

Genuinely if the next big politics push we have on climate is just overturning this and continuing to do nothing rather than, I don’t know, passing a law I‘m going to need to take some time off

Another banger of a thread from isaac

Perhaps we could realize that for the most part people aren't actively going out of their way to blow through massive amounts of electricity and simply...have efficiency requirements and give people the energy we use?

it is so infuriating how long this has been obvious and how poeple just refuse to see it. the number of NSF grant reviews (lol) that I have written that are like "this project is deeply unethical and probably actively dangerous to its participants" is way too fucking high.

It has been my nonwhite and queer friends who are the only ones who think about this with me. Everyone else has said this line of thinking is an overreaction.

More people of conscience who work on the grid have to join in, now that the stakes are so obvious.

yuuuup

a map image

You can see in this image nicely how the gas plant is situated across the state line for weaker environmental protections

Absolutely unmitigated cruelty to this community - and all to power software designed to be corrosive and cruel itself

floodlightnews.org/thermal-dron...