@eriknordman.bsky.social
Director, Institute of Public Utilities @ Michigan State University & Associate Professor of Agricultural, Food, & Resource Economics • Author: The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom • Fulbrighter (Kenya) • #EnergySky • Views my own
SCOOP: Alabama might be the first state to ever ban new solar farms.
Why? People are upset about a gigantic solar project that would power a Meta data center.
Turns out when you tie solar to data centers, it can quickly become less popular!
IPU's Grid School 1: Engineering, Economics, and Modeling Fundamentals is in the books! Many thanks to all our attendees and our expert instructors including Nat Zorach, AICP, MBA, Rabab Haider, Omid Beik, Seth Blumsack, Mohammed Ben-Idris, Yansong Pei, & Rob Homer.
www.canr.msu.edu/ipu/programs/
For me, this is one of those "I've been working on this for years and they just said it out loud" situations. Well, thinking about for a few months with the intention of writing something, but still.
So, we are going to regulate your company like a utility, right?
"The new enclosures"
'Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism that “a mixture of gullibility and cynicism is prevalent in all ranks of totalitarian movements... the whole hierarchical structure of totalitarian movements... could be described in terms of a varying mixture of gullibility and cynicism.”'
DNR director: Consumers hydro deal ‘a recipe for us to manage’ dams
#EnergySky 🔌💡
www.mlive.com/environment/...
Corpus Christi was already low on water when it invited water-guzzling fossil-fuel industries to take whatever it had left. It’s a familiar example of exactly how not to prepare for a hotter world
Gift link to my column for @opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
"In the past several months, Nevin sought to prohibit fluoride in the drinking water, made it easier to opt out of children’s vaccines, removed health care services from school clinics and pushed a county ordinance that declared solar farms a possible 'threat to public health.'"
As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy
There's a new hot bird in town! And it's the first time NYC has ever seen a trumpeter swan, in recorded history (after it came back from the brink of extinction). In the last week, it's been spotted frequently hanging out with one of our mute swans 👀
hellgatenyc.com/behold-nycs-...
There's been a lot of talk of data centers in Michigan, but it is nothing compared to many other states. We are way down this list at #36.
Learn about Michigan's salamanders in our new Extension article!
Mighty, moist, and mysterious: Meet Michigan's salamanders (Learn what the "eft" is up with the Eastern newt!)
www.canr.msu.edu/news/mighty-...
“'Michigan is actually going to be one of the leading states for new solar over the next couple of years,' he said, with more than 3,600 new megawatts in the pipeline and scheduled to come online by 2028. That total 'is the largest of any state in MISO.'” #EnergySky🔌💡
www.wkar.org/wkar-news/20...
It would be one history‘s great plot twists if Trump has now managed to alert the entire world to why they should transition away from single-use fossils to renewables as quickly as any possible - even while having dismissed global warming.
And Hormuz isn‘t even Asia‘s biggest risk.
Intersecting crises - water, oil, climate, governance - as Corpus Christi faces dwindling water supplies.
#EnergySky 🔌💡 #WaterSky
In Environmental and Resource Economics for March: nations incur losses if they tackle climate change in a non-cooperative and self-interested manner. Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig revisit scope for global cooperation when countries are not completely self-interested. #EAERE
Chicago goes batshit over our Piping Plovers: @chicagopiping.bsky.social
Interrupting your doom scroll to say THE FIRST PIPING PLOVER OF THE SEASON HAS ARRIVED IN MAINE
💯 They call their fossil fuel policy "energy dominance" for a reason. And that framing extends well beyond energy.
Trump asked tech leaders to sign a unenforceable pledge to protect ratepayers from data center power costs. Is it a genuine promise — or just “PR help”?
The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handy.
Completely absurd humor from the writer of SNL's "Deep Thoughts" and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
Must read and if I may add not calling out manifest law breaches has many unintended consequences.
""for the companies well-positioned to make the most of suddenly rising natural gas prices, “it’s a gold rush,” Williams-Derry said. “I’ve often described the oil and gas industry’s financial strategy as ‘pray for war,’” he said. “That is how they make money.”"
insideclimatenews.org/news/0503202...
Infra requires lots of cash and long time horizons. But we're in what seems like a suboptimal equilibrium where we have rlly cool pilots with no cash run by people with shorter time horizons, and the US infra planning ecosystem (really, the lack thereof) has no incentive or mandate to scale them up.
Corporate innovation, as best as I can tell, only happens when federal policy or extreme competition forces the quick depreciation of your existing capital stock and forces you to compete on quality. Hard to engineer this.
I am slowly working on a thesis for why the US is dogshit at scaling up cleantech and, frankly, I think it's going to make nobody happy??
Meanwhile, Spain's massive investment in renewables is paying dividends now: with prices for Spanish industry and consumers low and stable compared with other European economies.
www.ft.com/content/ac77...
