I wrote a quick little blog this week between job interviews about the inevitable future of energy. Coal ain’t it.

Illustration by my friend Mary @gradsgonerogue.bsky.social

sites.google.com/view/grads-g...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package and the release of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-H) appropriations bill, which excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades. For nearly 60 years, CPB has carried out its Congressional mission to build and sustain a trusted public media system that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country. Through partnerships with local stations and producers, CPB has supported educational content, locally relevant journalism, emergency communications, cultural programming, and essential services for Americans in every community. “Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down operations after loss of federal funding:

Motherfucking wind farms…

Quantum efficiency - Wikipedia

My other favorite example at the opposite end of the spectrum are LEDs and solar PV modules which are both limited by the same solid state physics and are very close to realizing the thermodynamic limit. (LEDs are around 100 lumens/W which works out to ~20%)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum...

Example: an NVIDIA H100 consumes ~700W to flip ~3e16 bits per second at around 373K. From Landauer's principle this only requires ~1.2e-4W! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landaue...

And it gets even smaller when you consider the thermodynamic limit! As a physicist I like to always keep the thermo limit in mind to contextualize how energy could be saved by technological advancement. Computing is my favorite example where we are at least six orders of magnitude from the limit.

YouTube video by Road Less Marveled May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications

Needing Mr. Rogers energy these days. ❤️

youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA?...

Excellent political cartoon from

jaythurber.com/2025/07/17/h...

Internal Agency Memo Calls for Political Reviews of Solar, Wind Projects The widely circulating document lists more than 68 activities newly subject to upper-level review.

Huge: An internal Interior Department memo that I’ve reviewed shows the agency may soon subject *any* activities related to wind and solar to heightened levels of political review.

It threatens to delay renewables projects across the country, including those not on federal lands.

#greensky

“Energy Dominance”
what a joke

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/c...

During the Senate hearing last week for the EERE secretary nominee he bragged about his close relationship to a coal lobbyist. He also said we must stop using coal as a dirty word and then proceeded to explain how coal miners are heroes because of how horrific it is in coal mines.

Even if this is reversed by the next administration so much damage will have been done. We were finally as a nation gearing up to compete in the obvious future of energy production and consumption. Some of those investments will now move elsewhere, many will be lost entirely.

MethaneSAT Loses Contact with Satellite

This is extremely sad.

Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas, and it's notoriously tricky to track down its sources.

This satellite was a vital weapon in our arsenal. Without it, our defences are seriously compromised.

www.methanesat.org/project-upda...

Truly disgusting.
bsky.app/profile/lega...

It looks like they cannot be sent to Iran but SCOTUS has cleared the way to “deport” people to countries other than their own.

‘It Felt Like Kidnapping,’ Khalil Says in First Interview Since Release

Another American hero 🇺🇸
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/n...

Mahmoud Khalil is finally home with his beautiful wife and newborn son.

Each one of the 104 days he spent detained was a grave injustice.

From the moment of his detention, @ccrjustice.org + @aclu.org engaged my office as we worked closely to help secure his release. They did remarkable work here.

This is an American hero 🇺🇸

We have a constitutional obligation to provide oversight. To ASK QUESTIONS. And for our questions to be met with handcuffs is UNACCEPTABLE.

I’m hoping for a future where LCOE makes sense as a comparison across technologies with the advent of extremely cheap energy storage, grid forming inverters, load flexibility and improved interregional transmission. Perhaps load growth will outrun this dream…

This @energyinnovation.org report has some good info: energyinnovation.org/wp-content/u...

Power density and heat transfer are probably the real technical limiting factors for high temp resistive heating applications. I suspect clever engineering and process integration could overcome these but it's hard to make those investments when combustion is cheap.

I hear that 1,100C number a lot, I'm not sure where it came from. Simple nichrome heaters can provide ~1250C, molybdenum di-silicide can get you to ~1850C without an inert atmosphere. With an inert atmosphere tungsten gets you to ~2500C and graphite takes you all the way to ~3000C.

2. While it is true that a BESS cannot be simultaneously charged and discharged, this is no barrier to using it for firming power to a resistive heater. If you want to run the heater while also charging the battery you just need a grid connection with sufficient power to do both.

I want to point out two places where I'd change your framing.
1. Resistive heaters can easily supply heat over 3000C. This is the temperature where blackbody radiation produces white light, hence why tungsten filaments in lightbulbs are this temp. Oxidation is an issue but addressable.

This is a great summary! I'm managing a project at NREL to explore how wide deployment of TES for industrial heat will relate to VRE deployment as well as how it can compete with incumbent heat supply on cost. I'd be happy to chat with you about it.

(We are working with one of the authors here, Sarang Supekar, on the I-ATB)

Agreed! We have a couple projects in my
office at DOE to improve this situation. TES in a coupled industry/power sector capacity expansion model is my focus, but we also are working on an “industrial annual technology baseline” to establish a process for better industry cost data.

Transit Access An accessible resource to make public transit navigable for disabled people. | Check out 'Transit Access' on Indiegogo.

My friend Joel Chapman is working on an app/website to better track subway elevator status and make it easier for people to get accessible directions:
igg.me/at/transitac...

www.transitaccess.org

Haha I also get asked this question a lot. Now I’ll just send your post :)

Pedantic point: angular momentum conservation prevents Z->γγ

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landau%...

Chart of UK gas and power prices.

I keep being told that Net Zero is responsible for the surge in UK electricity prices. But then how did UK electricity prices drive up gas prices so sharply, because it's pretty clear the two correlate extremely closely. Can anyone help?
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why...