Mark Interrante

Rev. James Martin on Our Moral Duty in Turbulent Times

Honored to be interviewed by the @nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/m...

California is off to another great start this year in terms of getting fossil fuels off their electricity grid.

Look at how much progress they have made over the last few years after starting to be able to put a massive amount of battery storage capacity on their grid:

Important analysis here from Ember. Compare dispatchable solar at $76/MWh (given these assumptions) to the most recent LCOE numbers from Lazard. At these price points, it's game over for thermal generation. (NB: combined cycle gas isn't particularly dispatchable)

OpenAI are quietly adopting skills, now available in ChatGPT and Codex CLI One of the things that most excited me about Anthropic’s new Skills mechanism back in October is how easy it looked for other platforms to implement. A skill is just …

OpenAI aren't talking about it yet, but it turns out they've adopted Anthropic's brilliant "skills" mechanism in a big way

Skills are now live in both ChatGPT and their Codex CLI tool, I wrote up some detailed notes on how they work so far here: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/12/...

Pic of Pontevedra from the air.

“It's not my duty as Mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me it's the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you're going to put them.” — Mayor of Pontevedra, Spain (re-elected 6 times)

Holy shit San Francisco!

60% of the city rezoned, most places exceeding (!!) SB 79. The most restrictive of these allows attached 4–8 story apt buildings with no cap on the # of homes inside, no parking mandates, and by-right streamlined approval.

Movement racking up the municipal wins today 🏆🏆🏆

Energy transitions can happen faster than we think:

In 2000 almost 90% of Denmark's electricity was from fossil fuels.

In 2024 less than 10% of Danish electricity was from fossil fuels.

Another way electric cars clean the air: study says brake dust reduced by 83% Exhaust isn't the only impact of cars, they also emit tiny brake particles. Thru regen braking, EVs reduce that (but bikes are even better!)

A new study has provided quantitative evidence underscoring how battery-electric vehicles reduce the amount of brake dust generated by 83%.
electrek.co/2025/05/27/a...

EVs Set to Displace 10mn b/d Oil by 2035 EVs set to displace 10mn b/d of oil by 2035 as electric vehicle adoption accelerates across global markets.

Given that 1.8 million barrels of oil per day are already being displaced by #EVs — before the real S-curve phase hits with 25% YoY growth — the writing’s on the wall. Every km on electrons is demand oil never gets back. No wonder the industry is panicking as it traverses a full-blown death spiral.

This person is at Harry Ransom center

Wind and solar covered all the growth this year

Congratulations to my UT Austin colleague Jason McLellan (@mclellanlab.bsky.social), who’s just received a well-deserved MacArthur Fellowship. His work has been instrumental in developing vaccines for RSV and COVID-19.

Some good news.

London is meeting legal limits for toxic NO2 pollution for the first time – almost 200 years earlier than predicted – following the Mayor’s "world leading air pollution policies," City Hall announces.

The Ultra Low Emissions Zone - and similar policies - really do work.

🚨 Big win for rooftop solar in Colorado: @colorado.gov just made instant permitting + fast, flexible interconnection a statewide priority.

That means more Coloradans powering up clean energy without the red tape. Other states: time to follow suit. ⚡
colorado.gov/governor/new...

How Skyrocketing Rents Are Forcing Your Favorite Restaurants to Close One thing we love to say here in the Observer food section: if you love a local bar/restaurant - go there.

Dallas has become a destination location for international concepts, leaving local restaurants in a lurch.

China's coal generation dropped from 62.7% in July 2023 to 55.1% in July 2025!

7.6 Point drop in two years!

Petrostate boosters hate that China is moving from coal to wind, solar, hydro and nuclear to generate their electricity.

EVs also were 55% of August 2025 auto sales.

#energysky

The air quality in Shanghai has been substantially improved over the past decade. Left: the medium-level haze event in 2013, right: the air is much more clear in 2025, although there is still air pollution.

In a new #ScienceReview, researchers discuss the latest understanding of secondary organic aerosol formation in urban China, providing a framework for identifying knowledge gaps and guiding future research into haze chemistry and pollution control strategies. https://scim.ag/3HCgNrX

6 2-story townhouses front wide-side (lots of light) to this French Quarter garden court, which sits on a quarter acre with the garden on only 1/10 acre. 24 units/acre looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Missing Middle Housing from before it went missing.

I wrote about how Imelda Padilla accidentally told the truth about what "local control" over land use policy actually means in practice: replacing actual planning with capricious, case-by-case decision making by elected officials.

www.maxdubler.com/blog/2025/8/...

Portland’s 2020 Residential Infill Project (RIP) opened most lots to middle housing, things like duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhomes and more.

The result?

1,400 new homes, typically priced ~$300K less than nearby single-family houses.

📍Portland, OR

Latest on the "stalling" shift to electric vehicles, EU edition

There are more apartments available under $1,500 in Austin than there are under $4,000 in NYC*

(*that are listed on Zillow)

How States and Cities Decimated Americans’ Lowest-Cost Housing Option Low-cost micro-units, often called single-room occupancies, or SROs, were once a reliable form of housing for the United States’ poorest residents of, and newcomers to, New York, Chicago, San Francisc...

a year after i finished this article about the history of single-room occupancy (SRO) units, it's exciting to see Pew finally publish it. If you're curious about SROs or "micro-units," have a read! www.pew.org/en/research-...

This year, we Sierra Club opposed sensible CEQA reform to get more dense, pro-climate and conservation-friendly infill housing built in existing communities. But don't worry, there's no need to change existing land use patterns: just buy every household an electric F-150.

YIMBY organizing would not have gotten very far over the past several years if advocates weren't earnestly committed to explaining complex and highly technical issues in land use to laypeople.

Solar panels in West Texas

🌞 Solar that never sleeps? It’s no longer a fantasy.
With today’s batteries, we can now deliver near-constant solar power, up to 97% of the time, at prices cheaper than coal or nuclear.
Here’s why that changes everything 🧵 1/9 👇

This is the real doom loop. It will change everything about life in the Bay Area Already one of the oldest parts of the U.S., the San Francisco metro area is aging faster than any other major region. It will change every aspect of our lives.

The “real doom loop” is the dramatic aging of the Bay Area. There aren’t enough kids or young people.

The reason? Housing, housing, housing — a profound housing shortage that’s pushing out young families & young people generally.

We need to build so many more homes. We’re working hard to do that.

Window Heat Pumps Could Change the Game A new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has some exciting data for anyone attempting to retrofit a multifamily building.

NYC experimented with new window heat pump models in some public housing units. in winter, "The window unit-heated apartments used a whopping 87% less energy than the rest of the building’s steam-heated apartments did, cutting energy costs per household in half."

heatmap.news/sustainabili...

Good morning with good news: Arizona's solar generation skyrocketed 49% in April 2025 to 2002 GWh, up from 1342 GWh in April 2024.

Solar generated 25.1% of AZ's electricity in April 2025. Wow!

AZ April Solar Share
2025: 25.1%
2024: 16.6%
2023: 13.5%
2021: 11.1%
2019: 9.6%
2015: 6.4%
#energysky

One of the biggest obstacles to building new housing in California has now vanished After a decade of battling, lawmakers just exempted infill urban development from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.

A decade-spanning political battle between housing developers and defenders of CEQA, California’s preeminent environmental law, came to an end this afternoon with only a smattering of “no” votes.

The forces of housing won.

calmatters.org/housing/2025...