John Bistline

Battery export boom: China has exported approximately $60 billion in battery energy storage systems and components in the first three quarters of 2025, up 24% from last year www.reuters.com/markets/comm...

US export comparisons in 2024: Soy, $25b. LNG, $28.9b. Auto exports, $59.2b. 🔌💡

Interesting update to NREL's data center map with Baxtel data.

It's remarkable how closely the projections match how much solar was being installed in the year the projections were made, basically assuming that additions would stay the same in perpetuity.

Here's the wild part: IEA's solar projections have usually just matched the actual additions in the year the forecast was made... basically assuming solar additions stay flat forever.

Thankfully, the future keeps showing up early.

Credit where it's due: this is an updated of the classic solar vs. IEA chart from @aukehoekstra.bsky.social and @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org. It's striking to see how much WEO scenarios and actual additions have evolved in the years since the original comparison.

Solar keeps blowing past expectations, but expectations are catching up. The latest IEA WEO now has PV topping 600 GW per year, though this year's scenarios are actually lower than last year's.

The U.S. is on track for another record year for clean electricity in 2025: 59 GW additions, which is 92% of new builds. Solar leads again, and storage nearly doubles. The grid is changing fast.

Who wore it better? @cmu.edu

Peak chart crime: IEA invents Gt₂CO and non-Euclidean timelines. The x-axis is emissions, the labels are years, and a mannequin hikes an Escher ramp to nowhere.

Exactly. California and Hawaii have high rates but low consumption, so total household energy expenditures are lower than average.

This figure is from our Energy Wallet report: energywallet.epri.com/en/current.h...

From GIs' rations to supply chains, energy systems, and climate policy: the diet problem shows how OR turns messy reality into a solvable problems... and how reality pushes back. Happy 111th, George!

You can read more here: resources.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/...

📢 What’s current in #REEP? 📢
"Inflation Reduction Act: Origins, Policy Implications, and Research Gaps" by John E. T. Bistline ( @bistline.bsky.social ) and Catherine Wolfram ( @cwolfram.bsky.social ).
🔗 Read it here: buff.ly/xlWk4NK
📈📉 #Econsky

Moral of the story: models are only as good as their data, definitions, and constraints. Also, good models don't replace judgment but organize it. Dantzig's wife studied the menus and said, "I'll put you on my diet." And he lost 22 pounds.

Then: two pounds of bran per day. Anne threatens to take him to the hospital, imposes a cap, and swaps in blackstrap molasses. New constraint, similar nutrients. Classic LP substitution.

Next day the model prescribes 200 bouillon cubes/day. Anne Dantzig drops a legendary pun: "What are you trying to do, corner the bullion market?" Doctor confirms: no upper bound on salt in the requirements. So Dantzig adds one. Behold, the origin story of upper bounds.

First menu from the IBM 701 includes... 500 gallons of vinegar. Because the source listed vinegar as "very weak acid" with water content = 0, the model treats it like dense fullness. "I decided vinegar wasn't a food."

While at RAND, Dantzig's doctor tells him to go on a diet. So he models his own diet as an LP to maximize "feeling full." Objective ≈ food weight minus water weight. What could go wrong?

Background: Dantzig invents the simplex algorithm for solving linear programming problems but needs a test case. In a Pentagon bull session, Marvin Hoffenberg suggests: "Try Jerry Cornfield's diet problem for GI rations" (i.e., finding a low-cost diet meeting nutritional needs).

Modeling Monday: In honor of George Dantzig's 111th birthday, everyone knows the "late to class/solves two open problems thinking they were homework" story. Fewer know the hilarious backstory of the diet problem. Buckle up for an operations research thread... 🧵

bsky.app/profile/bist...

Ultimately, what matters is the emissions intensity of electricity generation. On that front, you're right that CA is currently lower than TX, but TX has made much faster progress (from a higher starting point) and is catching up to California.

Updated data on renewables and energy storage deployment. The race between California and Texas is... how shall we say... no longer close.

20+ years of climate impacts research in one figure. Climate change hits everything, everywhere, all at once.

From Solomon Hsiang's new NBER paper on empirical methods and economic impacts of climate change: www.nber.org/papers/w34357

Updated UNEP Emissions Gap just dropped. Current policies are projected to lead to peak warming of 2.8°C (with a range of 2.1-3.9°C). NDCs can push this down to 1.9-2.5°C.

Everyone's talking about AI's electricity demand. But new EIA data show planned gas builds look... pretty normal. Additions through 2030 track the last decade, not a 2000s style surge. Is this turbine supply constraints, lagging data, or something else?

Big EV gap between China and the USA.
- China has 52 BEV models with >400-mile range with many under $50k; USA has 4 all priced above $75k
- EV sales share in 2024: China 47%; USA 10%

Great paper in Science by @jhelvy.bsky.social.

Postdoctoral Scholar - Environmental Science & Policy University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!

🚨The Moore Lab at UC Davis is hiring!🚨
Post-doc for a project with @adamsobel.bsky.social on the valuation of climate information for adaptation
Could be a good fit for an environmental economist or a climate scientist - flexible start date and location
Apply by Dec 1st: recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07346

Interesting takeaway from a new ESIG report: Half of recent planning studies assume at least one emerging technology by 2030. Do these timelines seem realistic for advanced nuclear, e-fuels, direct air capture, and the ever-popular "generic resource?"

Be careful out there. They're putting RCP8.5 in candy bars.

Celebrate Bat Week by reading about bat bombs or listening to my colleague Christian Newman talk about how the electric sector is working with conservationists to protect bats from white-nose syndrome on EPRI Current: epricurrent.podbean.com/e/63-a-bat-w...