Austin Hinkel

Could this city be the model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change? Vienna has a way to make affordable housing and combat climate change all at the same time. Now U.S. cities want in, and they're building their own green housing.

C’mon Cincinnati — let’s give this model a shot: www.npr.org/2025/06/15/n...

Musk is murdering people

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The American Oil Industry’s Playbook, Illustrated: How Drillers Offload Costly Cleanup Onto the Public Oil executive Tom Ragsdale walked away from his old wells, making the pollution left behind the state of New Mexico’s problem. His tactics, however, are ubiquitous in the industry.

Over 2 million oil and gas wells sit unplugged across the country. Who is left holding the bill for their cleanup?

@propublica.org www.propublica.org/article/oil-...

My inbox is finally down to single digits 😭🙌🏼

I’d honestly buy a T-shirt with this on it.

This would imply the utility requests a rate change (to a lower rate) from the PUC, right? Hard to see a for-profit utility doing that! Are there any time series rate data out there to mine? Could look for dips? (I can only ever seem to find the PUC filings and never any ready-to-use data.)

Oops, forgot #energysky

An example calculation for the annual returns from a campus solar array.

The data, methodology, assumptions, etc are all detailed in the earlier link. A calculator tool is also included.

The interesting thing is that the percent returns are so attractive (10-16%), they beat a typical college endowment. This implies a donor could fund whatever they are interested in (e.g. a scholarship) by funding solar panels on a college’s campus, essentially funding a scholarship *and* solar.

Together with the cost and the incentives, these savings were used to estimate a yearly return on the investment (annual savings divided by net cost), and I have tabulated all of the results here: ahinkel.github.io/projects/DIRAC

Using national averages for things like the price of solar panels, the price of electricity, etc. and geospatial solar resource data from NREL, I was able to estimate the annual savings for a small/medium solar array on a college campus.

Non-profits in these energy communities are eligible for 40% (!) “rebates” from the US government, while those outside are eligible for 30%. Since I’m in the higher ed space, I plotted all institutions of higher learning within these regions to get a feel for the scale.

Map of the continental US with state lines shown in black. Gray regions mark energy communities, while black dots within these energy communities mark institutions of higher learning eligible for 40% Direct Pay incentives.

I was interested in the business case for solar on college campuses, given incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, so I joined data from IPEDS, DOE, NREL, etc. to get a feel. Certain regions of the US qualify as energy communities (pictured in gray), due to recent closure of a coal plant, etc.

I see no red flags there. 🤣

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Always felt like the 1.5/2 C marks lent themselves to binary results / doomism. Is there a particular reason 0.1 degree is often the increment used (for popular communication)? Is there a reason we don’t frame it instead as hundredths of a degree (or even milliKelvin)? Places it more on a spectrum.

No longer live in CO unfortunately but always looked forward to hearing your latest on CPR. Thank you for covering these issues.

Hey all, I’m an assistant professor of physics in the Northern Kentucky area specializing in astrophysics. I have been turning my efforts back towards our home planet lately, including running analyses to help institutions of higher ed see the value in going solar with the help of the IRA.