April 2025 – Energy Institute Blog
4 posts published by James Sallee, James Bushnell, Severin Borenstein, and Lucas Davis during April 2025| Energy Institute Blog
4 posts published by James Sallee, James Bushnell, Severin Borenstein, and Lucas Davis during April 2025| Energy Institute Blog
3 posts published by James Sallee, James Bushnell, and Severin Borenstein during July 2025| Energy Institute Blog
2 posts published by James Bushnell and Aaron Smith during October 2025| Energy Institute Blog
How do comparisons to railroads and fiber add up? Being an expert in the electricity industry is becoming cool again because, all of a sudden, the link between power and … Continue Reading Is There Really an Energy Silver Lining to a Datacenter Bubble?| Energy Institute Blog
Policies to promote sustainable aviation fuels would interact with existing biofuel policies, mostly by diverting fuels and feedstocks away from surface transportation and towards aviation. S…| Energy Institute Blog
The threat of increased rates is real, but good policy can bring lower prices as demand grows. Electricity has recently replaced eggs, beef, and gasoline as the inflation concern du … Continue Reading What Will Data Centers Do To Your Electric Bill?| Energy Institute Blog
Going car shopping with the world’s most rational human. If you’ve hung around these parts, you probably know that this team of bloggers is also the core of the Severin … Continue Reading Putting the EV in sEVerin| Energy Institute Blog
We’ve led the nation in rate hikes. Now we’re test-driving some affordability fixes. National headlines are warning of an energy affordability crisis, with electricity rates cast as a primary culpr…| Energy Institute Blog
Information needs to be up to date to help buyers make good decisions. With the electric vehicle (EV) tax credit expiring at the end of the month, a lot of people have been running out to the deale…| Energy Institute Blog
Real-time information about chargers could speed electric vehicle adoption. Our family’s summer ended with a 2,800 mile road trip from the Bay Area to southern Alberta, Canada and back. The … Continue Reading Raising the Low Expectations of Electric Vehicle Drivers| Energy Institute Blog
The state must plan today for the import capacity that can smooth the transition. When two major California refineries recently announced they would be closing – Phillips 66’s Wilmington facility … Continue Reading California’s Refinery Closure Drama| Energy Institute Blog
Trade restrictions imposed in 2018 increased the price of washing machines by $86. U.S. consumers are starting to feel the pinch of tariffs. Prices are up for home furnishings, toys, appliances, an…| Energy Institute Blog
A decade of solar tariffs has taught us some costly lessons. Unless you’ve been living under a rock – a valid lifestyle choice these days – you’ve been hearing a … Continue Reading Tariff Trial and Error in the Solar Energy Sector| Energy Institute Blog
The rapidly evolving rollback of policy support for electric vehicles. Source: Where are EVs headed? Back in April, I wrote a piece surveying various threats to the EV transition in the US. I argue…| Energy Institute Blog
That’s not an ethical judgment, just simple math. Over the years, our team of bloggers has put out quite a few posts on rooftop solar, many of which discuss the cost shift from solar ad…| Energy Institute Blog
Without major rate reform progress will be slow and incomplete. Not everyone has yet agreed that rooftop solar systems in California’s investor-owned utility territories shift significant costs ont…| Energy Institute Blog
Tariffs, rollbacks, and the IRA repeal threaten to stall America’s EV transition, just as it was beginning to scale. Image source: The Orange County Register The likely fate of electric vehicles du…| Energy Institute Blog
Denying reality is a real problem for climate policy. Public discourse about climate change in this country, and even around the world, has tended to emphasize the polar (no pun intended) extremes:…| Energy Institute Blog
Only when you ignore environmental benefits and electricity bill impacts. U.S. electricity demand is on the rise. A data center boom, a possible renaissance in domestic manufacturing, and a push to…| Energy Institute Blog
Proposed performance-based ratemaking, a mainstay of UK policy, is unlikely to address California’s energy affordability crisis. California’s capital is abuzz with ideas about how to reduce the sta…| Energy Institute Blog
Would reduced rates just for EVs and heat pumps be a step in the right direction? If you are a regular reader of this blog, you have witnessed much hand wringing over the fact that electricity rate…| Energy Institute Blog
About half of U.S. households with a heat pump have some kind of backup heating. February was cold. Unusually cold throughout much of the United States. Polar vortex conditions brought record-break…| Energy Institute Blog
California’s solar industry is doing just fine despite their complaints about net energy metering reform. There is a new administration in DC producing a raft of misguided actions to bolster fossil…| Energy Institute Blog
Affordability isn’t the enemy of cap-and-trade—It’s the goal. California lawmakers are back to work in Sacramento. Heading into the new legislative session, cost of living concerns loom large. Both…| Energy Institute Blog
The Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies for electric vehicles provide moderate climate benefits and help US firms at the expense of foreign auto manufacturers, but are not a home run. Today’s post …| Energy Institute Blog
How new efforts to curb groundwater depletion will impact the Golden State’s electricity use. This week’s blog is co-authored with Fiona Burlig, Louis Preonas, and Matt Woerman. Farmers consume nea…| Energy Institute Blog
Maybe, but we’ll need a little policy and alignment of incentives to make it work. This week’s blog is co-authored with Emilia Chojkiewicz and Amol Phadke The United States needs to up its tr…| Energy Institute Blog
At this rate it is not going to be easy to meet decarbonization goals. Decarbonization experts say you can’t do it without heat pumps. One prominent study has 75 million heat pumps deployed in the …| Energy Institute Blog
In 2024, residential PV will shift nearly $4 billion onto others’ bills, more than double the 2020 amount. There’s a lot of anger in California right now about rising electricity prices. Since 2020…| Energy Institute Blog
Unreliable chargers could hold back electric vehicle adoption. Policymakers need to intervene. Consumers embraced electric vehicles like never before in 2023. Electric vehicle sales increased by 50…| Energy Institute Blog
Bill savings from residential PV are as large now as a few years ago, but the industry is facing other big challenges. 2019 was a good year for residential solar in California. In the service terri…| Energy Institute Blog
California is tightening its GHG belt – who should feel the pinch? California has set some ambitious GHG reduction goals. Now the state is trying to figure out how to meet them. The costs of unmiti…| Energy Institute Blog
Online vehicle sales could reduce double marginalization. Amazon’s new Hyundai Evolve Showroom feels almost like the future of car buying. You pick out the car you want, choose its features, and se…| Energy Institute Blog
