Research that Informs Business and Public Policy
Industry and utility customers should chip in to support the carbon price floor. The Covid-19 crisis has led to all sorts of dramatic changes in lifestyles and economies. The energy … Continue Reading The High Cost of Low Carbon Prices
Energy efficiency world views collide. There are two dueling, strongly held, views on the definition of energy efficiency. The idea of energy efficiency, at least to economists, is to overcome … Continue Reading How Much Electricity Consumption Is Too Little?
Could California’s ambitious zero carbon electricity policy make it harder to cut greenhouse gasses overall? Sometimes two ideas that seem joined at the hip end up butting heads. A couple … Continue Reading 100% of What?
What the Solar Rooftop Standard has to tell us about our climate policies. If you follow this blog, you are probably already aware that last Wednesday, the California Energy Commission, … Continue Reading Lessons in Regulatory Hubris
Proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear reverses 20 years of regulatory restructuring. The EPA’s recent moves to euthanize the Clean Power Plan (CPP) have generated a lot of news. However, … Continue Reading To Save Coal, Will Trump Kill Electricity Competition?
In case you missed it, a recent investigative piece in the LA Times unearthed the shocking fact that California retail electricity prices are high, about 50% higher than the national average. … Continue Reading Breaking News! California Electricity Prices are High
There are lots of government policies that economists like to roll their collective eyes about and use as examples of bad incentives in economics textbooks. In many cases these policies … Continue Reading Does Anyone Really Know How Much Electricity Goes into Cars?
What will be the fate of California’s cap and trade system for GHG? This is an issue that has been flying under the radar nationally, given the hullabaloo about carbon taxes … Continue Reading Looking for Environmental Certainty in All the Wrong Places
These are strange times for competitive power markets in the United States. Baseload power plants, many of them nuclear, are reportedly struggling to stay out of the red. About 10 … Continue Reading Is US Climate Policy Killing Nuclear Power?
I work at UC Davis, a University with at least two (that I know about) centers devoted to research “aimed at developing a sustainable market for plug-in vehicles.” I run … Continue Reading Economists are from Mars, Electric Cars are from Venus
I am frequently asked why people seem to dislike economists so much. It’s a complicated question to answer. There are lots of reasons, many represented in the comments section of … Continue Reading How Can Zero (net energy) be a Hero?
Today’s post is coauthored by Benjamin Hobbs from Johns Hopkins University The U.S., almost alone among developed economies, has operated its power system as a collection of balkanized fiefdoms. Evidence … Continue Reading Can California Ignore its Neighbors?
You may have heard that the Federal highway trust fund is running out of money because, darn it, people aren’t using enough gasoline. The transformation of our energy system is … Continue Reading How (and who) will pay for our energy infrastructure?
Today we take a break from our regularly scheduled blogging about environmental topics to provide a brief message concerning electricity restructuring. Severin Borenstein and I are finishing up a draft … Continue Reading Remember back when everybody hated electricity deregulation?
With the looming expansion of its cap-and-trade program to transportation fuels like gasoline, California is fast approaching a significant moment of truth for its climate policy. This has some people … Continue Reading Cap-and-Trade’s Moment of Truth
Last week, following years of anticipation, the shoe finally dropped on EPA carbon regulations. Two or three things are notable in this. First, we’re on the road to a national climate policy! … Continue Reading EPA and climate regulation: Mind the gaps
