Yakov Feygin Profile picture
Political economy, Russia, Public Finance @pubenterprise
Apr 24 7 tweets 2 min read
Did you know about tax normalization? It's actually really important to explain why a lot of big political economy theories of investment and utilities don't work in the real world. In short, if you are an IOU, you have to take your ITC over thirty years rather than up front. If you are not an IOU and are a third-party developer in a de-regulated market, you can take the ITC up front and not discount it over the usually 30-year life of the project. Thus, in solar and wind, a PPA is always cheaper than a directly owned asset.
Feb 2, 2023 20 tweets 4 min read
Took me a while because I have had a tumultuous 24hrs but I want to respond to this deep and brilliant reading by @EricLevitz. I have never had anyone engage so much with anything I have written. It is truly the nicest thing anyone has done for me. The first thing I have to say is I think Eric is right. This is not a future foretold. What @nils_gilman and I wanted to do is a kind of intellectual history of the present. That means more of thinking about if this evolves, where could it go? If it does go there, how?
Jan 31, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Add a massive swarm of cruise missiles coming from the Navy and bombers all flying toward command and control centers. Ohh and to put craters in runways. I remember trying to explain this during NFZ discourse. An NFZ means blowing the hell out lots of things to assure that you can fly in the zone.
Jan 15, 2023 6 tweets 1 min read
Man. These Russian boomers in Berlin are talking about how liberals are the cause of all military conflict because they are trying to spread their communist ideals around the world, and the only answer is for a global conservative/fascist alliance that does realism. This is who we are fighting at home and abroad. This is why the left has to stand with Ukraine no matter whether they are perfect or not. The Russian government is the spearhead of global fascism.
Jan 15, 2023 16 tweets 3 min read
This chart is something that a colleague of mine showed me from this paper:
ceepr.mit.edu/workingpaper/e…
It shows the price volatility in a theoretical renewables-dominant TX energy grid. Prices go from almost negative to thousands of dollars per hour. This is because of the technical features of renewables. They have zero marginal costs per unit after the initial investment is recouped. This means that they offer almost infinite energy. True abundance. BUT they are also variable.
Jan 13, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Yes but Russia is overestimating its own capacity as well. Russia has been at full scale war and under real sanctions only from this fall. I am not sure won’t crack. The question is what the cracks look like. Russian elites and Putin in particular probably overestimate their own capacity for action.