.@NatBullard's annual presentation (200+ slides this year!) on decarbonization is always a must-read for energy nerds who love charts.

Here are my 10 favorites:

1. Solar modular prices dropped by 50% last year — and the panels keep getting more efficient, too. 2. Batteries also returned to their long-run trend of decreasing in price — falling more than 10% last year.

New report from the Center for American Progress claims that "NEPA functions as a critical climate action & environmental justice tool requiring agencies to consider the environmental & public health impacts of projects."

But NEPA is actually delaying pro-climate projects... 1/ The most stringent level of environmental review under NEPA is used way more often for clean energy projects than for fossil fuel projects.

Many fossil fuel projects are “categorically excluded” from NEPA even though similar scale clean energy projects aren't.

Hard to believe that these two countries are on the same island... "As recently as 1960, the two countries had similar standards of living. Today, the D.R., by some measures, is eight times as rich as Haiti, while Haiti’s standard of living hasn’t advanced at all since 1950." @Noahpinion

noahpinion.blog/p/haiti-vs-the…

How it started / How it’s going This is not permitting reform, not even close.

Still lots of work to be done to make a bipartisan deal happen later this year — let’s get back to it.

This is probably just a negotiating position from Republican leadership, but seems like a great way to kill a bipartisan deal.

Democrats in both the House and Senate have been consistently clear that permitting reform must include transmission. The NYT editorial board had a very good article last week explaining why transmission is critical to accelerating clean energy deployment: nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opi…

New statement by the White House in support of bipartisan permitting reform.

List of priorities includes making it much easier to site and build transmission lines.

It’s time to build, folks White House wants to build on Manchin’s bill from last year and recognizes that compromise will be required for a bipartisan deal: whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

Very cool chart showing all the American megaprojects and grand programs over the last century.

We need more of these! Here’s an idea for the next one:

https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1655953450574684160?s=20

1/ The Biden administration is committing $5 billion to accelerating the development of new coronavirus vaccines & treatments.

Here’s what the new program can learn from Operation Warp Speed, arguably the most successful government program since the Manhattan Project.

A thread: 2/ First, why is Operation Warp Speed worth copying?

It might seem to us today like the vaccines were inevitably going to be invented, but that’s not what the media was saying back in April 2020.

Here’s The New York Times:

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

More than 15,000 people have participated in human challenge trials over the last 40 years and not one person has died (or even been permanently impaired).

We should have done human challenge trials for COVID but alas… Check out more great research from @1daysooner here: 1daysooner.org/publications

This bill targeting renewable energy in Texas really is insane Also, the narrative that renewables caused the blackouts during the big freeze in 2021 is just wrong.

Glad to see E&E correct the record:

1,700-word article in the WSJ about the lack of skilled labor for broadband infrastructure projects.

Doesn’t mention “immigration” once 🤔 “An industry group promoting network expansion estimates that more than 205,000 additional workers will be needed through 2026. Other estimates for how many more fiber workers will be needed this decade have run as high as 850,000.” wsj.com/articles/high-…

Scientist who discovered that hand washing dramatically reduces mortality during child birth was ridiculed by his colleagues and then committed to an insane asylum, where he was beaten and then died 14 days later. twitter.com/i/web/status/1… .@asymmetricinfo mentions this story in her conversation with @EconTalker: econtalk.org/megan-mcardle-…

Texas is the national leader in solar & wind development because they make it easy to build all kinds of infrastructure.

And now they might throw it all away by copying the worst blue state policy but applying it only to renewables… 🫠 More info here:

https://twitter.com/DukakisDude/status/1646593239233732608

The UK has been quietly adopting a lot of really great policies that the US should copy Global Talent Visa: gov.uk/government/new…

Offshore wind energy might be the starkest example of how broken our permitting process has become.

The United States has 42 megawatts of offshore wind capacity in operation.

There is currently more than 18,000 megawatts (!) of potential capacity stuck waiting for permits... FYI I made the chart using data from this U.S. Department of Energy report: energy.gov/sites/default/…

This is an underrated point by @tylercowen in the AI safety debate:

It is much easier for smart people to imagine how things might go wrong than it is to predict how we might make it go right. I’m more worried about AI x-risk than Tyler is, but this tendency toward excessive pessimism seems real: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

Canada let in a million immigrants last year.

The equivalent for the US would be 9 million.

Public opinion of immigration is very positive & broadly supported.

How?

Canada is selective about who it admits, with eligibility criteria that value higher education & skilled work. Canada’s ability to increase its immigration rate without sparking a public backlash is inspiring

nytimes.com/2023/03/23/wor…

For the first time ever we have a miraculous weight loss drug that actually works and isn't a scam "Obesity is a problem of staggering global proportions. In 2023 the World Obesity Federation (WOF), an NGO, says 1.1bn people aged older than five, or roughly 14% of all people in that age bracket, were obese." economist.com/briefing/2023/…

Two major bottlenecks to successfully reshoring advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the United States

1. Labor shortage (need green card cap exemption for STEM immigrants)

2. Environmental procedure laws like NEPA impose huge project uncertainty (need categorical exclusion) If we want ambitious spending bills like the CHIPS and Science Act to succeed during implementation, then we need urgently need regulatory reform.

politico.com/news/2023/02/2…

Don’t give in to doomerism:

We’re just as wealthy as the boomers were at our age Glad to see @jmhorp’s work in this issue getting wider attention: qz.com/millennials-ar…

Solve your housing affordability crisis with this one weird trick "Apartment rents fell in every major metropolitan area in the U.S. over the past six months through January, a trend that is poised to continue as the biggest delivery of new apartments in nearly four decades is slated for this year."

wsj.com/articles/apart…