Finding quality, consolidated information on energy use in California is surprisingly difficult. The California Department of Energy provides detailed information on electricity production, and a variety of reports on, for example, refinery inputs and production. But there is no report available from official state sources that puts it all together. This is unfortunate, because as a state […]
In the cities and farms immediately south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the worst flooding of the 20th century happened in 1997. Several days of unrelenting rain pummeled the slopes of the Sierras, and with the snow line unusually high at 10,000 feet, nearly all of it poured into the San Joaquin River and other tributaries. […]
Iron air batteries appear poised to play, at the least, an important niche role in the emerging electric age. A very recent example of this is the $750 million equity financing that Form Energy secured this week, raising the total investment in that iron air battery manufacturer to over $2 billion. Iron air batteries offer long-duration electricity storage […]
Earlier this week, a respected YouTube channel covering the future of technology and energy released a video exploring the viability of solar panels covering California’s canals and aqueducts. The videos are hosted by Ricky Roy, a California-based mechanical engineer whose channel is called “Two Bit Da Vinci.” Reviewing his findings is an opportunity to offer some […]
Earlier this summer a guest op-ed appeared in the Orange County Register, “Learning the right lesson from San Diego’s desal water surplus.” But the “lesson” presented was only partly accurate. What the authors, both affiliated with the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), got right was the need to change regulations that restrict the ability for farmers to […]
The Statistical Review of World Energy is arguably the most authoritative and comprehensive source publicly available for national and global energy statistics. And a funny thing happened between the report issued in 2024 and the report issued in 2025. “Renewables” as a percent of total energy consumed in 2023 was quietly lowered from 9.3 in the U.S. […]
It’s January 2027, and for the last few months, a super El Nino has already delivered torrential rains to the Pacific Coast of North America. California’s reservoirs have been releasing record quantities of water to preserve space for the next round of precipitation but their remaining capacity to absorb runoff is dangerously low. From the peaks […]
Whenever evaluating a new energy technology, caution is warranted. During what was arguably the first big cleantech boom around 2009, schemes were sold to angel investors thrilled to find a hot sector in the wake of the recent financial crash. Almost anything that sounded good got funded. Some of these schemes, such as a “clean” […]
There are at least three ways to evaluate the economic viability of energy projects. The easiest way is to just repeat whatever is in a press release. The other extreme, a mandatory exercise for anyone poised to actually invest and build a project, is to develop complex projections that take into account the benefits of […]
The reason to socialize a portion of the cost of major infrastructure is so the ratepayer doesn’t have to bear an unaffordable share of the construction financing payments. The broader benefit to society is to achieve greater affordability for what constitutes raw materials for prosperity; transportation, water, and energy. Whether or not they are ever […]