New report: wind and solar are driving down wholesale electricity prices across Europe.
On average, prices were ~24% lower in 2023–2025 than if gas had set the price at all times.
Thread below👇
ZDF Politbarometer: Mehrheit: Energiewende geht zu langsam Mit 57 Prozent finden die meisten Befragten, dass die Energiewende in Deutschland zu langsam vorankommt, besonders groß ist diese Kritik bei den Jüngeren (unter 35 Jahre: 67 Prozent). Für insgesamt 15 Prozent geht die Energiewende zu schnell und 21 Prozent halten das Tempo für gerade richtig.
Die Union macht Energiepolitik für 15% der Bevölkerung und und prahlt auch noch ständig damit, wundert sich aber, dass die AfD in Umfragen an ihr vorbeizieht. Drei Viertel der Deutschen wollen weiterhin keine Rechtsextremen, aber 57% eine schnellere Energiewende.
A diagram, describing how banks manufacture brand-new dollars when they make a loan
My main challenge writing about money is dealing with theories of endogenous money, which comes from banks, and exogenous money, which comes from, you know, somewhere but it doesn't really matter. It's a ridiculous distinction. The Fed is a bank. It's all bank money, endogenous all the way down.
“This is payback for that time when we attacked you!”
81/ Policy shifts coming fast. France accelerates Electrification
- a ban on gas boilers in new houses from end of 2026
- increased support for replacing old heating with heat pumps
- 100 regions will pilot comprehensive heat transition plans to phase out gas by 2030
bsky.app/profile/janr...
It’s the same with Trump’s comment at Davos about wind turbines in China: they aren’t just ignorant, they’re sowing misinformation on purpose.
A world order that isn’t reliant on fossil fuels is a world order that isn’t reliant on America and the dollar.
The time between fossil fuel crises is just going to keep shrinking, until there's no discrete single "crisis" - just one unbroken prolonged state of global suffering due to fossil fuel unreliability
The best time to ditch fossil fuels was 30 years ago. The second best time is now
We’re living through an incredible experiment in externally imposed carbon shock therapy. Not the green macrofinancial regime we want but the one we currently have.
🚨 Reminder: apply by April 10! 🚨
If you are planning to apply for the OBFA-TRANSFORM research group's workshop, you need to send an abstract and brief biographical note to verena.gradinger@globalclimateforum.org by April 10.
Further details in the call for papers below! 💸 🏗️ 🌱
Wohnen ist teuer. Die Wohnungspolitik auch: ca 30 Mrd € jährlich kostet sie den Staat. Trotzdem verpasst sie es, dauerhaft bezahlbaren Wohnraum zu schaffen.
Wie kam es dazu? In unserem neuen Papier geben @sara-schulte.bsky.social und ich eine Antwort:
We're hosting a workshop in Berlin on 12-13 June on using balance sheet frameworks to understand contemporary money and finance! Applications by 10 April 📝
The US government has agreed to pay TotalEnergies $928 million to cancel its offshore wind leases and redirect the money to oil and gas instead.
This is happening during the worst global energy crisis (per IEA) in history and as rising prices put huge pressure on households and businesses.
This chart goes a long way in explaining why Orbán’s system is under real pressure for the first time. The growth that sustained it has stalled—and with it, the political bargain that kept voters on board. I tried to unpack what that means.
👉 brettoninthewoods.substack.com/p/can-hungar...
screenshot of the article heading at https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2026/03/the-world-energy-shock-is-coming
The economic fallout from the Strait of Hormuz isn't a hypothetical — it's already there. Most people in Europe and the US just can't feel it yet. A threat on our new @newstatesman1913.bsky.social article: what's heading our way, and why the burden won't be shared equally. 1/
Amazing how far European servitude to an out of control U.S. administration has gone that this fairly timid statement of a normal centrist position on immigration by Taoiseach Martin has people acting as if he's done something significant
Gas is expensive. Everyone will rush to buy solar, EVs and batteries i.e War will ACCELERATE energy transition.
"More renewables will be built in the next 5 years than in the last 40 years" - IEA, lashing forecasts for US & raising forecasts for EU, India, Asia AND MidEast
bsky.app/profile/scie...
Infografik: In zwei von drei Paarhaushalten ist das Modell verbreitet: Der Mann arbeitet in Vollzeit, während die Frau Teilzeit arbeitet.
Was hat sich zuletzt in Bezug auf die Situation von Frauen und Männern im Berufsleben getan? Wie groß sind die Ungleichheiten, wo gab es Fortschritte bei der #Gleichstellung, wo Stagnation? Welchen Einfluss hat Fürsorgearbeit/#CareArbeit?
#InternationalerFrauentag
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While the DFC is unlikely to prevent domestic energy price increases (a better policy would be to stop military adventurism), expect to see more of this type of governing through OBFAs as geopolitical fragmentation deepens.
/end 🧵
meme courtesy of @leon-heckmann.de
The main point is, to understand how states respond to emergencies (even self-imposed ones such as war w/ Iran) we need to look beyond the apex institutions and look at how a state finds balance sheet elasticity throughout its fiscal ecosystem.
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Most relevant for the case of the DFC is our working paper on how the UK financed a large part WWII through an OBFA, the EEA.
We hypothesise that during wartime, OBFAs are often refashioned to suit war aims in a form of 'emergency institutional bricolage'.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
/5
I've since used the framework to look at the historical case of U.S. housing finance as being managed by a network of OBFAs which derisked and stabilised private lenders and enabled the mid-20th C housing boom in the US.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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The first working paper of the research group analysed the ecosystem of OBFAs in the case of Germany. While fiscal resources are usually analysed in terms of the core budget, it's better to think of a network of institutions with different fiscal capacities.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
/3
My colleagues and I have been working on this topic for the past few years, labelling these institutions as 'off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies (OBFAs)'. OBFAs are the balance sheets of the state set apart from its apex institutions, the treasury and the central bank. www.obfa-transform.eu
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The Trump administration's plans to use the Development Finance Corporation to insure oil tankers in the Gulf to the tune of 350bn dollars has again drawn attention to how states try to respond to emergencies when they are subject to fiscal constraints. A 🧵
www.ft.com/content/6dde...
Following up on this. Finland is by far the euro area country most decoupled from gas. Wholesale electricity prices in Portugal and Lithuania are largely uncorrelated with gas prices. Italy, Ireland, and Greece will be among the most negatively impacted if gas prices continue rising.
New paper on China’s solar subsidies (2004–20): clean energy industrial policy can boost growth and cut emissions. Innovation & production subsidies drove patents, new firms, output, exports. Demand subsidies cut pollution but did less for growth. Social benefits > subsidy costs.
Pleased to announce publication of the fifth edition of states versus markets
www.bloomsbury.com/us/states-ve...
The book is now old enough to drink in the USA but of course I have significantly updated it with each new edition. Buy a copy for Mother's Day or the holiday of your choice!
1/5 The Council has released new research on Ireland’s corporation tax. These receipts are increasingly reliant on a small number of firms. We estimate that the top 3 groups paid almost half of all corporation tax in 2024.
Need to run a c/a deficit to be reserve currency?
Absolutely not.
Top post by @rajakorman.bsky.social for @alphaville.ft.com
www.ft.com/content/4b08...
At the OBFA-TRANSFORM group, we sometimes do videos on our publications - now it was my turn, with @olanmcevoy.bsky.social interviewing me on our paper on the Recovery and Resilience Facility and the limits to incremental fiscal integration in Europe!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT7P...