A Breakdown of Five Days of Secret Supreme Court Memos

Read more here: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Leaked memos show the Supreme Court blocked the Clean Power Plan in 2016 when justices feared companies couldn't afford to comply. Those companies cut CO2 enough to hit the plan's 2030 goal, a decade early. The emergency that changed how America is governed turned out not to be one.

With the Boston Marathon today, a good time to re-up one of the greatest figures in sports data: the distribution of marathon finish times (n=9,789,093). The spike at 4:00 is not a coincidence.

Japan’s Cherry Blossom Database, 1,200 Years Old, Has a New Keeper

Good news on this 1,200-year-old dataset: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/c...

One chokepoint: 14 million barrels a day and ~20% of global oil consumption. This is what was flowing through the Strait of Hormuz before the conflict, and why its closure is being called the largest energy supply disruption since the 1970s oil embargo.

Updating to fix a coding issue with the 2022 line and add the disruption as a share of global demand on the right.

Every major oil shock, put on the same timeline. The 1973 embargo was the longest lasting. The 1990 Gulf War was the biggest reversal. The 2026 Hormuz crisis is the steepest climb and drop. But the line isn't finished yet.

Thanks, Brendan!

Thanks, Blake!

That would be great!

That’s fantastic. Still probably the most widely read thing I’ve done 😅

I’ll be in San Francisco regularly now. If you’re in the Bay Area, let’s find time to connect.

After nearly 20 years building energy system models at EPRI, I'm joining Watershed as Head of Science.

The science of decarbonization is only as good as the decisions it drives. Excited to close that gap.

watershed.com/blog/john-bi...

A message from Tuna Acisu asking for help maintaining cherry blossom record in Kyoto Japan.

A figure showing the cherry tree record since 812 from world in data.

A 1200+ year climate record is at risk. Do you know know anyone in Japan who could help? See below.

In the special issue described in this editorial, working with several developing country teams, we articulated practical bottom-up guidance for reaching net-zero across the economy in key sectors: power, transport, industry and AFOLU, and in the context of countries' other goals @iddri.bsky.social

Bought the Artemis II Lego set ”for my kid.” This thing is stunning.

Artemis II is circling the Moon this week using 8.8 million pounds of SLS thrust.

The Raptor 3 engine SpaceX is building outputs ~100 GW of power. The entire U.S. runs on about 400-700 GW depending on the season.

We are living in a remarkable era of rocket engineering.

Cherry blossoms have reached peak bloom in the Bistline backyard.

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Tomorrow is my last day at EPRI after 13 years as a full-time employee (closer to 20 if you count my internship in 2007). This place has been my second home. I'm proud of what we accomplished together, and I'll continue to be a champion, collaborator, and advocate for EPRI's mission.

Texas is deploying battery storage so fast that it's almost keeping up with the other 49 states... by itself!

Check out more from this terrific retrospective here: www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo...

Prediction is hard, especially about the future, etc. Other models and scenarios missed the extent of all three trends, too, including our own.

Wild figures in two decades of EIA retrospective data.

Solar getting it wrong gets all the airplay. But the consistent underestimation of natural gas exports and the speed of coal's collapse are just as striking, even at 3-5 year horizons.

Anyhow, if you're interested in offshore wind, check out our Nature Energy here: rdcu.be/dn7UD

The tl;dr version is here: publicdownload.epri.com/PublicAttach...

We spent a lot of time building scenarios for offshore wind futures. Still didn't capture "administration pays ~$1B for a French company to abandon its US leases and promise never to build offshore wind here again." New tail risk unlocked.

My colleague Aranya and I put together this figure to show heat pump expenditures by state using Clean Investment Monitor data from @rhg.com and MIT. This doesn’t show the total stock, utilization, etc. but does give a sense for where HPs are and the time trend.

I wish! ACS has spatially granular data but only at the fuel level; RECS has HP data but only at the state level.

Updated this with ACS 2024 data and fixed a coding error, both of which lead to more electricity-dominant counties in the South.

Drivers of natural gas use in U.S. residential buildings Machine learning analyzes U.S. residential gas use patterns to temperature, revealing drivers and emission reduction potential.

Yes, that's largely the case for the U.S., though natural gas access and retail prices also influence the choice: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Correct, county-level fuel values come from ACS 2022. The flow for heat pumps has been large in several states (the Clean Investment Monitor has good data on this), but the overall technological stock is slower to change.