[Washington Metro Conductor voice] Now entering the commonwealth of Pennsylvania

The DC Metro

Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 mi of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave & Farragut N. System now serves 130 mi.

The DC Metro shows that, with good planning & enough investment, the public sector can succeed & build something extraordinary.

Read Read chapter Front Matter: The scientific community has been studying the question of how human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the cli...

The scientific understanding of human-driven climate change is much stronger today than it was in 2009 when the EPA first issued the endangerment finding. There is no scientific basis for the Trump administration's decision to repeal it

Energy parks provide an innovative approach to meeting our increasing energy needs, particularly for data centers and advanced manufacturing. Join @nationalacademies.org on 2/12 for a webinar that will look at efforts to create energy parks and the issues they could address. bit.ly/3LOUy3Q

Increasing #energy costs are placing a growing burden on households, businesses, and institutions across the U.S.

Explore why energy bills are rising, how impacts differ by region and sector, and solutions to help improve affordability on February 4: https://ow.ly/BU3Z50Y6s6T

Do you appreciate @nws.noaa.gov's posts on Bluesky?

Did you know that this account is a pilot program that may or may not be continued and even expanded to NWS field offices?

NWS is soliciting comments here! www.surveymonkey.com/r/PrototypeN...
Press release:
www.weather.gov/media/notifi...

The US #electricity system is under stress, from growing demand & complex operating conditions. Join @nationalacademies.org for a webinar series exploring technologies & capabilities for improving reliability and resilience. Our first event on hardening the T&D system is tomorrow! bit.ly/42yNIF5

📢 Submissions are now open for the U.S. Climate Collection, a joint @theAGU + @ametsoc initiative.

This special collection will publish U.S.-focused climate assessment science that’s free to read, ensuring rigorous, accessible science informs decisions for years to come.

🔗 buff.ly/1tHUSLC

A new report by the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences concludes that the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding was accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence:

Our new report explores the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the U.S. health and welfare. Read more: nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2923...

Power Rewired report - cover page

If you want to see what a best-in-class climate scientist with a lens on geopolitics and energy can do in the financial sector - read Sarah Kapnick's new report on energy system politics for JP Morgan. A few of my favorite figures below 🧵1/ www.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/...

Growing connections of AI/DC have now reached a level of complexity warranting a NERC alert, citing "rapid, major swings in load, experienced both in typical operations as well as in response to grid disturbances.” = more data + modeling needed.
www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/bpsa/...

So many companies do business in CA, this is a big deal, indeed. Investors can’t manage (at least well) what they cannot manage.

Power price stability and the insurance value of renewable technologies - Nature Energy Increasing solar photovoltaic and wind generation capacity beyond European 2030 targets could make electricity prices more stable, with reductions in sensitivity to fluctuations in the price of natura...

Two new papers find renewables are good insurance (they stabilize electricity price volatility in welfare improving ways)

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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How Methane-Zapping Technology Could Finally Solve the Cow Burp Problem Ambient Carbon is doing the methane equivalent of point source carbon capture in dairy barns.

re: cow’s methane-laced burps, viable emissions reduction solutions are scarce. now though, forays into methane destruction - and even atmospheric removal - are gaining traction. i explore one pathway, from Ambient Carbon, here:

Next week begins our @nationalacademies.org 3-part webinar series on greenhouse gas removals!

Experts will cover research priorities, governance challenges, and practical applications.

Learn more and RSVP here: www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/atm...

US science research was gutted in 2025. How will it rebuild? New strategies as diverse as venture capitalism and investments from abroad are emerging to sustain the field

cen.acs.org/careers/US-s...

Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University, said the new controversy that the Trump administration had stirred around climate science was a fitting subject for a fast-track effort by the National Academies. “The National Academies [were] established exactly to do things like this—to answer questions of scientific importance for the government,” he said. “This is what the DOE should have done all along, rather than hire five people who represent a tiny minority of the scientific community and have views that virtually nobody else agrees with.”

Nice article about NASEM review of the endangerment finding by @insideclimatenews.org

National Academies Will Review Endangerment Finding Science insideclimatenews.org/news/0708202...

Grid-Scale Battery Stabilizes Scottish Power Supply Grid-scale batteries in Scotland are stabilizing power supply with advanced grid-forming inverters.

It’s a signpost that grid planning + op are entering a new paradigm. System operators are rethinking how to maintain reliability in a BPS where inertia is no longer free and stability must be actively engineered.
spectrum.ieee.org/grid-scale-b...

Timely:

I love renewable energy tech because it's either "use quantum mechanics and semiconductor physics to leverage the photoelectric effect" or "put three spinny things on a stick"

Searing Heat Threatens Grids and Health Over Nearly Half the US Nearly half the US will wilt under hot, sticky conditions through the bulk of the week as temperatures and humidity soar from Chicago to New York City and New Orleans, boosting power demand and raising health risks.

Nearly half the US will wilt under hot, sticky conditions through the bulk of the week as temperatures and humidity soar from Chicago to NYC and New Orleans, boosting power demand and raising health risks.

What is less well understood is how poorly the United States is prepared to match this rise in electricity demand with an equivalent increase in supply. To some degree, American electricity prices are already rising: So far this year, utilities have received or requested permission to increase customers’ bills by $29 billion, according to a July report from PowerLines, a think tank and advocacy group. That’s a large number in its own right, and it’s more than twice as much as had been approved at this time last year. But when you look across the power system, virtually every trend is setting us up for electricity price spikes: The supply chain to build new natural gas power plants is backed up. Virtually all new utility-scale gas turbines are spoken for until the end of this decade, as Heatmap News covered in February. U.S. natural gas supplies will come under more strain in the next few years as fossil fuel companies export more of the fuel abroad. From 2024 to 2028, North America’s liquified natural gas export capacity is projected to double. Many of the key components to build more grid infrastructure — such as copper or steel — have surged in cost due to Trump’s tariffs and self-induced trade uncertainty. The federal government has become a less stable fiscal and financing partner for energy producers and distributors. On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright killed a government loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express transmission project. Why? “To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources,” but also because President Trump asked him to.

It’s hard to find a trend in the electricity system right now that *doesn’t* point to near-term rate hikes if not a broad affordability crisis. That’s a serious problem for climate policy, but also the American economy writ large. I wrote about it: heatmap.news/politics/ele...

Report: Fewer New Miles: Strategic Industries Held Back by Slow Pace of Transmission Today, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid (ACEG) and Grid Strategies released the report “Large-Scale Transmission Deployment Saves Consumers Money.”

New report finds, yet again, that "The United States is failing to build the high-voltage transmission infrastructure needed to support the nation’s surging electricity demand and growing strategic industries."

Me in UtilityDive today re: a new $10bn data center announced for NC (the same is true for most states) 🔌💡 www.utilitydive.com/news/growing...

When it comes to Texas weather, I look to @theeyewallwx.bsky.social to cut through the nonsense. @mattlanza.bsky.social knows his business on this analysis of the tragic TX flash flooding.

REPEAT Project just completed our rapid analysis of the impacts of the Senate-passed version of the One Big "Beautiful" Bill (OBBB), which the House is considering now, on the US energy sector and emissions. Still working up full report, but here is a sneak peak...
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This looks depressing, but there are reasons to be optimistic. Not naive, but truly hopeful.

Renewable energy technologies are cheap, and global GHG emissions are flattening.

We never had a better chance to get this done.

But a lot of work remains, and we cannot stop.

How much could clean electricity adoption change without tax credits? Existing modeling suggests that annual additions could slow by roughly half for many technologies to 2035. But these studies omit recently proposed excise taxes, which could further reduce project deployment.

A review of reports on Spanish blackout causes and solutions • Grid Strategies Michael Goggin, Grid Strategies June 24, 2025 Last week, the Spanish government and Spanish grid operator Red Electrica released lengthy reports on the blackout that affected the Iberian Peninsula on ...

This is a nice summary of the Spanish grid operator's reports on the May Iberian blackout. As with any big event like this, there were many interdependent causes, but the TL;DR is that 3 nuclear and 7 gas plants failed to provide the voltage control that the grid operator contracted them to provide.