asa watten's Avatar

asa watten

@asawatten

economist. i think about energy technology innovation and climate policy. detroit/rustbelt stan currently exiled in new haven. asawatten.net

680
Followers
1,500
Following
72
Posts
27.07.2023
Joined
Posts Following

Latest posts by asa watten @asawatten

Oh oh force a divorce of sales and service. Terrible incentives and the main reason dealers steer ppl away from EVs (low maintenance).

And bust up anti competitive service lock in. Just the worst.

21.02.2026 07:18 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

Final EIA-860 is out, and 2025 really did it: 54 GW of new U.S. electric capacity, 96% clean. Solar again carries the offense, and we built more storage in 2025 than the cumulative total through 2023. More and more and more additions... but also record low retirements.

11.02.2026 18:09 πŸ‘ 336 πŸ” 107 πŸ’¬ 10 πŸ“Œ 30

The logical fallacy that uncertainty => 0 is needs a snappy name.

12.01.2026 19:03 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution

$7.4M per life may be wrong, but $0 is extra super wronger.

Hard to square with Section 812 of the Clean Air Act which requires EPA to conduct scientifically reviewed CBA that includes "overall health, welfare, ecological, and economic benefits".

12.01.2026 19:02 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Using LLMs to annotate text for anything scientific requires a lot of human validation *every time.*

β€œThey got a bot to churn out bot poetry. Then they judged how well the poems jailbroke the chatbots … by using other chatbots to do the judging!”

13.12.2025 17:03 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Electrons themselves barely move! On the order of meters per week in a reasonable DC circuit and hardly wiggle in AC. Electric fields traveling at ~light speed, directed by, but not in, wires, deliver energy. Pretty weird.

10.12.2025 15:06 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Mild take: 'Electrons' is simply a popular metaphor and that's fine πŸ€“

Electricity is profoundly unintuitive for most of us. Like water flowing through pipes is helpful, but wrong.

10.12.2025 15:01 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Fair!

10.12.2025 03:00 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I would not be surprised if the pm effects are > change in traffic volumes because moving diesel trucks and busses from full stop over and over is real bad.

10.12.2025 02:35 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

You have me convinced my prior should have low prob of PM effects >2x the change in traffic. And the method for the CI is sus.

But parallel trends with other cities is violated for the reasons you mention (w-fire smoke, elec. gen) and they imply (local wind direction). Sometimes you just can't DiD.

10.12.2025 02:29 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The way back machine is great, but maybe it’s time to make forks and wikis of these sites e.g. @audreyt.org

08.12.2025 23:42 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

you could call this take β€œdon’t think of a framed elephantβ€œ

04.12.2025 23:47 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent

Also a bummer that higher ethanol blends appear to increase local ozone pollution. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

31.10.2025 18:15 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Should have been Fig 1.

22.10.2025 23:21 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

New in Nature Climate Change: @asawatten.bsky.social and I show how common marginal emissions methods can miss system effects and substitution. Using hourly, long-run modeling can materially alter emissions benefits, which we show for rooftop solar. Paper + summary πŸ‘‡

22.10.2025 17:37 πŸ‘ 25 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 4

...
3. Fixed MERs ignore time of day and year, which are really important for variable renewables (because substitution effects)

4. The marginal effect of a particular technology or action under a binding carbon cap is always zero (because substitution effects)

22.10.2025 16:18 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Here is the tl;dr of our 4 main points about quantifying emissions effects:

1. MERs don't make sense for non-marginal changes

2. UNFCCC includes guidance and weights for operating margin and build margin--the build margin is probably much larger especially in places with lots of renewables
...

22.10.2025 16:18 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Emissions reductions of rooftop solar are overstated by approaches that inadequately capture substitution effects - Nature Climate Change Nature Climate Change - Emissions reductions of rooftop solar are overstated by approaches that inadequately capture substitution effects

🚨Oh hey @bistline.bsky.social and I have a short piece in Nature Climate Change out today. It's a response to a great study on global rooftop solar, but it's *really* about the misuse of marginal emissions rates. Something we've been thinking a lot about. #energysky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

22.10.2025 15:59 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image

Good news / bad news on U.S. solar in the new LBNL report:
β€’ Utility-scale solar >50% of 2024 nameplate additions
β€’ But solar's average costs are up ~25% vs. 2022

Record build, rising costs. Two things can be true at once.

emp.lbl.gov/utility-scal...

20.10.2025 17:48 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

πŸ“’ Just launched: Our REGEN energy systems model is now open source!

REGEN is a detailed and flexible energy systems modeling platform designed to explore a wide range of long-term scenarios. Check out the code, data, and documentation at the links below.

27.05.2025 16:13 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

New Energy Institute Blog Post: Winners and Losers from Interregional Transmission - by Lucas Davis

energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/04/07/w...

07.04.2025 15:23 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2
Build affordable homes

Build affordable homes

Destroy the constitution and economy

Destroy the constitution and economy

I’m for some things and against others

05.04.2025 15:41 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Nice! Would be cool to see the margin difference on the vertical axis in the second fig.

02.04.2025 17:11 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Are Clean Electricity Tax Credits a Bad Deal? Only when you ignore environmental benefits and electricity bill impacts. U.S. electricity demand is on the rise. A data center boom, a possible renaissance in domestic manufacturing, and a push to…

In the Energy Institute blog this week, Meredith Fowlie has an excellent explainer about what the IRA is really likely to cost per ton of GHG reduction based on a new paper from EPRI.
energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/a...
#EnergySky

01.04.2025 02:38 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Are Clean Electricity Tax Credits a Bad Deal? Only when you ignore environmental benefits and electricity bill impacts. U.S. electricity demand is on the rise. A data center boom, a possible renaissance in domestic manufacturing, and a push to…

My working paper with @bistline.bsky.social is the subject of today's @ucenergyinstitute.bsky.social blog post by Meredith Fowlie. Honored!
energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/a...

31.03.2025 15:07 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

BTC is a computation treadmill.

Jensen's paradox (⬆️efficiency=>⬆️demand) is weak for many things (cars, lights) bc demand is inelastic. Not so for crypto mining!

Makes sense. Miners mine until marginal cost=marginal benefit. ⬆️eff=>⬇️mc=>⬆️mining=>⬇️mb. An EPRI brief: www.epri.com/research/pro...

31.03.2025 14:28 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Google Gemini answers: No, if confidence intervals overlap, the difference between the two estimates is not statistically significant. However, it's possible for the difference to be statistically significant even if the confidence intervals overlap.

Google Gemini answers: No, if confidence intervals overlap, the difference between the two estimates is not statistically significant. However, it's possible for the difference to be statistically significant even if the confidence intervals overlap.

It's important to cover all the bases

05.03.2025 19:10 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Video thumbnail

As expected, the Trump team is already deleting climate info from government websites. In anticipation, our team at Urban Ocean Lab created a permanent archive of 100+ key resources and published a permanent archive: www.urbanoceanlab.org/resource-hub πŸ‘©πŸ½β€πŸ’»

24.01.2025 21:12 πŸ‘ 8982 πŸ” 3906 πŸ’¬ 197 πŸ“Œ 156
Post image

Check out my new working paper with amazing ND grad students Bill Kakenmaster and Ben Francis

We show, among other things, that climate attribution among R House candidates depends on district-level climate vulnerability and fossil fuel employment reliance

osf.io/preprints/os...

24.01.2025 17:53 πŸ‘ 37 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 2

Waste of paint! Guernica has stopped exactly ZERO wars.

26.12.2024 17:21 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0