Gregor Macdonald @GregorMacdonald Twitter profile

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Gregor Macdonald

4 days

No matter how fast clean energy grows it mostly sits on top of an enormous fossil fuel underlayer, whose position remains unthreatened. Bringing an additional clean energy source like nuclear up to better speed would be one way to make further progress.

The Underlayer

Monday 30 September 2024

www.coldeye.earth

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 months

Killer Pete was so damn good you can see the sincere admiration from Maher as he lands every joke to perfection. cc @SecretaryPete

Brian Beutler

@brianbeutler

3 months

Incredible how easy it is to reveal Republican cravenness when you’re able to easily transpose your thoughts into words.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

1/ Electricity is the new oil. China just killed the future of the internal combustion engine. And climate action (energy transition) is neither scary nor costly to the economy, but will pay for itself over twenty years. That's why I've written Oil Fall.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

8 months

Coal: you'll never catch me. Wind and Solar: just did.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

Let's play the superlative game: the biggest story in global climate is unfolding in real time right now in China's EV market which is absolutely off the hook. EV (NEV) sales are headed towards 3 million this year, as ICE sales get absolutely crushed. 1/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

@JordanUhl I love this so much because it takes stupidity to 11. Anyway, for reality based people, Iowa and Oklahoma now produce over 40% of their electricity from wind alone, and CA and TX produce 20% of their electricity from wind and solar combined. Ergo, lots of clean electric heat.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

@costareports Really surprising given the wise counsel he received from legal experts like @TomFitton :-)

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

@cfdarch @JordanUhl That study is from the year 2000. The solar, wind, and storage industries are entirely transformed from a tech and cost perspective over the past two decades.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

2010: wind+solar just aren't powerful enough technologies to scale to the problem. 2012: wind+solar are fine, but too dependent on subsidies. 2016: wind+solar are now too cheap, and it's messing up powergrid economics. 2019: let's rip out the old, and replace w/ wind+solar.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

US energy balance sheet update: supertrend continues. During the 8 year Obama term the US increased supply from *all* sources by the largest amount in a half century. Pace continued during Trump admin, and now Biden admin. No stopping.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

California put 237, 618 new EV on the road last year. Conservatively speaking (i.e. being generous and cautious) that represents nearly 1 new TWh of electricity demand needed (0.95 TWh). How much *newly created* electricity from wind+solar alone, in CA last year? --> 8.45 TWh.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

This is absolutely amazing. In the US southeast, new analysis suggests many existing coal plants are so uneconomic operationally, that shutting them and *taking the loss of shutting them* could be more than offset by replacing them with new solar. cc @aldatweets @ramez

Tyler Norris

@tylerhnorris

5 years

The Southeast has the largest concentration of uneconomic coal plants in the U.S. — and with better avoided cost methodologies, we can more accurately capture those costs & enable IPPs to displace them for the benefit of ratepayers. (slide from my #SolarSE deck; credit: BNEF)

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

5/ We should be talking not about the cost of climate action to the global economy, but rather, the incredibly high cost of staying on the fossil fuel system, where at least half of all the energy the world pays for is lost to the atmosphere. With oil, the losses are even higher.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

1/ China just re-shaped the future of the global car market. Let's take a look at the numbers rolling in now, as we get the full year picture on China's EV sales and road fuel demand. First and foremost: the sales growth of ICE vehicles has now peaked, in China w/ no way back.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

Yesterday's Trump performance at the CDC was one of the worst Presidential moments I've ever seen in my lifetime. And here, @Scaramucci succinctly explains why the Trump era holiday-from-reality just ran into a brick wall.

Real Time with Bill Maher

@RealTimers

5 years

"You wanna say that the Trump Tower condominium is 10,000 sq. ft. when it's 1,000? No problem. But you can't lie about the science." Watch Anthony @Scaramucci 's take on why Trump's #coronavirus talk is tanking the markets on #RTOvertime :

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

@mrlevine Without question the very worst theme in US car culture is the celebration of vehicles ripping into the backcountry.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

4 years

America: your search for the perfect metaphor is now over.

Daniel Burke (@burke13.bsky.social)

@burkedaniel13

4 years

Someone in Ohio called the cops on a homeless person sleeping on a park bench. It was a statue of Jesus.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

Lots of attention right now to the rising performance of batteries on the California grid: picking up the load as the day ends and the sun sinks. You love to see it.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

Snapshot of California's powergrid mix at 6PM on the longest day of the year. Kinda revealing, fascinating to see solar still punching hard as the batteries come online. | via @https ://twitter.com/grid_status

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 months

@EricLevitz Thoughts: the decline has accelerated quickly and recently enough that Biden himself and those around him--who experience the slippage in small doses--are sincerely not aware of the size and scope of what's happened.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

Sales of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in China have peaked at 28.1 million units (2017) and will never return to those levels. 2019 ICE sales on course toward 23.5 million units. All growth is swinging to EV, both in passenger and commercial markets. Goodbye ICE.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

The US sold 918,000 new EV last year, representing new annual electricity demand of about 3.67 TWh. Yet the US also created 96 TWh of fresh electricity last year entirely from new wind+solar. Our clean power growth swamps new EV demand. More in tomorrow's @TheGregorLetter

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

Cranky wrong guy: we'll never have enough electricity to run all the EVs and besides, they'll be running on coal anyway. US wind and solar industry: we got this.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

16/ But the worst news of all for the oil industry here, in the EU, and China, is that wind and solar electricity is cheap, and it takes 70% less energy to move an EV a mile down the road. Those are devastating facts for a product known as oil, that has long been protected.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

Let's place that in context. China generated 7780 TWh of power in 2020. And as I tirelessly point out, China creates so much new power each year from *wind and solar alone* that it overwhelmingly covers new EV demand. 2020: 61 TWh from *new* wind. 37 TWh from *new* solar. 4/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

Just a casual update here, but 2023 is turning out better than expected, or forecasted, at the beginning of the year: 1. US EV sales are strengthening, with potential to hit/near 10% share for FY 2023. 2. Global solar is so completely bananas it gives me improving hope...

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 month

@milansingh03 @Blueprint_2024 "I think Tim Walz was an excessively complacent, excessively risk-averse selection with very limited upside representing a missed opportunity for Harris to help her cause." - @mattyglesias

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 months

I wonder how many new crimes Trump has committed in the past 12-18 months, as criming to get out of criming is clearly the established historical pattern.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

6/ The Oil Fall series (Part I) begins in California where the first indications began to appear in 2017 that sales of internal combustion engine vehicles would peak, then permanently lose all market share growth to EV. That's now happened. When California warns, listen.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

We are therefore exiting the period when early EV adoption globally was unable to have much of an effect on oil demand. Exiting quickly now, more quickly than can be easily absorbed or accepted--to a new domain where EV are like a WTF? Viking Raid on ICE, and oil. 10/fin.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

The bitter complaint that we can't possibly run the cars on wind and solar will press onward as we create overwhelming surpluses of wind and solar, from which we will indeed power the cars. It's fun, and it's already happening.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

11/ But in the 2H of 2018 China's total vehicle market broke down pretty hard. For the first year in decades, sales went into outright decline. That opened up risk that EV sales would get hurt too. But no. EV now on pace to sell 1.2 million in 2018. *ICE growth is over in China.*

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

@joshtpm This is especially fun, because in the last 12 months, wind power alone provided over 17% of Minnesota’s electricity consumption. In Iowa and Oklahoma, it’s above 40%. Good times. Here’s the data:

Minnesota Wind Generation as a Percent of Total Sales via EIA API

docs.google.com

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

7 years

Today I’m releasing part one of Oil Fall. It’s the story of how wind and solar will jailbreak the powergrid, finding their way into EV.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

8 months

How can you have even a passing knowledge of 20th C history and not regard this as totally insane, or one better, incredibly dangerous. I'll say this: MAGA does not like western civilization, not even a little.

Acyn

@Acyn

8 months

Trump: One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and were attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said.. No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

4/ But now, 7 years later, we no longer live in that world. Indeed, the cost-crash for energy transition has been so revolutionary on a global level, that simple price incentives now taking place at the consumer level are effectively turning what had been costs to gains.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

9/ The internal combustion engine has protected the global oil franchise for nearly a century now. Take away that protection, and oil, long accustomed to world dependency, will be imperiled. Now comes the EV drivetrain, superior in every way. And consumers want those advantages.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

1/ The EV sales growth take-off point is now arriving and everyone is going to have to revise their projections (again). IEA and EIA are of course the farthest behind. But even BNEF may have to revise. China is of course leading the way, but edge-economy California also roaring.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

@secretsandlaws @nycsouthpaw And it must be said, that Thomas' mother has functionally been granted a life estate--remaining in a home no longer owned by her but rent free--if the reporting so far has been correct. That life estate granted to mom has real value.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

But what's unfolding right now in China's car market is far closer to some of the heady forecasts from a couple years back, that at the time just seemed dreamy and wishful. 3 million NEV sales in a 25 million unit market already, in 2021? That is absolutely brutal for oil. 5/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

2/ Years ago I coined a phrase "It's going to take alot of oil, to get off oil." The idea: to fight fossil fuel path dependency and build new energy infrastructure would mean a massive, ongoing hit to global GDP. I loved these words and thought them clever. Now, they're wrong.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

8/ I'm confident the global community has not fully absorbed what just happened in China. But the oil market spotted the change immediately. The 2018 oil crash is nearly entirely about a revision to future oil growth. That's why Part II of Oil Fall was titled "China Sudden Stop."

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

Even as someone who reports on and writes about EV adoption, I remain newly astonished that ICE vehicle sales in China will barely grow, if they grow at all this year, as EV flood the zone, taking all the growth. Really didn't expect that until 2020 at earliest. Crazypants.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

26/ Closing thoughts. The world has to spend about 6% of the energy it produces on the energy required to just extract that energy. With fossil fuels, extraction is forever. Wind and solar are upfront-cost machines--but the year-over-year "extraction" is just wind and sun.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

Kinda fascinating is that China's data agencies have started reporting electricity demand from the emerging EV fleet. Counter to people's intuitions, it's not much. But it's not nothing. 3 million EV hitting the road in 2021 places roughly 10 TWh of new demand on the grid. 3/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

I have never seen the global oil market in its current position: a really scary house of cards, with enormous spare capacity held by OPEC, and "turn it on" flexibility outside of OPEC. And all this is shrouded currently in logistical delivery issues, and high prices. #cuidado 9/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 months

@admsteiner @nikitabier Indeed. At 400 calls, it would look like an 0DTE lucky play. At 4000 calls, well....

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

20/ So here we all are, incorrectly wondering *how to pay* for energy transition (climate action) when now, given extraordinary tech gains, can pay for itself. Sure, if you try to accomplish this in one year...but transitions play out and distribute their costs over decades.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

@AnandWrites $300B is of course just a price tag, saying little about the prospective ROI of those investments. Indeed, we already know the avoided-losses and energy gains would be so large that the world could literally print that $300B, and, it would be well worth it.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

21/ Gasoline is the portal through which the next big inflection point arrives in energy transition. The world consumes about 400 billion gallons of gasoline per day. EV roughly speaking only need 30% of that energy (equivalent) to get the same job done. China will lead the way.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

Now that global oil demand growth is over, and we enter a plateau-of-consumption period of at least several years where demand oscillates (but does not fall, yet), trading price is imo going to be far more difficult than ever. Here are some themes: 1/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

Reaching 5% market share tends to be a takeoff point for new technology, so let's review EV sales share in China since 2015. 2015: 1.34% 2016: 1.81% 2017: 2.69% 2018: 4.49% 2019: 4.68% 2020: 5.40% 2021: 13.40% 2022 (forecast) 24.63%

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

@JessGrose Contrast with a pro-natalist society like New Zealand: for many decades, within 3-5 days after a new mother returned home with her child, a traveling nurse would show up with support, time to chat, and any supplies needed. "Just to see how everyone is doing, if they need help."

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

4 years

Democrats currently have a single issue offered to them on a silver platter, against which Republicans are defenseless, one that would catalyze majority buy-in on the need to expand not just SCOTUS but other federal courts, and one that is clearly most pressing: Voting. 1/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

Care to make a guess where we're headed, with EV starting to blow past 10% market share in China? How about 7 million EV sales in a 28 million unit market during 2025? Through the lever of petroleum product demand, what is the signal to oil markets from this point forward? 6/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

Coal had one final hope: that it could cling to the last gasp of growth, in India. Well, that's over. | India, the world's no. 2 coal buyer, plans to cut imports by a third via @markets

India, World's No. 2 Coal Buyer, Plans to Cut Imports by a Third

India’s coal ministry is preparing a plan to cut imports of the fuel by at least a third over the next five years, counting on an increase in domestic production and a jump in renewable output,...

www.bloomberg.com

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

19/ As you can see, the US could have put 3.6 million new EV on the road last year, not just 360K, and they all would have been easily covered by generation from new wind and solar. China is running the same formula. The heart of the matter is the extreme efficiency of EV.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

JMHO but $TSLA has exactly the wrong strategy for what happens next in EV. The cybertruck is an abysmal piece of clownware. And every maker from VW to Kia and now Toyota is coming with the vehicle that'll matter most in the US: the crossover. In short, Musk forgot Columbus, OH.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

18/ In 2018, the US sold 360,000 new EV (pure, 100% EV and also PHEV). To be very overly generous, that represents about 1.45 TWh of new electricity demand. But hells bells, the amount of *new* wind and solar created in 2018 alone will be at least 60 TWh. Gasoline is in trouble.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

4 years

@MylesUdland The way I'd play this is to say: there's not going to be a vaccine anywhere near in time to help the economy as one might hope, and educated people who know better shouldn't be engaging in obvious fantasies, like, it's coming soon, or even next year.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

In my latest newsletter I showed that after ICE sales peaked at 28.1 million units in 2017, China's road fuel demand stopped growing. While we can't count on fuel demand to stay flat (on-road ICE fleet in China is mighty) ICE sales are on course to be < 22 million this year. 2/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

7/ Part II of the Oil Fall series moved on to the China question: if we know once ICE vehicle sales growth peaks it will never claw back share from EV, how close are we to this inflection in China? Originally I thought this could happen as early as 2020. Well, 2020 came early.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

@laril1234 @ianbremmer The disincentives for Ian to lie are huge. His whole business is based on intelligence and analysis. Thank you for reporting this Ian. It is shocking. What's very not shocking: Musk lying.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

Bic pen on my coffee napkin: Economy running at $20T per annum in GDP suffers a sudden stop for 3 months. Prepare to design packages that sum to $5T (20T/4). And, given structure of sudden stop, the bottom up relief--the fix to demand--is the primary need.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

7 months

@joshtpm Worse, as @nycsouthpaw points out, they denied DOJ originally in its request to take up the question on an expedited based, thus putting the DC court into play, and have now burned up even more time. If they denied the stay, it would have somehow all made sense. But no.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

The US continues to create new generation from wind and solar on an annual basis that completely overwhelms demand from new on-road EV.

US Wind and Solar Electricity Generation Growth vs Demand Growth from New On-Road EV in TWh...

Chart from: coldeye.earth

www.datawrapper.de

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

29/ One of the biggest mistakes the climate community can make at the current juncture is to misconceive the problem as requiring policy edicts, rather than policy incentives. The latter recognizes the wind is already at the back of transition. The former is stuck in year 2010.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

28/ ..ongoing harvesting operation in which thermodynamic gains (yes, in dollars too) will be picked up by the economy. Not over just one year, but again over a couple of decades. So if you are thinking you have to "raise taxes to pay for it," you have not properly understood it.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

30/ Thanks so much to all the readers so far that have given me feedback on the Oil Fall series. This thread today has leaned in a very thematic direction but there is much data inside of the Oil Fall series. I hope you read it and respond. All best, G

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

22/ How do large physical systems change? Not overnight. First growth slows. Then growth goes flat. And then the decline. The reason you can't intuit how much trouble oil and fossil fuels face is because you see easily see the dependency on them, but less so the transition.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

12/ A primary focus of the Oil Fall series has been to hunt for Peak ICE growth. I'm not alone. The good folks at @BloombergNEF have been on the case as well. Many thanks to them. Now, the world is waking up to peak ICE too.

Colin Mckerracher

@colinmckerrache

6 years

Yep, this is what I've been saying. Credit to @GregorMacdonald who probably spotted it first.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

1/ China is on pace to sell 4 million fewer ICE cars this year, as a cyclical auto sector slowdown merges into real problems w/ China's economy. A thread of fresh data on oil, transport, renewables, as a mid-year update to my Oil Fall series.

Oil Fall 2023

Welcome to the 2023 update to the original Oil Fall series. Contents: The original Oil Fall title at 105 pages. And the 2023 update, Electric Candyland, at 29 pages. Compressed and Non-Compressed v...

terrajoule.gumroad.com

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

Something folks may not know about me: I used to be an oil market trader 2002-2008. My entire edge was trading against the hatred of higher oil prices, because I knew, and was correct, there was a structural shortage problem. A multi-year problem. What do I see now? 8/

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

11 months

@BenjySarlin @joshtpm @lindayaX In 2015, comments on the hate sites indicated a genuine excitement at the prospect of Trump, seeing him as a stalking horse for their cherished ideas, and the chance they'd finally come into the mainstream. I saw the same today on X. For them, Musk "finally said it."

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

@TheRickWilson @NoLabelsOrg Let's rename them Crow Labels.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

4 years

Over the past two years I've been telling the story of how global oil demand growth would eventually flatten, decimating the industry. Today's oil gotterdammerung is a very different story; a macro crisis that will not as many hope deliver easy progress to the climate problem. 1/

Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

1/ Electricity is the new oil. China just killed the future of the internal combustion engine. And climate action (energy transition) is neither scary nor costly to the economy, but will pay for itself over twenty years. That's why I've written Oil Fall.

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Gregor Macdonald

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3 years

@RaoulGMI You could review the (1997) Bernanke paper which found that in the aftermath of tightening cycles that were also paired w/ energy spikes, the net effect of monetary actions was to effectively double the effect of tightening. At least gives you your theme.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

15/ Here's why it's over for ICE in California (led by Los Angeles, of course) as EV take control of the market. In 2018, EV took at least 175K of a falling market, of 1.992 million vehicles. ICE sales fell for a second year in a row. And EV (EV+PHEV) now at 8.7% of sales.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

23/ Accordingly, the war for oil's future has nothing to do with the 100 mbpd of daily consumption but the 1-2 mbpd of annual growth the industry needs. Same for ICE vs EV: the marginal change *IS* the big change you are looking for.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

Coal fell to just 23.2% of US power generation last year, as combined wind+solar reached 9.81%--having nearly doubled their share in the past 5 years. Coal's share of the grid is now collapsing, so it's likely to be met or surpassed by combined W+S by the year 2025.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

10/ Here's how China's vehicle market was shaping up coming into mid-year 2018. It had joined the global slowdown in total vehicle sales, but, only mildly. EV growth very strong. But ICE still growing. And most wondered if EV sales could really hit 1 million.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

14/ There's a reason LA appears as a through-line in the Oil Fall series: ponder deeply how you would transform Los Angeles, moving it away from fossil fuels, and you will have unlocked solutions for most of the world. Post-war car centered cities, and all that, you see.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

4 years

@TheStalwart Hyperinflation is everywhere and at all times a behavioral phenomenon. No math is involved. And every warning about massive inflation in the US from our debt growth should have come true 25 times by now. All the Points of No Return warned about decades ago have all come to pass.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

10 months

China is currently the biggest builder of new nuclear capacity. But far more aggressively, it's the heavyweight champion of new solar capacity. That nuclear growth doesn't constrain, even a little, solar growth is confusing to the zero-sum people.

Yan Qin

@YanQinyq

11 months

China monthly Solar additions in 2022/2023

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

3/ In one of the earlier papers to estimate the cost of a clean energy transition, @Sustainable2050 et al (2012) suggested 2% of global annual GDP would be required, and then this investment would convert into gains as time went by. This was a good opening salvo to the question.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

10 months

@jonathanchait How can it be awful when an originalist would be hard pressed to argue against the applicability of the plain, literal language of the relevant amendment. I conclude you weren't really following this much.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

9 months

Lots of people seem to not understand that closing coal and replacing it with natural gas is not a win. It's a one-time step down in emissions to a new, hard layer that's every bit as challenging to dislodge as the coal before it.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 months

@brent_peabody Nice map. Good theme. But a couple of choices make no sense: MT's presidential margins are far, far away. It's not a green state. NH on the other hand is definitely not a gray state.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

27/ Meanwhile, the global economy historically has spent somewhere between 6% of GDP and 10% of GDP (higher at times) on energy. Energy costs will never go to zero. But an electrification of the economy, in which marginal growth comes from wind and solar, represents a large...

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

@KevinMKruse Put another way: for everyone unclear on how deeply inadequate and poorly designed was the Senate GOP recovery proposal, just let it go into effect and you’ll understand soon enough.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

@MikeBloomberg Very wise decision on your part, Mike. With a very full DEM field already forming the impact you'll unleash with the Beyond Carbon effort could be better, and faster. Well done.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

2 years

China check-up: a country where ICE sales peaked five years ago, and where EV adoption is skyrocketing, is a country that needs to create gobs of new wind and solar. Wonder how they're coming along. :-)

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

4 years

Excessively high prison populations are a massive social failure and a private prison industry is full-on dystopian. @MotherJones and its editor @ClaraJeffery are to be commended for one of the most extraordinary stories of the past decade, a must read:

Jennifer Epstein

@jeneps

4 years

Biden will direct the federal government today not to renew any contract with private prisons

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

5 years

My outlook for the oil and gas sector in 2020 and 2021 is the bleakest it's ever been, in 20 years of following energy markets. I would go so far to say we are entering the mirror image of the 2004-2008 raging bull market in oil. And it doesn't improve, even after 2021.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

17/ The Oil Fall series quantifies how easy it will be--indeed, already is trivially easy--to build new wind and solar to meet marginal demand growth from emerging fleets of EV, even a *fast* emerging fleet of EV. People's intuitions lead them astray on this area. So, an example.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

8 years

If only we could measure the declining US dependence on foreign energy over past decade. @mattyglesias @joshtpm

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

Coda and typo to the Oil Fall mega-thread: In tweet #21 , I inadvertently wrote the world consumes 400 billion gallons per day, but of course it's per *year*. Worry not: that data point is featured strongly, and correctly, in the Oil Fall series,

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

Just to remind there's a vast inventory of short-distance car trips (3-7 miles) that can be replaced by both bikes, and especially e-bikes. It's like a rich vein that has yet to be even scratched. Here in the US, all that's required is dead easy, low cost protected lane creation.

Brent Toderian

@BrentToderian

3 years

BIG NEWS: Milan has approved a £200 million plan to create a new 750km network of bike paths linking 80% of the city to bike paths, & connect the city to surrounding areas. The goal is to achieve a 20% modal shift to biking by 2035. Strategy & leadership.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

3 years

@SecretaryPete Because it's been so long since we invested in ourselves that we no longer even have the language to describe what needs to be done.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

6 years

13/ The Oil Fall series has been followed all year globally by urban planners, investment managers, and folks in the energy industry. I was particularly happy to learn @AIALosAngeles has Oil Fall on their reading list. LA is dear to me, and the series.

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Gregor Macdonald

@GregorMacdonald

1 year

@gtconway3d I gave a presentation about this exact issue last week to a corporate board, and explained the US is not, and will not, take regulatory action towards any *existing* device: cars, stoves, or anything else. Democrats are in 99% unison, on that issue. AMTalkRadio hilarity.

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