A collection of 19 posts
The frenzy over new projections of electricity growth continues to escalate. This excellent episode of the Energy Transition Show is the best counterweight to that crisis mentality that I’ve found. The show notes themselves are extensive for those who want to dig in further. Short summary: There are many
Read moreI worked with a stellar team of the world’s top experts on computing’s effect on energy and emissions to craft this commentary for Nature, which came out today (April 22, 2024): Luers, Amy, Jonathan Koomey, Eric Masanet, Owen Gaffney, Felix Creutzig, Juan Lavista Ferres, and Eric Horvitz. 2024.
Read moreThis conversation was a fun one. here’s the description: Will the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence break the climate system? In recent months, utilities and tech companies have argued that soaring use of AI will overwhelm electricity markets. Is that true — or is it a sales pitch
Read moreEvery year since Chris Nelder started the Energy Transition Show, he’s interviewed me for the annual roundup episode, and this year is no exception. We discuss the proper role of government in a capitalist economy, climate change doomism, how the fossil fuel industry rigs the system, and the difficulties
Read moreOur latest book was just released online today by IOP Publishing (The Institute of Physics). It’s called Solving Climate Change: A Guide for Learners and Leaders. The publisher’s page for the book is https://doi.org/10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8. This textbook grew out of a course my colleague
Read moreMy talk was titled “Information and communications technology (ICT) and the energy/climate transition”, and I presented it today (November 24, 2020) at the 3rd Vienna Energy Strategy Dialogue, on the Implications of the Global Energy Transition”, Vienna, Austria. The key points: • Direct electricity used by ICT is modest and
Read moreA couple of weeks ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released emissions scenarios related to the World Energy Outlook (WEO). We’ve used our spreadsheets to disentangle the drivers for those 2019 scenarios. We express the results in what we call a “dashboard of key drivers” (see below). The 2019
Read moreThere’s been discussion recently about the upcoming release of the 2019 International Energy Agency (IEA) scenarios related to the World Energy Outlook (WEO). We’ve worked in the past few months to disentangle the drivers for a key 2017 scenario, what IEA calls their “Beyond 2 degrees” (B2DS) scenario
Read moreBack in 2015, Professor Richard Hirsh (Virginia Tech) and I published the following article in The Electricity Journal, documenting trends in US primary energy, electricity, and real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through 2014: Hirsh, Richard F., and Jonathan G. Koomey. 2015. “Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth: A New Relationship
Read moreAll oil is not created equal when it comes to carbon intensity of production. That’s the message from our latest article, just released in Science today. This work is part of a broader project to assess the full life-cycle emissions impacts of oil production, refining, distribution, and consumption, summarized
Read moreYesterday (May 31, 2018) I talked at the Foothill College Solutions conference about climate solutions, summarizing what I’ve learned in three decades of studying how to solve the climate problem. Here’s the main message: We need to reduce emissions as much as possible, as fast as possible, starting
Read moreThe oil industry has known about the climate problem for a long time, which makes their resistance to actions to reduce emissions somewhat problematic (that’s an understatement). This video from Shell dated 1991 is exemplary in how it treats climate science, and it stands up really well. That speaks
Read moreFor the past two years I’ve been working with a distinguished team of analysts associated with the Risky Business project to analyze possible pathways to substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Our new report, From Risk to Return: Investing in a Clean Energy Economy, just came out
Read moreThe sterling reputations of Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles precede them, and in The Madhouse Effectthey do not disappoint. I confess that I read all the cartoons first (I’m a big Tom Toles fan). Then I dug in to the text, and found it equally enjoyable. The writing
Read moreWe just expanded and updated the Oil-Climate Index (OCI) from the first version that we released in 2015. Project collaborators at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Stanford University, and the University of Calgary have now collected enough open-source data to model the climate impacts of 75 global oils—25
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