Tony Dutzik

Our 8th annual State of Renewable Energy dashboard w/@EnvAm is live! Check out how your state ranks in adoption of wind, solar, electric vehicles and more. frontiergroup.org/resources/the-…

WOW. Just in the last two weeks, BYD showrooms around the world are seeing a surge in customer demand from people who are deciding that now is the time to switch to EVS, with oil prices so high. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Over the past 20 years, traffic projections (dotted lines) have been repeatedly wrong about growth on the Brent Spence Bridge. Actual traffic (solid blue) has not increased, and costs have quadrupled. Do we need a new companion bridge (the old bridge is staying) at any cost?

Price of Brent Spence project now nearly $4.4B, up from $3.6B cincinnati.com/story/news/202…

You know what never got stopped by war in the Strait of Hormuz? On-farm and local fertilizer sources that recirculate naturally-created nutrients through the same ecosystem infinitely.

Amid a growing national pushback on data centers, Virginia senators have voted to end a projected $1.6 billion annual tax break, requiring the industry to resume paying a minimum 5.3% sales tax. to.pbs.org/4sHadlL

@bslotterback @DukeU I know, and I appreciate that. Believe me.

@FrontierTony @DukeU I'm not out of "decarbonize the grid mode"!

If we could maximize data center flexibility, we could reduce power generation needs (mostly gas) about 40 GW, or roughly half of the projected growth in demand growth in the US, according to @DukeU nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/articles/key-t…

@bslotterback @DukeU We just need to be honest with ourselves about this, I think. If we're out of "decarbonize the grid" mode and into "prevent even more catastrophic catastrophe" mode, that just needs to be made clear. I don't think it's being made clear now.

@bslotterback @DukeU Yes. But it's the near-term emissions bump from increased utilization, plus our lack of tools to encourage/force regional "flexibility", plus what look like optimistic assumptions about coal retirements that are worrisome. This seems like a best case scenario and it's not good.

The obsession with “decentralized energy” is that everything is pointing towards it. Whether it’s climate focused people pushing solar, large loads investing in onsite turbines, or grid tech people pushing batteries. The advantages of scale have eroded significantly since the grid was formed. Whether it be due to changes in financing, generation types, or load profiles - generation at the edge has many (certainly not all) advantages over centralized systems. In face, scale is now a negative given the “social impact” it incurs (justified or not, it’s a fact). Because we’ve made gas so cheap, and coal irrelevant - the efficiency gains of a state of the art CCGT vs a cheap gas engine in your parking lot is maybe .02/kWh at $4/mmbtu - everything else is distribution. A battery at your factory is the same asset as is deployed in series on the bulk transmission system - the same is true of solar panels on your house. The differences are explicitly distribution - not physics. The same thing shows up in financing - what bank is spending a billion dollars without a firm fixed offtake? Consider the difference between a corporate balance sheet that is spending 1/100th of the cost and is doing so to hedge their own costs or outage risk. What’s going to get built more? 1/4 of every new watt of capacity is going BTM, which would have been unheard of when we designed the grid.

Texas will have to spend billions “to prevent a total evacuation of the city” if water supplies are depleted in Corpus Christi this fall texastribune.org/2026/03/08/tex…

North American bird populations are not only declining, but they’re also shrinking faster with each passing year—particularly in regions shaped by intensive agriculture, according to a new study in Science. scim.ag/4clAUaN

Huge. Take notes, Massachusetts, OR/WA, etc.

Output from U.S. small-scale solar has doubled since 2020, and now accounts for more than 2% of total U.S. power generation. Small-scale solar works everywhere, particularly in areas where larger utility-scale facilities are harder to site. New insights: hubs.li/Q044xVBt0

Many of North America’s birds are in a state of accelerating decline, with over half of 122 species dying out faster, according to a new study. Their vanishing songs are a bellwether of a far deeper biodiversity crisis, researchers say. wapo.st/4kUFnTT

It's widely assumed that Americans have moved on from climate worry. The invaluable Yale survey on Climate Change and the American Mind tells a different story: more Americans are worried today about warming than during Waxman-Markey, the Paris accords, or I.R.A. negotiations.

Periodic reminder that those who periodically share this graph are pretty mum on how the values on both axes are log-transformed and what that implies.

You know that graph plotting (logged) GDP against (logged) energy consumption per capita, highlighting the bottom right corner and saying that "there is no such thing as a low-energy rich country"? (done my own version below) There's a few problems with it... (THREAD)

Offshore wind is under attack. It’s also a huge reason the Northeast’s grid held up during a weekslong cold spell. canarymedia.com/articles/offsh…