Excellent podcast from Columbia Energy Exchange. Interview with Javier Blas on the lessons from Iran war. Particularly important reminder that refining sector disruptions playing huge role in gasoline/diesel prices. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/j...

Javier Blas on Lessons from Closing Hormuz (So Far)

Podcast Episode · Columbia Energy Exchange · August 4 · 1h

podcasts.apple.com

Join my upcoming program @cwclub.bsky.social: A conversation with U.C. Berkeley's @severinborenstein.bsky.social to discuss how the U.S.-Iran conflict & disruptions in the Strait of #Hormuz impact global oil, gas, and #energy security including in the U.S.: www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2026-...

The U.S.-Iran Conflict and Energy Markets

In this program, we explore how the U.S.-Iran conflict and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz impact global oil, gas, and energy security, including in the United States, analyzing maritime blockages...

commonwealthclub.org

This is hardly the most egregious example of the lies, corruption of justice, and autocratic tendencies of this administration, but still worth noting how trump tears down the institutions that protect everyday citizens. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

How Trump’s claims of vandalism at the renovated Reflecting Pool crumbled

Trump has lashed out at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro after she dropped vandalism cases and blamed damage at the pool on rushed and flawed work by a contractor.

washingtonpost.com

In this week's Energy Institute blog, Jim Bushnell reports on important new research on GHG leakage in California's cap and trade market. His work with Kevin Novan shows that this remains a major challenge when CA imports electricity. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/08/03/c...

California’s Electricity Imports Are Much Cleaner. How Much of it is Real?

About half of the largest emissions reduction in California’s cap-and-trade program came from clean power that already existed. One of the central challenges in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) …

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Berkeley physics (emeritus) Professor Rich Muller and his daughter, Liz, ready to build small reactor a mile beneath Kansas town. Both science and economics sound daunting, but I would not bet against Rich. www.wsj.com/us-news/clim...

An Underground Nuclear Reactor Is Coming to This Kansas Town—and Dividing Locals

No one has tried operating a commercial one a mile down—until now in Parsons. “It’s great that it’s here. It’s kind of bad that we’re the guinea pigs,” says one local leader.

wsj.com

My post Monday broke down last 20 years of CA's rising gasoline premium over rest of US: 60% taxes and enviromental fees, 50% marketing/distribution/retailing, -10% wholesale commodity price. Time to get deeper understanding of furthest downstream sectors. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/07/27/w...

Why Do Californians Pay More At the Pump?

Breaking down more than two decades of the state’s gasoline price premium. The war is back on, crude oil prices are back up, and the cost of gasoline has reversed its declines of a few weeks ago. H…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Nice explainer in the FT on which price of oil we should be talking about. Front month futures price is usually "good enough", but not during times of extreme volatility. Temporal and geographic variation can be huge in the very short run, eg, last few trading days. www.ft.com/content/94f2...

Why the ‘oil price’ isn’t always the oil price

Contango for two

ft.com

Jumping back in and catching up. In the EI blog last week, Meredith confronted the very difficult issue of what to do with gas distribution systems as we transition off of natural gas. Tough to balance efficiency, fairness, commitment to decarbonization. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/w...

Why Are We Sinking Billions into a Gas System We Plan to Leave Behind?

Old rules, new pipes, and a shrinking customer base. Our natural gas distribution system is aging. Chances are, there’s an aging gas main under a street near you that will pose some leakage risk in…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Lucas Davis writes in Energy Inst blog that end of tax credits for heat pumps have had no discernible effect on heat pump sales. Bad news: some subsidy was wasted government spending. Good news: heat pumps now on a sustainable growth trajectory. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/07/13/w...

Will U.S. Households Still Buy Heat Pumps Without a Tax Credit?

From 2023-2025 there was a $2,000 U.S. income tax credit for heat pumps. Not anymore. The last few years were a great time to buy a heat pump. U.S. households installing a heat pump during 2023, 20…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Detailed FT article highlights why refined product prices have not fallen as fast as we would expect, even from normal rockets and feathers adjustment. Russia/Ukraine and US-Israel/Iran wars have also disrupted refining, especially for diesel. www.ft.com/content/4895...

This certainly has drivers going back to the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline, but it also has roots in ridiculous US tariffs and the Gordie Howe bridge. www.ft.com/content/e5ff...

Canada unveils plans for new oil pipeline to break dependence on US

Project to supply Asia with 1mn barrels per day comes amid trade hostilities with southern neighbour

ft.com

Max Auffhammer's must-read post yesterday about a new paper examining the relationship between wind turbines and adverse health impacts. TLDR: None found. One empirical paper does not close a literature, but this one sure should move beliefs. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/07/06/a...

Are Wind Turbines Making People Sick?

New research finds no evidence of negative health impacts from wind turbines Maybe it’s because I am currently in Portugal (which is totally next door to Spain) and re-reading Don Quixote, that I a…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Trump managed to make the World Cup about him and in the process anger much of the world. And then much of the world cheered at a US failure. Recurrent theme. Sad that in the process he dragged down the fine athletes of the USMNT. www.wsj.com/sports/socce...

‘Overturn This.’ Boiling Belgium Taunts Trump and Sends U.S. Soccer Packing.

A lively march to the World Cup’s round of 16 reaches a familiar end versus an extra-motivated contender. Where does U.S. men’s soccer go from here?

wsj.com

Belated congratulations to Pattern Energy on the New Mexico SunZia Wind Project and Transmission Project. The combination will deliver over 2 GW of power to Southern California, while also supplying to Arizona and New Mexico. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

Largest wind farm in the United States slated to begin commercial operations - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

eia.gov

EIA has a detailed history of US energy consumption over 250 years, from the early renewables (wood) to coal to hydrocarbons and most recently the growth of nuclear and now wind and solar, which still have a long way to go. www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...

Very useful extended piece in Utility Dive on the costs and benefits of DOE's 202(c) orders that are keeping open some coal plants under the argument that they are needed for grid reliability. www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-eme...

DOE emergency orders are incurring additional costs. What are the benefits?

Some of the generating units have operated during tight grid conditions and may have contributed to reliability. Keeping them running costs about $550 million a year, the Sierra Club says.

utilitydive.com

In the Energy Institute blog this week, Andy Campbell's really nice explainer about negative energy prices, electricity and nat gas. It pairs well with Lucas's post 2 weeks ago on renewables curtailment, especially for a microecon or energy markets course. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/06/29/t...

The Curiosity of Negative Energy Prices

Negative energy prices reveal opportunities for markets and consumers. US consumers have experienced rising prices for most of this decade. Energy bills have climbed at an even faster rate – partic…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

My blog post this week discusses both the supply/demand reasons that oil prices never reached the stratospheric levels some predicted during the Iran conflict, and the political/Trumpy reasons. The combination dampened a price spike. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/06/22/w...

Why Hasn’t the Iran War Driven Oil Prices Even Higher?

Supply and demand likely play an important role, but so do market expectations. When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in early March 2026, the media carried some pretty scary predictions of what wo…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

In this week's EI blog, Lucas Davis uses some cool data visualization techniques to look at the time trend in solar/wind curtailments in California. They are way up. The analysis reveals some interesting seasonal patterns in the changes. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/06/15/v...

Visualizing California Renewables Curtailments

Alternative ways to see California’s record-breaking April 2026. April 2026 was an all-time record for renewables curtailment in California. 1.46 million MWhs. That’s a lot. Equivalent to 18% of al…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Meredith Fowlie's Australia trip prompted her to write an insightful post about the very different ways CA and AUS are going about decarbonization. I love the dynamic pricing innovation, still trying to figure out why rooftop solar is SO much cheaper there. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/06/08/d...

Decarbonization Down Under

Clean energy transition, Aussie rules. I’m visiting the University of Melbourne. Lucky me. During the first week of our visit, my son and I got to watch an AFL “footy” match at the Melbourne Cricke…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

California's Mystery Gasoline Surcharge in May was lower than it was before the war. CA has problems in its fuel industry, but it is hard to find theoretical or empirical support for the idea that the war worsened those problems.

There were many hyperventilating reports, even from WSJ, that CA would get slammed bc gets much oil through Strait of Hormuz. "Last oil shipment from Strait to CA means skyrocketing prices soon!" But mkt reallocated oil, like it does; CA stayed in line with rest of US. www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Think $6 Gas Is Bad? It’s About to Get Even Worse in California

The Golden State depends more on crude-oil shipments from the Middle East than any other U.S. state.

wsj.com

Very busy couple weeks, but back to posting. 2 weeks ago, Jim Bushnell blogged about intriguing new research suggesting that getting drivers to accept managed EV charging may be more difficult than we'd hope. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/06/01/m...

Managed EV Charging: Good Work, If Anyone Would Take It

Even Silicon Valley EV owners mostly say no to letting the utility schedule their charging. Most of the public attention paid to electric vehicle (EV) policy has focused on getting them on the road…

energyathaas.wordpress.com

World has lost 10-15m bbl/day and started war w aggregate stocks of about 10b bbl. There won't be a stockout, but as stocks are drawn down, they become more valuable and prices rise. There's a limit to how long Trump can jawbone prices down as stocks fall. www.ft.com/content/7b32...

Chevron CEO warns oil prices to jump over summer as supplies dwindle

Blockade in Strait of Hormuz has removed up to 13mn barrels a day from global markets and drawn down ‘shock absorbers’

ft.com

The Energy Institute at Haas is hiring an Office Manager. If interested, go to this Berkeley jobs page. External to UC and Internal applicants have separate links. Please search for job number “86265”. More info on EI: haas.berkeley.edu/energy-insti... berkeley.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?...

The UK is taking an important step towards energy affordability that California should emulate. They are moving policy costs off of electric bills and on to the government budget. We suggested this for CA 5 years ago. haas.berkeley.edu/energy-insti... www.cornwall-insight.com/press-releas...

Budget Cuts over £145 from Annual Household Energy Bills, But Affordability Challenge Remains

Households could see around £145 a year in policy costs cut from energy bills in April under measures announced in the Chancellor’s Budget.

cornwall-insight.com

This, just a couple of weeks after we were told Europe is about to run out of jet fuel. It turns out that markets are pretty good at reallocating supplies to where they fetch the highest price. www.ft.com/content/ceaa...

European oil refiners and airlines have ‘almost zero’ jet fuel shortage concerns

Refiners maximise production and increase imports from US and Africa to offset loss of Middle Eastern supplies

ft.com

To those who didn't like Lucas Davis's post today on consumer savings from shale gas, because it only briefly mentions that calculations exclude negative enviromental cost: Facts are the beginning (and foundation) of a useful policy discussion, not the end. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/11/h...

How Much Has Shale Gas Saved U.S. Consumers?

About $200 billion annually since 2007, according to a new Energy Institute working paper. The war in Iran has pushed up natural gas prices in most of the world. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices …

energyathaas.wordpress.com

Hey @pacificgaselectric , why every month do I get an email saying "Your PG&E Energy Statement is Ready to View" but when I login will only show me total owed and a message that the detailed bill won't be ready until the next day? It's almost as if PG&E doesn't want me to look at my detailed bill.

Jim Sallee's EI blog about his important new paper w Koichiro Ito and Andrew Smith showing large international spillovers of fuel economy standards. Japan car makers redesigned cars for their own standards and ended up saving US buyers a lot of gasoline. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/04/m...

Made in Japan, Cleaner in America

A new EI working paper shows that a fuel-economy incentive in Japan created spillover benefits in the US market. Japanese cars affected by the policy improved MPG in the US, leading to greater gree…

energyathaas.wordpress.com