The lead essay
Energy
With diesel at record highs, there is a strong political temptation to look for levers to bring prices down. Last week, Politico reported that the administration was drafting…
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Three arguments
The newest thinking
Energy
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington today for a three-day state visit. Export controls will be a central focus of his meeting with President Trump. Two moratoriums,…
Infrastructure
Americans just lived through one chip shortage. They’re about to live through another, and this one could hit their wallets even harder. The culprit this time isn’t a pandemic disrupting factories; it’s an artificial intelligence (AI) boom devouring the world’s memory chip supply. If Washington isn’t careful, the policy response could make the problem worse, not better.
Infrastructure
Leveraging Xylem's 'smart sewer' technology, the community of South Bend, Indiana, was able to save around $400 million in planned infrastructure spending... roughly one billion gallons of polluted water are now prevented from contaminating the St. Joseph River every year.
Agriculture
Across major farming regions, crop conditions are shifting quickly as rainfall and temperature patterns become more uneven. Too much rain is creating problems in some places, while others are dealing with persistent dryness.
Conservation
Instead of reacting after a fire breaks out, public agencies and utility providers must detect dangerous fires before they ignite. This is where companies like Overstory are trying to make a difference.
Energy
To unlock affordable grid capacity, policymakers should require utilities to consider the best-available line technologies by default, while utilities themselves modernize planning to reinforce their affordability commitment to customers.
Energy
Governments shouldn’t determine which forms of energy are “good” or “bad,” using subsidies and mandates to boost the good while imposing restrictions to hobble the bad. Instead, decisions about the fuel mix should be left to the market as much as possible.
Energy
The Department of Energy’s recent National Transmission Needs Study identifies several of these cases, where regions’ electricity costs would decline substantially if they were connected by a high-capacity transmission line. Providing these benefits to consumers, however, requires confronting not just the incentives that discourage utilities from building interregional lines, but the state laws that let incumbent monopolies control who builds them.
From C3 Solutions
C3 Journal is published by C3 Solutions, a nonprofit advancing market-based ideas for energy, the environment, and human flourishing.
