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Yesterday

How to build a lunar mass driver

cjhandmer·Casey Handmer·19h ago

Casey Handmer May 2026 What? Elon has recently (late 2025, early 2026) been talking about building many terawatts of orbital AI compute and launching some components from Moon factories with a mass driver. This is an old idea, enabled by the Moon’s relatively low gravity and lack of an atmosphere. See, for example, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and The High Frontier. The fundamental problem with The High Frontier is that the set of products that can be made in space and sold on Earth while making...

This Week

California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

cdrnsf·1d ago62pts

Californians are facing growing uncertainty at the pump after the state’s last major oil shipment from the Strait of Hormuz arrived in Long Beach on Monday, as

UK businesses brace for jet fuel rationing

OgsyedIE·2d ago70pts

Goldman Sachs warns the UK is Europe's most exposed economy to a jet fuel crisis, with rationing looming as Strait of Hormuz closure hits airlines, SMEs and travel costs.

Heat pump sales rise across Europe

doener·4d ago220pts

Residential heat pump sales increased 17% across 11 European countries in the first quarter of 2026, following a sharp rise in gas and oil prices after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in March, says the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA).

Streamlining the difficult work of whole-home retrofits

David Roberts·Volts·2d ago

Today, coordinating a whole-home retrofit — or even just getting a heat pump — involves confusing research, a parade of contractors, and wildly varying quotes. It’s a broken system that practically pushes people to just buy another gas furnace. In this episode, I’m joined by Zero Homes CEO Grant Gunnison to discuss ways to improve this system for both customers and contractors. Instructions to add paid episodes to your preferred podcast app via mobile / desktop(PDF transcript)(Active transcript...

Older

Pro-Development Environmentalists

Alex Tabarrok·Marginal Revolution·8d ago

The Breakthrough Institute (BTI) found that “just 10 organizations initiated 35% of the total NEPA cases brought by NGOs.” The Sierra Club and its local chapters alone were responsible for more than 14% of these lawsuits. The dominance of a small number of groups is more pronounced in forest management and energy cases; only 10 groups filed 67% and 48% of these cases, respectively. In BTI’s “The Procedural Hangover: How NEPA Litigation Obstructs Critical Projects” follow-up, which expanded the a...

Solving the Strait of Hormuz Blockage

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·1mo ago

Markets ensure the disruption can't last more than 1-2 years. ... Read More

2026 Geothermal Update

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·2mo ago

Progress grinds forward as the great filter looms. ... Read More

Speed Can Reindustrialize America

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·2mo ago

Reviving manufacturing doesn't require a planned economy, just a better business model. ... Read More

A Nuclear Fission Regulatory Blank Slate

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·6mo ago

What if nuclear regulations were reset? ... Read More

Building Ultra Cheap Energy Storage for Solar PV

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·8mo ago

Solar still needs storage cheap enough to move energy between seasons. I have been working on a startup to do this for the last two years. ... Read More

Expanding the Universal Marginal Energy Source

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·8mo ago

Solar PV is poised to change the global energy landscape. ... Read More

Are Volcanoes a Risk to Solar Dominated Grids?

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·9mo ago

It seems grids will fare fine because of non linear affects. ... Read More

The Outsize Impact of AI Logistics

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·10mo ago

Automated logistics will heavy impact one third of GDP. ... Read More

A Review of Massively Scalable Enhanced Rock Weathering

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·12mo ago

How cheap can it pull CO2 from the air? ... Read More

Imagining the Drone Air Force

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·15mo ago

Can cheap, expendable drones complete every mission? ... Read More

Integrating AI Agents into Companies

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·16mo ago

AI needs a different environment than humans to take advantage of its speed. ... Read More

Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·19mo ago

Why ground transportation still has a lot of legs. ... Read More

2024 Geothermal Update

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·20mo ago

Drilling and completions technology progresses, but is it enough? ... Read More

How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·25mo ago

Powering data centers with solar and batteries can be compelling with optimized designs. ... Read More

Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·28mo ago

The US Navy's ship program is sick, but the fixes aren't rocket science. ... Read More

Making Hydrogen Affordable

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·29mo ago

Green hydrogen could be critical for chemical production, but making it cost effective is a tall task. ... Read More

Evaluating Geothermal Learning Curves

Austin Vernon·Austin Vernon·30mo ago

A look at how geothermal might improve like wind and solar. ... Read More

Australia will run an overt command economy by 2040

cjhandmer·Casey Handmer·22d ago

Australia’s Fiscal Point of No Return Last September I wrote about Australian economic stagnation — how taxation past the Laffer curve’s point of peak growth, zero public sector productivity improvement since 2001, and the systematic eradication of manufacturing and ICT from the economy have combined to produce economic stagnation and flatlining living standards. The NDIS and similar social spending were the only parts of the economy “growing,” but because this spending is not cumulatively gener...

Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories now

cjhandmer·Casey Handmer·2mo ago

A quick note collating a list of blogs I’ve written on the topic. I’ll update it with good third party write ups as I become aware of them. Context: SpaceX announced a refocus on lunar development. My best explanation for this is that SpaceX wants to accelerate human occupation of space which, requiring enormous resources to sustain, means accelerating capitalism in space. Five years ago, building a city on Mars was conceived as a philanthropic venture and the best a market could offer was a set...

Direct Current Data Centers

cjhandmer·Casey Handmer·3mo ago

Casey Handmer, Matt Weickert Originally posted at the Terraform Blog. This post explains our current views on how humanity will achieve Kardashev Level 1 status by exploiting the full energy resources of an entire planet. More specifically, how pure solar+batteries will power AI scaleup beyond gas turbine manufacturing limits. [Edit: Thank you for the nice write up, Ana!] It is an extension to my earlier post of March 2024 on using solar to power AI datacenters, and a response of sorts to the Sc...

Energy Predictions 2025

cjhandmer·Casey Handmer·5mo ago

Printable pdf. It’s been a few years since I wrote a broad post on energy, so I’m providing an update in one easy to read place. More detailed specific posts on energy are here. If you want to work on the future of energy, we’re hiring for a wide range of opportunities at Terraform Industries. Current fuel mix and uses The US consumes about 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year. Of this, about 80 start life as coal, oil or gas, and roughly a third of the energy mix serves the electrical grid. ...

The big stories from the last year in electricity

David Roberts·Volts·16d ago

The think tank Ember just released its yearly Global Electricity Review. In this episode, I chat with co-authors Nicolas Fulghum & Kostantsa Rangelova about the biggest stories in the global power sector in 2025. We geek out over the record-breaking scale of solar deployment, the game-changing role of batteries in shifting midday power to the evening, and the tantalizing possibility that India will not follow China’s coal-heavy development path and that global fossil fuel generation has finally ...

Doing data centers the not-dumb way

David Roberts·Volts·23d ago

In this episode, I welcome back my old friend Jigar Shah to discuss the current hullabaloo around explosive electricity demand from new data centers. We dig into why its stupid for tech companies to build their own behind-the-meter natural gas plants, how this approach is wrecking equipment and destabilizing the grid, and a better, smarter, faster path forward. Instructions to add paid episodes to your preferred podcast app via mobile / desktop(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:...

Ruggedized solar power for the hard places

David Roberts·Volts·28d ago

There are some circumstances — think disaster recovery zones or forward military bases — that cry out for portable, reliable, resilient power. I talk with Lauren Flanagan about Sesame Solar’s self-contained nanogrids, which use solar PV, batteries, and hydrogen storage to provide energy that works around the clock in remote or inclement environments. Instructions to add paid episodes to your preferred podcast app via mobile / desktop(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David Rober...

Using more of the grid we’ve already built

David Roberts·Volts·1mo ago

The US power grid runs at about 50% capacity on average — built for its worst day, underutilized every other day. As demand surges from data centers and electrification, utilities are racing to build more infrastructure. But Ian Magruder, who heads the new industry-backed Utilize Coalition, argues there's a cheaper, faster path: better use what we've already built — it will enable faster growth and bring down ratepayer bills, potentially by billions.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transc...

Should we block some sunlight to cool the planet?

David Roberts·Volts·1mo ago

In this episode, Dakota Gruener of Reflective walks me through her organization’s new project, which maps the gaps in our scientific understanding of stratospheric aerosol injection — currently the leading candidate for directly cooling the planet. We get into what we don’t know (including a factor-of-two disagreement on basic aerosol physics), who’s already doing this without oversight, and the unsettling governance question of who controls the Earth’s thermostat once humanity has grabbed it.(P...

For data centers, a little flexibility goes a long way

David Roberts·Volts·1mo ago

The explosive energy demand from data centers is breaking our grid, pushing desperate developers to build their own on-site gas plants just to get online. To figure out how we avoid locking in decades of new fossil fuels, I’m joined by Camus CEO Astrid Atkinson and Princeton’s Jesse Jenkins to break down their proposed alternative. We dig into how adopting flexible grid interconnections and clean, battery-backed “power parks” can meet this massive load growth without abandoning our decarbonizati...

The fate of fossil fuel systems in the "mid-transition"

David Roberts·Volts·2mo ago

If the world takes its climate targets seriously, the coming decades will see fossil fuel systems shrinking as clean energy systems grow. In this episode, I talk with associate professor Emily Grubert about the issues that may arise during this “mid-transition” period. She has fascinating new study on the physical and financial cliffs that fossil fuel systems may go over as they decline and reach their “minimum viable scale” — and argues that public ownership of these dying industries might be t...