Second Power

I have a new energy blog over at Substack called Second Power, and I encourage anyone reading this to subscribe to the email list. I’m just getting started over there but I’m envisioning it as a potential group project, so if anyone wants to contribute a piece, I’m all for it. (I currently have no budget, so I’m not in a position to pay anyone…yet.)

I’m interested in emergent/distributed technologies, exit technologies in the context of energy, themes of decentralization, enhanced customer choice, affordability issues/rate design, the energy/bitcoin nexus, current events (re: energy/war issues), and specifically markets like Texas and California (the latter being my particular area of focus).

I feel like a lot of energy writing online tends to get siloed into predictable ruts — much of it seems to be either sneering, Reddit-style advocacy of renewables/storage or stodgy, Cato Institute-type screeds that come off as antiquated. So I thought it might be fun to throw something new into the mix.

I’d also like to feature interesting aesthetics — I think solarpunk, for example, is a decent idea that maybe got overdone and played out a bit. But something fresh/unique along those lines interests me (recently I’ve had little visions of totem-type clip art/iconography/math-y sigils related to energy).

Here are a couple of recent longform pieces.

Surveying the Energy Aesthetics Landscape and its Possible Permutations

Wading Through California’s Rooftop Solar Quagmire