Live Wires 4: Non-energy books every energy nerd should read

Plus optimistic TED, mimicking regulations, summit fatigue, Herscowitz unchained, and the robot artist.

So much content! I’m here to help. Live Wires is my occasional short list of what I’m reading/watching/thinking. LMK what you think. 🤔😀🤬

1.  Three brilliant (non-energy) books that changed the way I think about energy & climate.

A good book is one that I keep thinking about long after I’m done reading. A great book is one that changes the way I think about the world, especially in ways that the author probably never directly intended. Here are three that have been on my mind a lot lately. 

• High Conflict by Amanda Ripley. What can we learn from a pioneer in cooperative divorce mediation who became a failed petty tyrant mayor of a tiny NorCal hamlet? A lot about how humans escalate conflict. Ripley’s book has helped me think differently about everything from raising teenagers to the rise of MAGA to climate policy to the emotional fights over fossil fuels. Recognizing the ‘idiot driver reflex’ has been especially useful. That’s the natural human reaction to assume the worst in people instead of trying to understand why they’re doing something that seems so obviously stupid.

• The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann. The recent history of environmentalism and technology told through the competing visions of William Vogt versus Norman Borlaug explains a lot about the world today – and differing visions of our energy future. (Spoiler: I’m Team Wizard.)

• Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen. Of course I read this back in grad school. But I recently listened to the audiobook and loved it all over again. I was repeatedly struck by how Sen’s redefinition of development – as enabling human freedom and opportunity rather than handing down better living conditions – resonates sharply in energy policy today. Is electrification about giving people lights and access to appliances? Or should energy policy aim to create opportunities for everyone to live their fullest possible lives? (No surprise here: Team Sen.)

2. Speaking of brilliant... If you’re feeling depressed about climate change and our dystopian future, watch Hannah Ritchie’s new TED talk ♥️

https://www.ted.com/talks/hannah_ritchie_are_we_the_last_generation_or_the_first_sustainable_one

3. Pretending to copy others never works.

Last month in downtown Miami of all places, I luckily ran into Lant Pritchett, one of the most constructively-provocative thinkers on economic development. One of his many contributions is the concept of isomorphic mimicry, which is when governments pretend to do something, often to tick a box to access a conditional loan or to satisfy some investor. But here’s the open secret: pretending never works. Instead, Lant and his colleagues argue that governments are successful when they define a problem themselves and solve it by adapting to feedback.

I was thinking about Lant, mimicry, and adaptive problem solving when reading “Best practices are not always best for emerging energy markets,” a terrific new memo on electricity regulation by Mark Thurber at Stanford. Electricity market regulation is a big deal that has widespread impacts on prices, reliability, and who gets power (and who doesn’t). Mark argues that copying “best practice” sounds like the right thing to do, but is rarely suited to solving particular problems in other contexts. Like taking regulations from Norway and copying them in Nigeria. He explains why it’s more effective to be “situational” and open to learning rather than to just copy the “best.” Yep.

4. While we’re talking about empty theater, here’s a modest idea to really help the world.

I’m mostly off twitter these days, but when I check in, I’m struck at how much of my feed is about the preparation, pre-briefing, main events, side events, photo opps, and post-mortems of some global summit. Just as one circus is ending, another pops up. The Bank-Fund annual meetings are going on as I type. People still seem tired from the African Climate Summit, the G20 summit, and the UN General Assembly hoopla, all of which took place just last month. Next up is COP28. People who go to these are openly exhausted. That’s not great for them or their families.

More importantly, what about the world? When exactly are senior officials supposed to get some real work done? Maybe one of the reasons that each of these summits is so often devoted to bemoaning the lack of progress since the last summit is because everyone's been too busy summiting? So here’s my proposal: a one-year pause on all summits. 

Seems like 100% upside. 

5. Some great ideas (from a recent jailbreaker) to actually generate more capital for the energy transition.

A chronic complaint at these summits is the lack of capital for poor countries to invest in their own energy transitions. The whole ‘billions to trillions’ has become a sad cliche. Yet it’s still true that rising interest rates, soaring debt, and global disruptions are making it overly hard for countries to attract investment. 

If anyone knows the barriers to energy investment in poor countries, it’s Andy Herscowitz. Andy’s been in these trenches for a decade. He was the inaugural coordinator for Power Africa and then the first chief development officer for the US International Development Finance Corporation. He recently left government to start the Washington office of the Overseas Development Institute, which means he’s liberated to speak his mind. In one of his first post-shackles pieces, he proposes four practical ways to direct more money to where it’s needed. I agree with each, but I’m especially in favor of #4 to focus precious development finance dollars on enabling infrastructure. Yes, sure, everyone wants to plant their flag on a solar farm. But the barrier today in many places is transmission. Power lines are less profitable (and less photo-ready), but more likely to have a catalytic development impact.

Some of us think transmission is beautiful. My treasured Seaver Wang office art.

6. Robots may kill us, but AI is fun for now

I’m as curious/bemused/torn about AI as anyone. But I learned an absolute ton from Adam Davidson’s 3-part podcast for Freakonomics, How to Think About AI. I also started messing around with Dream Studio (h/t Daniel Goodwin at Homeworld). I prompted it to “generate an image showing a realistic world where every person has enough energy to be rich and free and happy.” The result 👇