Megawatts and Malaise

Written by Ryan McGuine // On December 29, 2024 President Jimmy Carter passed away. Elected as a Washington outsider in the wake of the excesses of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal, President Carter had a transformative impact on America's energy policy. While some of the measures taken by his administration are controversial, they shaped much of the energy framework that today's policymakers and industry actors operate within. Continue reading

Tightening the Belt and Road

Written by Ryan McGuine // On an official visit to Kazakhstan in 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative. In doing so, he touted the BRI as a “new Silk Road,” recalling the historic trade routes between Europe and Asia. Initially meant to link China with western Europe through physical infrastructure, the Belt and Road Initiative has grown in scope to encompass a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, and highways across countries spanning Oceania, Africa, and Latin America. Continue reading

Institutions All the Way Down

Written by Ryan McGuine // In October, economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” While the Solow Model explains income differences between countries by the accumulation of physical capital and human capital, and rate of technological progress, Nobel laureate Douglass North wrote that rather than driving economic growth, these factors are economic growth. One thing that actually drives growth is institutions. Continue reading

The Carbon Must Flow

Written by Ryan McGuine // Most countries around the world, and increasingly many companies, have pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by or around 2050. Crucially, net-zero does not necessarily mean zero emissions. Rather, it means that a quantity of carbon emissions equivalent to those emitted have been either removed from the atmosphere, or prevented from having reached the atmosphere in the first place. Additionally, nearly every modeled pathway to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping the global temperature rise well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below 1.5°C, include assumptions for large amounts of carbon capture and sequestration. As such, even though carbon management is a nascent field today, it is poised to grow dramatically in the next few decades. Continue reading

Forging the Modern World

Written by Ryan McGuine //

The modern age has been characterized by the skyrocketing use of a number of materials, including steel. Remarkable for its strength as well as its durability, steel is the key metal of industrialization — in 2014 steel production was almost 20 times larger than that of aluminum, copper, zinc, and lead combined. As countries build out the infrastructure needed for the energy transition and urbanization, global steel demand is poised to grow by over one-third by 2050. Continue reading

Green, Green Grass of Songshan 

Written by Ryan McGuine // Beijing became the only city in the world to host both a summer and winter Olympics when it opened the 24th Winter Olympics last Friday. The Games put on by Beijing in 2008 were exactly the kind of thing all host countries hope for — China used the Games to demonstrate its technological and economic might on a global stage, pairing dramatic pageantry with impressive organization to cement its role as an emerging superpower. This year, China plans to use the Games to emphasize the environment, so let’s dig into some of their initiatives. Continue reading

Doing Less More With Less

Written by Ryan McGuine // In many ways, it feels like the world is changing faster than it ever has, yet measures of economic productivity have been growing more slowly than any time in the last 200 years. Productivity growth has been the main driver of historically-improving living standards, leading to more food, better health, better housing, and more consumer goods. But despite growing at around 2% per year for the past few decades, productivity growth has been slowing in advanced economies around the world. Continue reading

The Deep Roots of Deforestation

Written by Ryan McGuine // Humans have been changing the landscapes around them for millennia. Some began electively breeding crop varieties, grazing livestock, and clearing forests to do so as early as 3,000 years ago. The population was quite small then by today's standards, but the amount of land per person required to grow enough food was quite large. While clearing forests is not a new phenomenon, and crop yields today are much higher than they once were, deforestation has still accelerated in recent decades. Continue reading