Andy Zhang
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zhangstaz.bsky.social
Andy Zhang
@zhangstaz.bsky.social
Working on building electrification, energy efficiency, and climate at the Public Advocates Office in the California Public Utilities Commission. Opinions are my own.
Wouldn't surprise me if most infrastructure spending going forward is climate-related. Looking at my area of expertise, most of the electric rate increases in CA are directly attributable to wildfire spending.
October 22, 2025 at 6:06 AM
When all those bad real estate loans to climate-vulnerable spots (cough Miami) inevitably happens, the Fed is gonna say they never saw it coming
October 16, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Andy Zhang
This isn’t actually a thread of different posts. It’s all just different cultivars of a single post
October 7, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Feels like if we're literally gonna just prop them up w/ state money, might as well go with the original proposal and buy the refineries. It'll be selling for pennies on the dollar anyways.
September 13, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Not 100% sure but I thought SA had some of the lowest production costs in the world. In any case, what happens is anybody’s guess. Doesn’t seem like anyone is planning for anything except “drill baby drill”
June 23, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Unless oil stays at like $15/bbl, why would Aramco/Rosneft/Statoil turn off their money printers. It’s like having an atm in your living room.
June 23, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Waiting for the day state-owned fossil goo companies actually reduce production to meet their climate “goals”
June 23, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Sounds like capital markets are functioning and capital allocation is spot on these days. :)
May 28, 2025 at 4:35 AM
Curious how this plays out if (or when i guess) this chaos leads to greater capital repatriation and weaker dollar/dollar assets. Does relative yields even matter when you have such high political risk?
April 10, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Maybe not quite that low, since MiUSA garment producers are highly efficient/automated. Although a plain shirt does run you like $50+ easily. I wonder what American Giant's margins are. Must be wafer thin.
April 4, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Technology is good, who knew! Basic income (or jobs guarantee or whatever)+ automation is the way forward.
April 4, 2025 at 6:26 PM
“Hard to abate”, i.e. “but I don’t wanna change any behavior”.
April 3, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Banerjee (2013) wrote a paper about vertical farming and the CAPEX cost of vertical farming is like 650k/acre (adjusted for efficiency gains from VF). That is a ludicrous expense and would only be viable in a very select number of markets.
March 23, 2025 at 5:51 AM
Front-loaded finance is important for energy. Even in o&g, futures contracts to buy do not incentivize production as much as cash/finance upfront for exploration/developing reserves.
March 6, 2025 at 5:42 PM
We don't want a world where some centralized corporate entity controls the energy consumption of people to maximize their profit margins (cough*). We want a world where we can optimize human health and comfort, and ensure people have adequate electric service.
March 6, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Even just applying this narrowly to the climate movement, it is evident that a transition to a world of DERs, smart-managed grids is one that is heavily dependent on the free flow of information. Companies whose profit depends on private ownership of load data, or other such info is not it.
March 6, 2025 at 6:39 AM
At the end of the day, consumers should be mad. My whole research paper started b/c I noticed Whole Foods was making bs claims about norwegian/tasm salmon. Told the truth, I imagine there would be a great deal of economic damage, especially from the health concious crowd...
March 4, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Oh, it is completely insane how Tasmian finfish industry is allowed to claim there is no environmental damage. They don't have any baseline comparisons to make that claim! They literally make this shit up!
March 4, 2025 at 5:48 AM
I wrote about this 7 years ago, but it still is a massive conflict for the aquaculture industry to be regulated by a department that views the "success of the fin-fish aquaculture industry is inextricably linked to the future economic prosperity of Tasmania". nre.tas.gov.au/Documents/sa...
nre.tas.gov.au
March 4, 2025 at 5:14 AM