Voltscast: Jesse Jenkins on energy modeling

Hello, People of Volts!


Today I’ve got a special treat for you: a podcast with Jesse
Jenkins, energy modeler and assistant professor at Princeton.


Those of you on #EnergyTwitter already know Jesse. He’s been
doing this as long as I have, working his way up from take-haver
to think tanker to graduate researcher at MIT to Princeton prof.
Along the way he’s developed a reputation not only as one of the
sharpest, most empirically informed energy analysts in the
country, but as a scrupulously nice guy, always willing to share
what he knows and engage in good faith with questions and
arguments. As a journalist, I’ve found him indispensable.


So it was a real treat to sit with Jesse for an in-depth
conversation on energy system modeling. What exactly is it? How
does it work? What does it tell us about the kinds of energy
technologies we will need to decarbonize, and their relative
scale? How do politicians use — and misuse — models?


We get into all of it (as you will hear, I kept Jesse talking so
long that I started worrying I might be violating the Geneva
Conventions). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


Here are a few links either mentioned in, or relevant to, the
discussion:


* A three-part series on the “rebound effect,” whereby energy
efficiency reduces the price of a service, which then increases
demand for the service, which then wipes out some of the energy
and environmental gains of the efficiency. I wrote it in 2012 for
Grist.


* Jesse’s old blog Watthead, with posts going all the way back to
2005.


* A 2015 post of mine about how the International Energy Agency
(IEA) consistently overestimates the cost of renewable energy.


* The Princeton University Net-Zero America project, an effort to
model a variety of pathways to deep decarbonization in the US.


* A presentation on the Net-Zero project with Jesse and
Princeton’s Eric Larson.


Question for the type of folks who read to the bottom: would you
be interested in a written transcription of this episode? It
would be some work, but if enough people want it I’d be up for
doing it, perhaps as a bonus for community members. Let me know
in comments or at david@volts.wtf.


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