David Pomerantz

@davidpomerantz.bsky.social

6788 Followers 821 Following

Exposing efforts by utilities and fossil fuel interests to undermine clean energy with the Energy and Policy Institute. Personal account.

Screenshot of this excerpt: "Played a central role in scandals to engineer election results by running “ghost candidates” to siphon votes away from a legislator who criticized the utility; Conducted surveillance of journalists critical of the utility; Offered a job at an invented organization to a local politician to try to pave the way toward the takeover of a municipal utility; Controlled the operations of political news outlets to secure favorable coverage; and Co-opted officials of civil rights organizations, including the Florida NAACP."
"It's not as balanced a comfort system in the harshest cold (e.g. we have some zoning to figure out, floors are cold but that also has to do with an insulation fix needed in our garage ceiling), so it's not *perfect*, but that leads me also to one I forgot: - We got rid of ugly radiators, which now are not eating into the room and are replaced with lovely floor trim"
Screenshot of a message with the following text: "I'm swamped with work, but my heat/cold pump promoter score has bounced around a lot and is right now from a purely rational standpoint pretty high that really just distills down to: - We replaced both heating and cooling with a single unit - That unit has been effective at abnormally low temperatures in New England (still have to demonstrate value on the cooling front to be fair) - That unit was similarly priced for a replacement of *just our heating* - Installing this unit meant removing a massive furnace and an oil tank, meaning that we got actual, real life cubic footage back into our home for other things - Yes, I know the risk is so tiny, and we have monitors, but we have virtually entirely removed the lingering fear and risk of carbon monoxide poisoning"
A weather forecast showing very cold (some sub-zero) temperatures for a few days.
A screenshot of this note from Bill McKibben’s substack: [As I begin, an aside. This is becoming a difficult moment economically for some—new data today suggests that unemployment has reached its highest level since the pandemic. I worry there may be a few people who graciously volunteered to pay the voluntary and modest subscription fee to help underwrite this project and who now find themselves strapped. Here’s instructions for how to cancel those payments. And conversely if you’re in a place where you can afford to help support this community, it would be graciously welcomed].
A man wears a hat which reads “HIKE THE DAMN RATE”
Excerpt: “Small businesses could face a rate increase of over $75 million next year, three times what FPL proposed in its original plan, while also bearing additional costs created by data centers.”
A screenshot showing the Trump Administration's proposed cut to the LIHEAP program of $4.025 billion. Text: This Administration is committed to lowering energy costs for American families by unleashing energy production. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is unnecessary because States have policies preventing utility disconnection for low-income households, effectively making LIHEAP a pass-through benefitting utilities in the Northeast. Further, LIHEAP rewardsStates like New York and California, two of the top recipients for LIHEAP funding, which haveimplemented anti-consumer policies that drive up home energy prices. The GovernmentAccountability Office (GAO) has raised significant program integrity concerns related to fraud and abuse in LIHEAP. In 2010, GAO investigators audited seven States and found names of 11,000 dead people and hundreds of prisoners used as applicants for funds. More than 1,000 Federal employees whose Federal salary exceeded maximum income threshold received benefits and, in several cases, people living in million-dollar houses received benefits. The Budget proposes to end this program and to instead support low-income individuals through energy dominance, lower prices, and anAmerica First economic platform.
My dog lying on a child’s trampoline with a face daring me to try to remove her.
Lawsuit excerpt: If incumbent electricity generators such as NextEra can practice scorched-earth, anticompetitive, illegal, and unfair tactics to delay new projects with impunity, then the clean energy transition will become enormously more expensive, if able to succeed at all. The costs and impacts of the delay caused by such conduct are massive. Indeed, NextEra’s actions in this case caused (1) the needless emission of tons of CO2, (2) Massachusetts consumers to pay significantly more for retail electricity, and (3) hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs to Avangrid— all so that NextEra could squeeze several more years of additional monopoly profits out of the New England grid. This cannot stand.
Screenshot of headline: 'We all make mistakes': DeWine admits error in appointing now-indicted regulator
Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin imagines the city hosting a parade for him because he got an A on one test.
Our dog Taiga standing on a wagon at the dog kennel.