The archive
Policy
The report from Americans For Prosperity details a 21 percent increase in electricity prices between 2020 and 2024, including a four percent increase from 2023 to 2024 alone. While fuel prices, weather, and inflation all play a role, the report argues that a major, underappreciated driver of higher bills is America’s broken energy permitting system.
Agriculture
When most Americans talk about agriculture, they don’t start with emissions targets or land-use debates. They start with the price of food. Often, the mainstream environmental movement overlooks this reality, prioritizing solutions that may reduce environmental impacts but risk undermining an affordable, abundant, and reliable food supply. C3 Solutions’ research shows this is a false tradeoff. Innovation is the path to lower food prices, stronger farm economies, and better environmental outcomes.
World
There’s an interesting paradox in economics known as the “resource curse.” Simply put, areas with abundant natural resources tend to be poorer than those that face scarcity. Competing theories attempt to explain the resource curse, but one generally accepted explanation is that these resource-rich countries usually have authoritarian governments while citizens under democracies fare better.
Policy
As the second year of President Trump’s second term gets underway, the Department of Interior (DOI) has the responsibility to achieve two of the administration’s priorities: Expanding energy dominance and Making America Beautiful Again. Here are five practical things DOI should pursue to achieve energy dominance, address the affordability crisis, and improve conservation efforts.
World
Last week, the Trump Administration announced its intention to withdraw the United States from several landmark international climate institutions, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In practical terms, the move is largely symbolic: U.S. participation or non-participation in these bodies has relatively little direct effect on domestic climate policy or near-term global emissions outcomes.
Conservation
Ringing in the new year in Washington is often accompanied by the hope that your “fill-in-the-blank” long-stalled policy priority finally makes headway. When it comes to forest management, Congress can’t afford another year of delay.
Energy
Last fall, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the audience at Senator John Curtis’ conservative climate summit that “nuclear is going to become sexy again.” For policy wonks and proponents of modernizing outdated nuclear regulation, there may be nothing sexier than reforming ALARA.
Energy
By many measures, the Texas electricity grid was put to the test in 2025. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reported near-record power demand, with electricity use in the first three quarters of 2025 up about 5 percent from the prior year – the fastest growth of any U.S. grid. Since 2023, wind, solar, and energy storage have been the fastest-growing sources of electricity in Texas, all helping meet rising demand.
Policy
At the C3 American Leadership in Energy Innovation Summit, Chris Wright laid out the administration’s energy agenda with clarity. His message wasn’t about new mandates or distant, hard-to-achieve targets. It was about throughput—how fast the U.S. can actually build.
Around the Web
Across the United States, a quiet revolution is changing the way we think about energy. It’s not happening in massive power stations or through billion-dollar infrastructure projects. Instead, it’s unfolding in ordinary neighborhoods on rooftops, in garages, and behind smart thermostats. Homes equipped with solar panels, electric vehicles, and connected appliances are linking together to form what experts call virtual power plants.
