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Connor Chung

@connorpchung.bsky.social
1.2K followers 804 following 44 posts

PhD student, MIT HASTS | prev Harvard, Cambridge, energy stuff IEEFA | bad takes my own hasts.mit.edu/students/connor-chung

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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
As negotiations for a global plastics treaty continue, some questions have arisen over whether/how this agreement should take trade into account. Our piece on why the globalized and interconnected nature of monomer & polymer markets make trade provisions a necessity: ieefa.org/resources/tr...
ieefa.org
Trade measures a cornerstone to the success of global regulation to curb plastic pollution
Plastics, across its lifecycle, is a globalized, interconnected market, so a lack of strong trade provisions would limit the effectiveness of the objectives of the proposed binding agreement.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Tariffs are shaking energy markets. Some thoughts on what this means — and why this is only *part* of the fossil fuel sector's problems today ieefa.org/resources/oi...
ieefa.org
Oil producers face profit squeeze amid shifting policy landscape
• A recent survey reveals a dark mood in the fossil fuel sector, as tariff talk shakes industry confidence • Amid weak margins and rising costs, fossil fuel producers are facing a profit squeeze • The...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Remarkable comments from fossil fuel producers in the Dallas Fed's energy sector survey: (www.dallasfed.org/research/sur...)
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
So BP's in the news for walking back its climate commitments — and it's not exactly surprising. Here's what I wrote back in October, as the company telegraphed its rollback... ieefa.org/resources/bp...
ieefa.org
BP’s retreat is a reality check for investors
For several years, some major investors and analysts have looked to BP as an example of an energy company taking the global energy transition seriously
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
(the short version: fossil fuel companies' problems are bigger than politics alone, so politics alone won't be enough to get them back on the right track)
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Climate action is facing political opposition around the world. So is this a saving grace for the traditional energy sector? My thoughts today in the @financialtimes.com's @sustainableviews.bsky.social: www.sustainableviews.com/fossil-fuels...
sustainableviews.com
Fossil fuels’ problems run deeper than politics
Dan Cohn and Connor Chung are energy finance analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis   As the fossil fuel industry continues to underperform investor expectations, it is ...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Thanks for sharing! Glad you found our work interesting :)
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Thanks Dave!!
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Thanks for sharing our work! Glad you found it interesting.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
In wake of the invasion of Ukraine/emergence from Covid, fossil fuel companies turned in a few high-performing quarters. Going into 2024, they told investors that the good times were here to stay. So how has it worked out? My latest for IEEFA: ieefa.org/resources/an...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Every energy source has trade-offs/nuances, and the DOE has a lot of perspectives to consider when determining what's in the public interest. But to end with Sec. Granholm’s point: uncritical embrace of unfettered export growth is hardly a good way to go about this. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/c...
nytimes.com
‘Unfettered’ Gas Exports Would Harm U.S. Economy, Energy Secretary Warns
Jennifer Granholm said a new analysis showed that the continued pace of exports was “neither sustainable nor advisable.”
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
So why does this matter? The US — and world’s — LNG export capacity is poised to surge even more dramatically in the coming years. Policymakers need the tools to understand what impacts this might have.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
It’s sometimes claimed that LNG expansion is unequivocally necessary for global energy security. But here, too, the report paints a nuanced picture. LNG is “unlikely to be the most cost-competitive source of energy for many countries”, while demand uncertainties cloud its overseas market outlook:
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Second, re the economic case: the report provides further evidence that expansion of exports puts upward pressure on domestic prices, increasing costs for households and industry. This too is hardly a surprise: ieefa.org/resources/us...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
This aligns with some of IEEFA’s past research finding little evidence to support the idea that LNG is seriously displacing coal in key markets like China. ieefa.org/resources/ln...
ieefa.org
LNG is not displacing coal in China's power mix
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is often pitched as a transition fuel that can help countries reduce coal usage. However, evidence from China, the world’s largest coal consumer, shows that LNG is unlikely...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
In none of the scenarios, it turns out, do new LNG exports meaningfully decrease emissions. By competing with low-carbon energy and enabling new demand, exports raise global GHGs vs baseline across a range of conditions.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
First, re the climate case: LNG advocates claim that it reduces emissions by displacing coal. The report notes that this can be true — but that it does the opposite if it crowds out renewables or nuclear. So how do these countervailing forces interact in practice?
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
The study is finally out. First, a note on what it isn’t: global energy markets are uncertain, so it doesn’t purport to be a forecast. Rather, it seeks to test what LNG exports look like under different ranges of policy/market conditions. And across scenarios, some big picture conclusions emerge…
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
In light of this mismatch, the DOE announced that it was pausing new approval while it brought its toolkit up to date. Pundits framed the pause as a concession to climate hawks — but many industrial interests, too, celebrated the move. grist.org/energy/biden... (h/t @zteirstein.bsky.social et al)
grist.org
The unlikely coalition behind Biden’s liquefied natural gas pivot
Climate activists led the charge against LNG exports, but they’re not the only ones celebrating Biden’s pause.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
First, why was the study necessary? In the past decade, the US has gone from exporting basically no LNG to being the world’s top exporter, and the structure of LNG markets has changed dramatically. Many of the tools used to evaluate LNG’s economic/climate/other impacts were increasingly out of date.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
So the DOE’s long-awaited LNG export study is out. Some things that stood out to me on first read… (1/n) www.energy.gov/sites/defaul...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Ooh fun will read. I’d come across the concept in Latour and so on, but was fascinating to me to see it in the mouth of modeling practitioners back then
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Reminds me of a fascinating internal volume I once came across in IEA archives about the ways GHG/energy system modeling reflects the assumptions and mindsets of the modelers (and how that can be good, so long as we're conscious of it)... from 1997.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
And a classic case of how demand-side factors alone didn't drive a shift from whaling; indeed, cheaper fossil fuels initially made whaling more efficient than ever (a reminder that demand-side substitution isn't as predictable a process as we might presume) www.researchgate.net/publication/...
researchgate.net
(PDF) Why Petroleum Did Not Save the Whales
PDF | Ironically, even though fossil fuels provided substitutes for the main uses of whale oil, the rise of fossil fuel use in the nineteenth century... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Looking back further, a great read on how markets had to soak up expanded oil capacity after WWII (spurring further proliferation of automotivity, petchem, etc): www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
World wars and the age of oil: Exploring directionality in deep energy transitions
This paper explores the role of the world wars in 20th century energy transitions, focusing on the growth of oil as a major energy source which accele…
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
(anyways thanks for this exchange, I always learn a lot reading your work)
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
I'd suggest that uncritical expansion into a potential supply glut risks inducing new demand, injecting more uncertainty into markets, etc ieefa.org/resources/ri...
ieefa.org
Risks mount as World Energy Outlook confirms LNG supply glut looms
The International Energy Agency (IEA)’s World Energy Outlook 2024 confirms IEEFA’s analysis that global liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets are barrelling towards an unprecedented supply glut.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
And I share your concern that overly low ff prices can be bad for the transition. But this, I’d argue, is itself is a good pragmatic reason why the LNG buildout shouldn’t be placed beyond reproach. As export capacity grows dramatically amidst weakening demand… ieefa.org/resources/gl...
ieefa.org
Global LNG Outlook 2024-2028
IEEFA expects global LNG supply capacity to rise to 666.5 MTPA by the end of 2028, which could be sufficient to meet all global demand requirements through 2040, even under optimistic industry forecas...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
… and that the supply-side approach to fossil fuel production which the piece dismisses has some striking parallels to how I see you all thinking through the potential consumer impacts of LNG in these subsequent convos. (We agreed on the big picture that reductions in volatility are good)
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Had a fun conversation w/ your colleague over on the Bad Place about some of this stuff. Made my case that the reasons why folks (environmentalists, yes, but also industry voices) sought the LNG ban were perhaps a bit more nuanced than what was acknowledged in his op-ed… x.com/ArnabDatta32...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
And the Aus case is fascinating; I imagine you’re right that reserve policy may have restrained prices. Ocf the spikes they saw were still significant. Will be interesting to see how things continue to play out, with Aus pursuing far less export growth than us amidst weakening markets…
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Thanks for the reply, interesting stuff. And I’d agree that w/ global prices relatively depressed at the moment, there’s been less foreign competition for domestic gas as of late. But that doesn’t change the underlying fact that gas exports expose us to global volatility, hurting domestic consumers.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Enjoying a great conversation with Arnab over at the Other Place... x.com/ConnorPChung...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
It can’t simultaneously be true that any energy policy which raises short-run costs is off the table — and that the LNG export sector’s expansion can’t be questioned.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
The @arnabdatta.bsky.social climate politics op-ed is well worth reading, regardless of what one agrees/disagrees with. But very puzzled by a few of its empirical claims — eg LNG exports actually raise domestic prices and volatility, not lower them as implied.
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 24/10/2024
Analysts and investors have long described BP as an industry leader on climate. If this is how the best-in-class are behaving, probably time to revisit assumptions about the sector’s good faith. My latest for IEEFA: ieefa.org/resources/bp...
ieefa.org
BP’s retreat is a reality check for investors
For several years, some major investors and analysts have looked to BP as an example of an energy company taking the global energy transition seriously
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
Investors have traditionally seen engagement and divestment as mutually exclusive. But what if there's more nuance to the story? What if they can be partners not rivals when it comes to mitigating risk & driving change? New from me for IEEFA: ieefa.org/resources/en...
ieefa.org
Engagement and divestment: Shareholders transcend a false binary | IEEFA
The debate around fossil fuel investments once centered around engagement vs. divestment. But the experience of fiduciaries today is leading to another realization: It’s "and," not "or."
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 25/02/2024
Looks great! Will there be a video?
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 13/02/2024
Big fan of your work, Prof. Hayhoe — so glad you found our report to be of interest!
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 13/02/2024
Thanks @davidrvetter.bsky.social for a great piece!
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Reposted by Connor Chung
Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 13/02/2024
I wondered if this was consistently true across time periods and it mostly is: See chart attached showing rolling five-year performance, with only a brief post energy-crisis period where fossil stocks did better than the rest
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 10/02/2024
Thanks for covering!!
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 09/02/2024
How is the energy transition impacting equity markets? As climate risk materalizes, what does that mean for the billions and billions that investors have bet on fossil fuels? Our new report, out today from IEEFA: ieefa.org/resources/pa... (Enjoy, EnergySky and ClimateSky friends 🔌💡!)
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 30/11/2023
A little review I wrote of Erika Thompson's Escape from Model Land — an excellent book about what happens when mathematical modeling meets the real world: blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do about It – r...
In Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do about It, Erica Thompson explores how mathematical models are used in contexts that affect our everyday live�...
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Connor Chung @connorpchung.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
Sharing here in case anyone's interested: The Harvard Center for History and Economics is launching a new interdisciplinary collaboration trying to understand the "why" behind sites of globally-important methane emissions. I'm on the editorial board, and would love to hear y'all's thoughts!
histecon.fas.harvard.edu
1800 Histories
The Joint Center for History and Economics
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