For two decades I’ve worked at the intersection of energy systems modeling and climate policy — in the rooms where the numbers turn into laws, investments, and the infrastructure of the next century.
I’m an energy and climate modeler. As Head of Science at Watershed, I work on the analytics that shape how companies and governments measure and act to reduce emissions. Before that, I led energy systems and climate analysis research at the Electric Power Research Institute. I’m also a Research Affiliate at MIT and Associate Editor of The Electricity Journal.
My research has appeared in Science, Nature Communications, PNAS, the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and the New York Times. I was a contributing author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and on two U.S. National Climate Assessments. My analysis informed congressional and White House debate over the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA power-plant rules, and clean hydrogen, and has been cited in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Politico.
I earned a PhD from Stanford in Management Science and Engineering and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. Beyond the technical work, I write about how models shape policy, markets, and the public imagination — about what numbers can and cannot tell us when the stakes are high.
My work uses large-scale energy-economic models to study the pace, cost, and consequences of decarbonization. The questions are practical and the stakes are concrete: which policies actually deliver emissions reductions, what they cost, who pays, and what the alternatives look like under uncertainty.
I’m especially interested in where models are most useful and where they mislead — how their structure encodes assumptions, how their outputs travel into headlines and legislation, and how to use them as instruments of disciplined imagination rather than oracles.
Multi-model analyses of U.S. and global climate policy — the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA power-plant rules, clean hydrogen, carbon pricing, and the economics of getting to net zero.
How renewables, storage, nuclear, gas, and carbon management technologies fit together; what drives clean-energy cost declines; and how the grid evolves as load growth accelerates.
The methods themselves: how to represent uncertainty honestly, how to compare model results across institutions, and how to interrogate the assumptions buried inside the numbers.
Discussing a new Nature Reviews Clean Technology paper modeling the combined effects of the Inflation Reduction Act and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — what the laws together mean for U.S. emissions, the energy mix, and the next decade of climate policy. With co-author Ryna Cui (University of Maryland).
Listen on Heatmap →An on-air explainer of the fiscal and emissions math behind the law’s headline numbers — and why the two were estimated by very different methods.
Listen on Marketplace →Energy systems are not abstractions. They are landscapes, weather, infrastructure, light — the world you actually live in. Here is some of what I see when I’m not in front of a model.
Research collaborations, press, speaking, and writing inquiries are all welcome.
john bistline at gmail dot com