Igor Logvinenko

Prof @ Oxy || Political economy of the energy transition. Documenting my work:

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

I am so glad incumbent capitalists prevailed

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Wow, the S&P Dow Jones Indices has just officially announced that they will NOT be changing their inclusion rules to make it easier for “MegaCap” companies (such as @SpaceX) to be fast-tracked into the S&P 500.

Their reasoning:
"S&P DJI determined that exceptions to the financial viability, seasoning, and IWF requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization. The decision not to adopt the proposed exceptions preserves core index principles by maintaining consistent application of these key requirements. Although there may be trade-offs between strict adherence to these eligibility requirements and broad representativeness, the current methodology provides substantial market coverage and sector balance. As a result, the indices can continue to meet their stated objectives while preserving their role as representative and investable benchmarks for the U.S. equity market.

No changes will be made to the eligibility criteria including financial viability screens, seasoning period, or minimum IWF, for the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, or S&P SmallCap 600 as a result of the S&P Dow Jones Indices consultation on the treatment of MegaCap companies. Accordingly, there will be no changes to existing methodology for this index family."

This means that the earliest @SpaceX could be eligible to be added to the S&P 500 would now be June 2027.

The requirements that will now remain in place are:
• No changes to S&P 500 eligibility rules for mega-cap companies.
• Mega-cap companies will still need to wait 12 months after their IPO before being considered for S&P 500 inclusion.
• S&P will not waive profitability requirements for mega-cap companies. The company must have positive GAAP net income in the most recent quarter, and the sum of the most recent four consecutive quarters.
• S&P will not waive minimum public float requirements for mega-cap companies. At least 10% of a company's shares must be publicly tradable ("free float").

The S&P rejected proposals that would have:
• Reduced the IPO seasoning period from 12 months to 6 months
• Waived profitability requirements
• Waived minimum public float requirements

[Jonathan Fine @jonathanbfine]

it’s really inspiring to see the collective response of humanities professors on twitter whenever an academic says something positive about artificial intelligence. it feels like getting the whole gang together again for one last hurrah before turning off the lights for good.

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

Humanists could own this territory. But to tell this story credibly you have to know what "AI" actually can do in 2026 (how astoundingly and terrifyingly capable these tools are now!). Embarrassingly few are willing to make the leap.. that is the maddening part!

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

I am in strong agreement with @akoustov here. In fact, I'd go with a more dire diagnosis. The in-group signaling and circling-the-wagons dynamics are supercharged precisely because the humanities and most of social science lack objective standards.

[Alexander Kustov @akoustov]

Another thing I'm learning from my recent ethnographic engagements with humanities professors is the prevalence of the "AI as plagiarism" frame over the "AI as RA" frame in their tribes.

If you are a regular person or researcher, you mostly just want to get things done. If you already relied on various assistants or human agents (!) for that, using AI agents to do the same thing better is a no-brainer.

But if your whole existence is premised on mostly solo-authored human creativity and provenance with few objective standards (no shade, folks!), then any AI tool is clearly a moral violation and should be verboten.

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

Because the humanists have a valuable story to tell: deep reading, sustained attention, slow conversation are what we need more of as we march into our crazy future. (ironically Cal Newport a computer scientist! is the leading voice on this front)

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

https://t.co/ZJ1fyABxvm

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

Clean energy is winning on costs and losing on politics, but things might finally be changing! Plus a look ahead to the 2026 elections. link below

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

I would like to know what these goods are. The ones I can think of are patently less valuable than the “goods” produced by the sciences. Obviously humanities are valuable experientially but let’s not pretend research in humanities (and much of social science) is on equal footing

[David Decosimo @DavidDecosimo]

But many fields are not like that & never have been. The goods they deliver are not quantifiable or practical but humanistic - yet no less valuable. What we rightly care about in them would be effaced or destroyed by heavy use of AI. Academia’s distortions can blind us to this.

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

@akoustov It seems almost exclusively humanities people. What’s up with that? The “artisanal” thing?

[Tal Linzen @tallinzen]

A lot of the messiness in this discourse comes from a terminological confusion. Many humanities folks use the word AI to mean "chatbot" and are genuinely unaware of how these tools are used in science and engineering (e.g. as coding agents). There are good arguments for banning AI for writing essays but a blanket ban on AI for coding would be absurd.

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

This is so crazy

[Jan Rosenow @janrosenow]

Pakistan is now world's #2 solar panel importer.

More than India, more than entire Gulf.

Almost none of it policy-driven. Grid power is costly & unreliable so households go solar.

But does that push grid fees higher for everyone left behind?

More soon: https://t.co/In5lBaF2ox

[Quincy Lee @QuincyEdmundLee]

renewable power has become insanely cheap

legacy energy sources are being competed out of the market year by year starting with coal

[Chris Meder @EVCurveFuturist]

Kenya is another interesting energy transition story. Not because it followed western pathway, because it largely skipped it.

Most industrial economies evolved through:

Coal → Oil → Gas → Renewables

Kenya evolved through:

Hydro → Geothermal → Wind → Distributed Solar

That difference matters.

While many developing economies locked themselves into imported fossil fuels, Kenya steadily built one of Africa’s cleanest electricity systems around domestic renewables, particularly geothermal from the Great Rift Valley.

By 2025:

• Geothermal ~39%
• Hydro ~33%
• Wind ~13%
• Solar ~3%
• Fossil generation ~10%
• Renewables ~90%

And this transition wasn’t primarily driven by ideology.
It was driven by economics, energy security and system resilience.

Imported diesel was expensive.
Fuel volatility hurt the economy.
Geothermal was domestic.
Wind and solar kept getting cheaper.
So the system flipped.

Fossil generation steadily got squeezed while renewables became the backbone.

What makes Kenya especially interesting is that it may represent an early prototype for future African energy systems:

• Renewable-heavy
• Decentralised
• Modular
• Less dependent on massive fossil infrastructure
• Increasingly integrating distributed solar + storage

In many rural regions, rooftop solar and mini-grids are scaling faster than traditional centralized expansion ever could.

And that may be one of the biggest underappreciated global stories right now:

Developing economies may no longer follow the historical western industrial pathway.

Cheap renewables, batteries and decentralised systems are starting to change the sequence itself.

Kenya is one of the clearest real-world examples of that shift becoming visible.

[International Energy Agency @IEA]

Battery storage is growing at record speed, with 2025 additions 40% higher than in 2024

From balancing grids to shifting solar power across the day, storage is emerging as a versatile tool for modern day power systems around the world

The full analysis: https://t.co/KoR561QiKH

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

@Afinetheorem Yup, that’s the whole spine of the problem.

[Igor Logvinenko @igorlogvinenko]

Poland!!

[Nicolas Fulghum @nicolasfulghum]

Sunny Poland☀️🇵🇱 set a new all-time monthly high for solar in April of 2.7 TWh (+22% over April 2025)

The highest solar generation is usually observed in May-August, so there might be more records to come.