Author: Edward Ring

Edward Ring is the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. The California Policy Center is an educational non-profit focused on public policies that aim to improve California’s democracy and economy. He is also a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. Ring is the author of two books: "Fixing California - Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism" (2021), and "The Abundance Choice - Our Fight for More Water in California" (2022).

Ringside: The Case for Carbon Sequestration via Forestry and Mass Timber

August 7, 2025 3:05 amAugust 7, 2025 3:06 am

There are at least two massive opportunities to engage in cost-effective carbon sequestration. Neither would require subsidies and both could be performed exclusively by the private sector. They are controversial, but for different reasons. This week, building on last week’s...

Ringside: Logging Saves Species and Increases Our Water Supply

July 31, 2025 2:55 amJuly 31, 2025 2:56 am

There are obvious benefits to logging, grazing, prescribed burns, and mechanical thinning of California’s forests. When you suppress wildfires for what is now over a century, then overregulate and suppress any other means to thin the forest, you get overcrowded...

Ringside: Long Term Electricity Storage

July 23, 2025 3:45 pmJuly 23, 2025 3:51 pm

Silicon Valley veterans view Sacramento’s obsession with renewables mandates with pragmatic detachment. Blessed with disposable income sufficient to make them indifferent to the price of gasoline or electricity, they view life on the bleeding edge as an opportunity for California...

Ringside: One Way to Avoid Gasoline Lines in 2026

July 18, 2025 2:38 amJuly 19, 2025 7:34 am

It’s well known by now that California’s refinery capacity is stretched to the limit. The state’s total crude oil consumption last year was 1.40 million barrels per day, with daily refinery capacity at 1.62 million barrels per day. When accounting for downtime...

Ringside: Is California’s Water Infrastructure Ready for Climate Whiplash?

July 10, 2025 2:55 amJuly 10, 2025 2:56 am

If there is anything that might constitute an overwhelming institutional consensus in California, it’s that we are experiencing climate change, and that one of the consequences will be more rain, less snow, and more so-called whiplash between very wet years...

Ringside: Politics and the Cost for Water Infrastructure

July 3, 2025 2:55 amJuly 3, 2025 2:56 am

When it comes to building water supply infrastructure, even if regulations are streamlined and litigation is contained, there are massive costs. Quantifying these variables is something we have focused on a great deal, most recently “The Economics of the Delta...

Ringside: The Grand Water Bargain

June 26, 2025 3:05 amJune 26, 2025 3:06 am

For the last few decades in California, the conventional wisdom has been that farmers and urban water consumers have to improve efficiency and reduce consumption. To the fullest extent possible, rain and snow falling on watersheds must proceed unimpaired from...