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: Large Scale Desalination Could Transform California

October 30, 2025 2:45 amOctober 30, 2025 2:46 am

Why is it axiomatic among California’s water agencies and policymakers that large scale desalination is inconceivable in California? That certainly isn’t the case in other arid locales. In 2024, an estimated 30 million acre feet of fresh water was produced by desalination...

Ringside: Oil Extraction Reduces Methane Seepage

October 23, 2025 4:29 pmOctober 23, 2025 5:42 pm

An opinion piece in the Santa Barbara Independent, published last week, heralded the decision by the Santa Barbara County board of supervisors to phase out oil drilling, which as the authors put it, “will save lives, reduce air pollution, and help...

Ringside: Steps Toward Water Abundance

October 16, 2025 8:00 amOctober 16, 2025 8:01 am

Earlier this month a letter was sent to Governor Gavin Newsom from the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 water agencies that together deliver water to nearly 30 million Californians and irrigate nearly one million acres of farmland. This letter is...

Ringside: Is Biodiesel Sustainable?

October 9, 2025 2:55 amOctober 9, 2025 2:56 am

For the most part, California’s farmers grow food, not fuel. But the fuel required to operate farm equipment is diesel fuel, increasingly refined from food grown on America’s great plains. Digging into this reveals a rabbit hole of such depth...

Ringside: Newsom’s Concessions to Oil Industry Will Not Save It

October 1, 2025 2:55 amOctober 1, 2025 2:56 am

Access to adequate supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel for Californians is in dire peril, and the signing of SB 237 on September 19 will do very little to change that. To rescue the industry, far more sweeping legislation is required. First,...

Ringside: The Cost and the Upside of the ‘Big Gulp’

September 25, 2025 2:45 amSeptember 25, 2025 6:38 am

Of all the possible ways to increase California’s water supply, nothing compares to the potential of the so-called “big gulp,” that is, the ability of new and improved water infrastructure to safely divert millions of acre feet from the Sacramento-San...

Ringside: How the Federal Government Can Massively Fund Water Supply Infrastructure

September 18, 2025 2:45 amSeptember 18, 2025 2:46 am

A few months ago I had the privilege of speaking directly with some of the top executives at one of California’s largest water agencies. Their primary question for me was explicit, and my attempts to answer were inadequate. They contend,...