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 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,...

Ringside: Tips to Understand California’s Energy Economy

September 11, 2025 2:45 amSeptember 11, 2025 2:46 am

Last month, for the uninitiated, we devoted a newsletter to the topic “Tips to Understand Our Convoluted Yet Obligatory Units of Water.” It attempted to summarize some essential facts and relevant units for anyone who wants to monitor state water...

Ringside: Will the Sites Reservoir Ever Get Built?

September 4, 2025 2:45 amSeptember 4, 2025 2:46 am

What is happening with the Sites Reservoir is a case study in why, if the people running California today were in charge in the 1950s and 1960s, the California Water Project would never have been built. This reservoir, approved by...

Ringside: How Dredging the Delta Enables Groundwater Recharge

August 28, 2025 3:45 amAugust 28, 2025 3:46 am

ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization and winner of multiple Pulitzer prizes, recently published a report “The Drying Planet.” They report that “Moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the...

Ringside: Tips to Understand Our Convoluted Yet Obligatory Units of Water

August 21, 2025 2:55 amAugust 21, 2025 6:39 am

Those of us following water politics and the water industry have become familiar with the most common units of water volume and water flow. Professionals in the industry make constant use of terms, often reduced to acronyms, forgetting that the...

Ringside: The Case for Carbon Sequestration via Natural Gas Power Plants

August 14, 2025 2:45 amAugust 14, 2025 2:46 am

In the case Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate greenhouse gases because they qualify as air pollutants. And ever since, electric power plants using “thermal” fuels have faced escalating regulatory pressure. How...