Reading List 07/25/26
China’s EV subsidies, the future of aeroderivative gas turbines, a US-Saudi nuclear deal, defective roadway guardrails, and more.
TechEconomics
Construction Physics.
Brian Potter on buildings, infrastructure, industrial technology, and how things actually get made.
Recent essays
25 of 25Can We Lower Construction Costs with Cheaper Labor or Materials?
Last time in our series on the nature of the construction productivity problem, we looked at economies of scale, finding that capturing economies of scale in homebuilding is difficult.
Reading List 07/18/26
A setback for California Forever, a $500 million artillery shell plant not producing any shells, the difficulty of recycling EV batteries, manufacturing wire harnesses, and more.
How Predictable Are Laws?
An enormous amount of ink has been spilled (some of it by me) on the trials and tribulations of complying with the National Environmental Policy Act, better known as NEPA.
Reading List 07/11/26
Adults living with their parents, Samsung’s profits, Native American data centers, Puerto Rico’s electricity grid, and more.
Reading List 07/04/26
Households without homeowners insurance, crackdowns on AI chip smuggling, Japan’s two electrical frequencies, Meta’s AI compute business, and more.
The Fall and Rise of Screwworm
Every spring, as sure as the seasons, and for generations unknown, screwworms began their annual march northward from their overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico and South Texas.
Reading List 06/27/26
Trump refuses to sign a housing bill, the high cost of US-made doors, slow trucking, why we stopped making new land, and more.
US Subways Build Too Many Cross Passages
I wrote the following piece for IFP’s Transit Abundance Playbook, a collection of 15 ideas to improve transit delivery in the US.
Reading List 06/20/26
A new housing bill, General Motors joining the grid-scale battery game, skepticism about data center delays, solid-state air conditioning, and more.
Converting Coal Plants to Natural Gas
For the better part of the last several hundred years, coal was the fuel of choice for generating power.
Reading List 06/13/2026
Homes being built on top of libraries, Patriot missile manufacturing, an effort to construct new US coal plants, a tunnel between the US and Russia, and more.
Biological Evolution and Information Acquisition
A few weeks ago we looked at a simulation of technological evolution by economist Brian Arthur, in which he was able to start with simple building blocks (such as a NAND gate) and evolve surprisingly complex circuits (such as a 12-way AND gate or a 4-bit adder…
Reading List 06/06/26
Chatbots replacing realtors, Chinese synthetic diamonds, Australian batteries, Meta’s data center tents, and more
How Long Does It Take to Plan a Bridge?
Many folks, including me, have observed that it seems to take much longer to build infrastructure in the US than it used to.
Reading List 05/30/26
A California chemical leak, weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear reactor startups, a startup that will clean your house to get robot training data, Blue Origin’s rocket explosion, and more.
Where Are the Economies of Scale in Homebuilding?
Over the last few months we’ve examined the extent of the construction industry’s productivity problem.
Reading List 05/23/26
Squatter removal services, Apple finding uses for defective chips, process heat use in California, the brewing Colorado River crisis, and more.
The Rise of Build-to-Rent Housing
A major shift in the housing market in the last several years is the rapidly increasing popularity of “build-to-rent” homes — single-family homes that are built specifically for the purpose of being rented out.
Reading List 05/16/26
Tokyo’s cheap housing and expensive land, the House response to the Senate housing bill, an IED near an Alabama dam, Fervo’s IPO, and more.
Reading List 05/09/2026
Trapped buildings, in-home data centers, cardboard military drones, Brightline’s potential bankruptcy, and more.
How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions?
Mostly not very long
Reading List 05/02/2026
Chilling effects in the build-to-rent sector, how fast could robot manufacturing scale up, PJM’s new interconnection queue, the backlash against battery storage, and more.
How an Oil Refinery Works
Though wind and solar continue to carve out larger and larger shares of world energy supply, the modern world still runs on petroleum, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Reading List 04/25/26
Transformer steel manufacturing, textile engineering, bringing power plants online quickly, infrasound, and more.