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. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, National Review, City Journal, and other media outlets. Ring’s undergraduate degree is in Political Science from UC Davis, and he has an MBA in Finance from USC. Ring is the author of several books, including “Fixing California – Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism” (2021), “The Abundance Choice – Our Fight for More Water in California” (2022), and “Solutions – Innovative Public Policy for California” (2024).
There are at least three ways to evaluate the economic viability of energy projects. The easiest way is to just repeat whatever is in a press release. The other extreme, a mandatory exercise for anyone poised to actually invest and build a project, is to develop complex projections that take into account the benefits of...
By Edward Ring
On the advent of America’s 250th anniversary, the conventional narrative is that our country is deeply divided. Typical takes on the state of disunity in the United States include this headline from a guest op-ed that recently appeared in USA Today, “America celebrated together at 200. We won’t at 250,” and “We still had a sense of oneness...
By Edward Ring
The reason to socialize a portion of the cost of major infrastructure is so the ratepayer doesn’t have to bear an unaffordable share of the construction financing payments. The broader benefit to society is to achieve greater affordability for what constitutes raw materials for prosperity; transportation, water, and energy. Whether or not they are ever...
By Edward Ring
A very successful businessman—and a major contributor to Democratic Party candidates and causes—once explained to me why he talked, acted, and thought like a Republican but never considered supporting any Republican candidate, ever. “We’ve already got the Republicans,” he told me. This is the transactional essence behind corporate support for Democrats in California, the one-party...
By Edward Ring
California’s oil industry has been active for well over a century, and Los Angeles was always at the heart of it. By 1894, about 80 wells were already producing oil in the city, setting off a boom that peaked in the 1970s at nearly 100 million barrels per year. Today oil production in Los Angeles County is barely...
By Edward Ring
With midterm elections just around the corner, both major political parties are themselves coping with divided constituencies. The Democratic Socialists vie for dominance against more moderate Democrats. MAGA Republicans confront disaffected libertarians and neocons. And outside all these polarized factions are millions of voters that don’t find any politician or political agenda credible enough to...
By Edward Ring
When choosing what policies and projects might best ensure abundant water for California’s ecosystems, farms, and cities, the role of the delta is central. Even if large scale desalination were to someday deliver over a million acre feet of water per year to California’s coastal cities, how we manage the delta affects many times that...
By Edward Ring
Spencer Pratt’s LA mayoral bid surged on Election Day, only to be reversed as California’s entrenched political machine reshaped the final count after the vote. Bill de Blasio appeared on NewsNation on June 2 and was asked to comment on Spencer Pratt’s campaign. De Blasio smugly described Pratt’s ads as “inappropriate” and wondered, “Who is...
By Edward Ring
A recent article in Grist characterized recent efforts by the Trump administration to preserve Scott Dam as a “culture war crusade.” That is accurate, so long as we recognize that efforts to demolish the dam – and diminish the value of the entire Potter Valley Project that the dam is a part of – are also the result of a culture...
By Edward Ring
There is no realistic scenario imaginable that does not include Californians consuming at least another five billion barrels of oil before the state achieves its much touted official goal of a “clean energy future.” Here are the numbers: In 2025, Californians consumed 484 million barrels of crude oil. To understand why another five billion barrels is the...
By Edward Ring
If you own property in California, you’re not safe. A new ballot measure will empower the state to confiscate a percentage of the assets of any resident, even though its initial provisions don’t communicate that intent. California’s “One-Time Wealth Tax for State-Funded Healthcare, Education, and Food Assistance Programs Initiative,” which has already qualified for the November ballot,...
By Edward Ring
The recently released “Water Renaissance” plan, a product of “conservation groups and tribes,” gets a very big idea right. There is no reason why California’s coastal megacities should have to import water. With that one visionary presumption, this report has made a major contribution. In fact, it doesn’t go far enough. With massive, targeted investments,...
By Edward Ring
By every reasonable standard of governance, California’s elected politicians have made a mess of the Golden State. Reciting the litany of failures has become so common that it’s hardly worth the trouble. Chaotic, unsafe downtowns. Retail businesses giving up and relocating. Chronic government budget deficits, despite the nation’s highest taxes, set to go higher still....
By Edward Ring
Whether it’s an energy project or a water project, it’s important to avoid conflating capacity with actual production, or yield. With energy projects, that difference is much more certain than with water projects. For example, in 2024, California’s lone remaining nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon, with an output capacity of 2.4 gigawatts, would have produced...
By Edward Ring
a new form will got here