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THE CLEAN-ENERGY transition is doing wonders for energy nerds. Not because of any particular policy triumph, but because people beyond wonkdom are actually trying to understand what they are saying. Several times in the past two years “energy permitting”, such as the approval of electricity-transmission lines, became one of the hottest legislative topics in America. Attempts at planning reform failed. But the nerds’ moment in the sun is not over. Those newly captivated by provisional environmental-impact statements and land-use planning will soon turn their attention to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an obscure, independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of energy.
In 2022 Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a climate law full of tax incentives for clean-energy infrastructure. President Joe Biden and Democrats won the support of Joe Manchin, a centrist senator for West Virginia, by promising that they would also seek to ease the cumbersome process of obtaining permits. It can take years for solar and wind farms to be approved, and even longer for interstate transmission lines. Speeding up planning is crucial. A study from Princeton University in 2023 found that America needs to expand electricity-transmission capacity 50% faster than its recent historical rate to reap the maximum decarbonisation benefits of the IRA.
One way to launch a building boom would be for Congress to grant FERC the power to permit interstate transmission lines as it does for natural-gas pipelines, which sail much quicker through planning processes. But progress there has stalled. Other good ideas are floating around. One bill, from John Hickenlooper, a Democratic senator for Colorado, would mandate that regions be able to transfer a certain amount of electricity between them. That could make it easier to move power around during extreme weather, reduce costs for consumers where energy is now scarce and help states meet their clean-energy-generation targets.
Yet progressive Democrats are wary of rushing projects through. And though Republicans have long favoured making permits easier to get, they would like to make it easier to build fossil-fuel infrastructure, too. The result is a stalemate. The lack of congressional action leaves agencies trying to speed things up themselves.
Enter FERC. The next few months could determine how effective the commission will prove to be for the foreseeable future, for two reasons.
First, a final rule is set to be released on May 13th that could require transmission developers to plan 20 years into the future and that works out who should pay for new interstate lines. The transmission-opposition-complex is waiting. Environmentalists and NIMBYs are suspicious of how such projects mar the landscape, and often sue to delay them. Many utilities are local monopolies, and building interstate transmission could introduce competition from power generators beyond their regions. “It’s all about the control they have over where our power comes from, and transmission can disrupt that control,” says Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University.
Politics also threatens to get in the way. After FERC initially released its rule in 2022, 17 Republican attorneys-general argued that the commission wants to inflict renewable energy on states that resist it via new transmission lines, and that it does not have authority from Congress to do so. The Supreme Court may be amenable to this argument. In West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency, in 2022, the court used the “major questions doctrine” to strike down an EPA rule regulating greenhouse-gas emissions on similar grounds. It will also take time for transmission operators to comply with the new rule. Mr Peskoe reckons that compliance and legal challenges could delay the rule’s implementation by several years.
The second factor that will affect FERC’s power to change the energy landscape is the commission’s size: it is shrinking. It is supposed to be made up of five members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But Mr Manchin blocked the renomination of the commission’s chairman in 2022, another member’s term expired last year and a third commissioner is scheduled to leave in June. If FERC goes down to two commissioners then it loses a quorum, notes Caitlin Marquis of Advanced Energy United, a clean-energy lobby group. In that case, “they can’t function as a decision-making body,” she adds.
In February Mr Biden announced three nominees who would bring the commission back to full strength—provided that they are indeed confirmed. Their nominations appear uncontroversial so far, but America’s toxic politics have made even energy nerds superstitious. The common refrain from the cognoscenti when contemplating the nominees’ prospects is: “I don’t want to jinx it.”■
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SIX ESTEEMED sommeliers sit silently behind a judging table. A waiter tops up their glasses one by one and they appraise the stuff: sniff, hold it to the light, sometimes swirl, sip, swish between cheeks, dump the extras and give it a score. But the liquid is no Zinfandel or Syrah. Instead the bon viveurs are tasting high-end waters.
Homemade barbecue pork chops. Katy Perry performs onstage during the Katy Perry The Lifetimes Tour 2025. A woman checks her receipt while exiting a store.
iStock| Theo Wargo | Hispanolistic | Getty Images
A few weeks ago, as Kiki Rough felt increasingly concerned about the state of the economy, she began thinking about previous periods of financial hardship.
Rough thought about the skills she learned about making groceries stretch during the tough times that accompanied past economic downturns. Facing similar feelings of uncertainty about the country’s financial future, she began making video guides to recipes from cookbooks published during previous recessions, depressions and wartimes.
The 28-year-old told followers that she is not a professional chef, but instead earned her stripes by learning to cook while on food stamps. From Rough’s yellow-and-black kitchen in the Chicago suburbs, she teaches viewers how to make cheap meals and at-home replacements for items like breakfast strudel or donuts. She often reminds people to replace ingredients with alternatives they already have in the pantry.
“I keep seeing this joke over and over in the comments: The old poors teaching the new poors,” Rough told CNBC. “We just need to share knowledge right now because everyone is scared, and learning is going to give people the security to navigate these situations.”
The self-employed consultant’s videos quickly found an audience on TikTok and Instagram. Between both platforms, she’s gained 350,000 followers and garnered about 21 million views on videos over the last month, by her count.
President Donald Trump’s announcement of broad and steep tariffs earlier in April has ratcheted up fears of the U.S. economy tipping into a recession in recent weeks. As Americans like Rough grow increasingly worried about the road ahead, they are harking back to the tips and tricks they employed to scrape by during dark financial chapters like the global financial crisis that exploded in 2008.
Google is predicting a spike in search volumes this month for terms related to the recession that came to define the late 2000s. Searches for the “Global Financial Crisis” are expected to hit levels not seen since 2010, while inquiries for the “Great Recession” are slated to be at their highest rate since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
Porkchops, house parties and jungle juice
On TikTok, a gaggle of Millennials and Gen Xers has stepped into the roles of older siblings, offeringflashbacks and advice to younger people on how to pinch pennies. Some Gen Zers have put out calls to elders for insights on what a recession may feel like at this stage of life, having been too young to feel the full effects of the financial crisis.
“This is, potentially, at least on a large scale, the first time that millennials have been able to be the ‘experts’ on something,” said Scott Sills, a 33-year-old marketer in Louisiana. “We’re the experts on getting the rug pulled out from under us.”
Those doling out the advice are taking a trip down memory lane the to tail-end of the aughts. Cheap getaways to Florida were the norm instead of lush trips abroad. They had folders for receipts in case big-ticket purchases went on sale later. Business casual outfits were commonplace at social events because they couldn’t afford multiple styles of clothing.
Porkchops were a staple dinner given their relative affordability, leading one creator to declare that they “taste like” the Great Recession. They drank “jungle juice” at house parties, a concoction of various cheap liquors and mixers, instead of cocktails at bars.
“There’s things that I didn’t realize were ‘recession indicators’ the first time around that I thought were just the trends,” said M.A. Lakewood, a writer and professional fundraiser in upstate New York. “Now, you can see it coming from 10 miles away.”
Customers shop for produce at an H-E-B grocery store on Feb. 12, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
To be sure, some of the discourse has centered around how inflationary pressures have made a handful of these hacks defunct. Some content creators pointed out that the federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 per hour since 2009 despite the cost of living skyrocketing.
Kimberly Casamento recently began a TikTok series walking viewers through recipes from a cookbook that was focused on affordable meals published in 2009. The New Jersey-based digital media manager said she’s found costs for what were then considered low-budget meals ballooning between about 100% and 150%. In addition to sharing the price changes, the 33-year-old gives viewers some tips on how to keep costs down.
“Every aspect of life is so expensive that it’s hard for anybody to survive,” Casamento said. “If you can cut the cost of your meal by $5, then that’s a win.”
‘A very human thing’
This type of communal knowledge-sharing is common during times of economic belt tightening, according to Megan Way, an associate professor at Babson College who studies family and intergenerational economics. While conversations about how to slash costs or to make meals stretch typically took place among neighbors in the late 2000s, Way said it makes sense that they would now play out in the digital square with the rise of social media.
“It’s a very human thing to reach out to others when things are feeling uncertain and try to gain on their experience,” Way said. “It can really make a difference for feeling like you’re moving forward a little prepared. One of the worst things for an economy is absolute fear.”
Read more CNBC analysis on culture and the economy
Way said that Americans are quick to look back to the Great Recession for a guide because that downturn was so shocking and widely felt. However, she said there’s key differences between that economic situation and what the U.S. is facing today, such as the absence of bad debt that sparked the housing market’s crash.
Still, she said there’s broad uncertainty felt today on several fronts — be it tied to the economy, geopolitics or domestic policy priorities like slashing the federal workforce or limiting immigration. That can reignite the feeling of unpredictability about what the future will bring that was paramount during the Great Recession, Way said.
In 2025, it’s clear that economic confidence among the average American is rapidly souring. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment recorded one of its worst readings in more than seven decades this month.
With that negative economic outlook comes rising stress. When Lukas Battle made a satirical TikTok about feeling like divorces were increasingly common around the time of the Great Recession, the 27-year-old’s comments were abuzz with people talking about their parents splitting recently. (Though divorce has been seen as a cultural hallmark of the financial crisis, data shows the rate actually declined during this period.)
“There’s a second round of divorces happening as we speak,” Battle said.
Cultural parallels
That’s one of several parallels social media users have drawn between the late aughts and today. When videos surfaced of a group dancing to Doechii’s hit song “Anxiety,” several commenters on X reported feeling déjà vu to when flashmob performances were common.
Disney‘s reboot of the animated show “Phineas and Ferb,” which originally premiered in the late 2000s, similarly put the era top of mind.
Lady Gaga performing at Coachella 2017
Getty Images | Christopher Polk
“Recession pop,” a phrase mainly referring to the subgenre of trendy music that dropped during the Global Financial Crisis, has caught a second wave over the past year as Americans contended with inflation and high interest rates.
In 2008, artists such as Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry regularly appeared on the music charts. Both Cyrus and Gaga have released new songs this year. Perry kicked off a world tour this week.
“It’s almost a permission to feel good, whether that’s through song or something,” said Sills, the marketer in Louisiana. “It’s not necessarily ignoring the problems that are here, but just maybe finding some sort of joy or fun in the midst of all of it.”