This week on Watt It Takes : How Ryan Popple’s experience in the military, Tesla and venture capital helped him lead electric bus maker Proterra. “It’s good for the ‘keep calm and carry on mentality’ when people tend to bring me a box of broken parts. So if you’re the founder or CEO of an organization, you shouldn’t be surprised when most of what is brought to you is bad news.” Proterra is on a roll. The company is a leading manufacturer of heavy-duty electric buses in North America, with over 5...
Aug 22, 2018•1 hr 4 min
There are now one trillion watts of wind and solar installed around the world, according to new figures from BNEF . It took a few decades to get here, but it’ll only take five years to do it again — and nearly 50 percent cheaper. Now that we’ve reached the terawatt scale, the true acceleration begins. This week on the podcast, we'll contextualize that landmark for renewables. Then, we'll discuss Tesla’s privatization debacle. Musk claimed on twitter that he has a plan to take Tesla private. Insi...
Aug 16, 2018•48 min
The Gang is on summer vacation this week. We'll be back soon with our regular analysis and debate on the stories in energy. Meanwhile, we'd like to introduce you to Political Climate , GTM's newest podcast hosted by Senior Editor Julia Pyper. The show features healthy debates from Republicans and Democrats over the politics of energy and climate. Enjoy this bonus episode and share your feedback with The Energy Gang and Political Climate on Twitter. Subscribe to Political Climate via Apple Podcas...
Aug 08, 2018•46 min
This week on Watt It Takes: We’ll hear from Susan Kennedy , the CEO of Advanced Microgrid Solutions, about her transition from politics to behind-the-meter energy storage. Kennedy was an important player in California environmental politics. She influenced some of the biggest pieces of legislation that launched the state’s solar industry and cap-and-trade market. She also worked as a senior advisor to some the biggest names in both parties, including Dianne Feinstein and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A...
Jul 30, 2018•1 hr 1 min
This week, David Roberts, a staff writer at Vox, joins the gang to talk about a wide range of topics in the news. How would a good carbon tax work? Are we fooling ourselves thinking Republicans will ever support one? In the absence of a carbon price, is 100% renewable energy good politics? Is it good policy? Should we bail out nuclear? Can renewables fill in the gap created by closing nuke plants? What should we be hopeful about? We’ll spend the second half of the show talking about electric bus...
Jul 27, 2018•1 hr 3 min
Jul 18, 2018•40 min
Dozens of companies across solar, batteries and biofuels have imploded over the years. But it's hard to match the spectacular implosion of Better Place five years ago. Better Place rose to fame in 2007, pulling in nearly $1 billion of venture capital by promising to put millions of cheap electric cars and battery switching stations on roads around the world. It fell nearly as quickly into bankruptcy after a series of poor decisions, market twists and bitter internal disputes. A new book on the c...
Jul 12, 2018•59 min
Like fantasy sports? Listen to our deep decarbonization draft. The Energy Gang is break this week for the July 4 holiday. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, we're offering up a re-run from The Interchange. In this episode, Shayle and Stephen choose their rosters of nine technologies to decarbonize the global economy. The goal: find the best resource mix to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius. The draft has nine rounds. The “team” resulting from each person’s picks will need t...
Jul 05, 2018•45 min
A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science gives us a clearer picture of the climate impact of natural gas. According to researchers, methane leakage across oil and gas operations in the U.S. are 60 percent higher than government estimates. Put another way: the methane leakage from oil and gas has the same warming effect over a 20-year time period as all America’s coal capacity in 2015. Natural gas has been vital to lowering power-sector carbon emissions. Are methane leaks reversing that p...
Jun 28, 2018•41 min
Leila Madrone was constantly looking for creative ways to use robots. In the mid 2000's, she co-founded a music group called Ensemble Robot, which featured robots that played music. "I had this great passion to use robotics to have meaning in the world," said Madrone. Later, Madrone worked for NASA's intelligent robotics group. Then she caught the solar bug: "Solar seemed like where the most possibility was for the future." She teamed up with Saul Griffith, an expert in self-replicating machines...
Jun 19, 2018•47 min
Elon Musk announced Monday that Tesla is laying off 9 percent of salaried employees at the company. This is not the first round of sweeping layoffs at Tesla — the most recent came after the SolarCity acquisition. But this appears to be the biggest so far. We'll discuss Elon's new quest for profitability. Then, we'll cover the never-ending saga in Washington over saving coal plants. The Trump Administration is now trying to invoke national security to prop up closing coal and nuke plants – and th...
Jun 14, 2018•48 min
What’s the optimal way to spend money raised by a carbon tax? How should climate play in Florida’s big toss-up Congressional race? What’s the best energy platform for gubernatorial candidates? This week: your questions answered. We got a bunch of queries from listeners about politics — so that’s the direction we’re headed. We'll discuss what these individual stories tell us about nationwide elections in 2018. The Energy Gang is brought to you by Sense . Sense installs in your home's electrical p...
May 24, 2018•43 min
There’s a new phrase bouncing around energy circles: Electrify Everything. This week, we talk to Nate Adams, a home performance expert whose personal mission is to rip gas meters out of homes and move us closer toward full electrification. As he’s learned from experience, it’s not easy. The electrification of homes may be getting easier in California, however. In the second half of the show, we’re going to tackle California’s new building codes. Starting in 2020, most new homes will have to come...
May 17, 2018•48 min
Billy Parish dropped out of college to pursue a career in climate activism. Today, he's the CEO of America's biggest rooftop solar loan company, Mosaic. In this edition of Watt It Takes , Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch interviews Parish about his transition from activist to executive. They'll talk about the many iterations of Mosaic, difficulties in raising money from VCs, and Parish's philosophy on building a successful team. Watt It Takes is a live interview series produced by Powerhouse in partn...
May 09, 2018•41 min
We all fall victim to myths. But when they're deeply tied to our belief systems, they can be nearly impossible to break. On this week's show, we're busting some of the most common myths in clean energy: No, storage doesn't necessarily increase emissions. It depends on how it's used . No, solar isn't just for rich Democrats. In California, Republicans are buying solar more often . No, renewable energy doesn't inherently raise electric rates. In fact, U.S. electricity prices have fallen . In the s...
May 04, 2018•46 min
This podcast episode sponsored by West Monroe Partners , and brought to you by creative strategies. How do we think about change in the electric utility industry caused by distributed resources? Is it like telecom? Internet-based retail? Sam Uyeno, senior manager in West Monroe Partners’ energy and utilities practice, says that it may be more like ride sharing. As distributed resources flourish, he argues that utilities will have to think about how to leverage new customers within its network — ...
May 02, 2018•26 min
Are we entering a new era of grid planning? In recent years, we've assumed that sweeping reforms are the best way to get distributed energy built. But in pockets of the country, a more localized approach to deploying these assets is taking hold – and it could be the sign of a much bigger shift to come. On this week's Energy Gang, we'll look at Washington, D.C.'s new proposal for an authority that would push PEPCO to consider distributed alternatives to infrastructure projects. Then, why is one o...
Apr 27, 2018•48 min
SunPower couldn’t convince the Trump Administration to abandon tariffs on imported solar panels. So now it plans to buy one of the companies pushing tariffs in the first place. Yesterday, SunPower unveiled plans to acquire SolarWorld’s U.S. operations. Two months ago, CEO Tom Werner said SunPower was going to divest from America. But now he’s buying his way back in. In this week's episode, we'll explain how Trump's demands for tariffs are shifting the PV manufacturing landscape. Then, 173 countr...
Apr 19, 2018•48 min
Statoil is the largest operator of oil and gas rigs around the world. Consequently, the company's biggest low-carbon investments are offshore: floating wind farms and distributed carbon capture and storage. This week, we're talking to Stephen Bull, the VP in charge of Statoil's low-carbon business, about where he sees the most potential. We'll talk to him about the performance of floating wind, the economics of CCS, and whether oil companies are investing enough in their new energy divisions. We...
Apr 13, 2018•40 min
After a multi-year decline, global carbon emissions are on the upswing. The International Energy Agency now says that emissions grew in 2017 -- caused by an increase oil, natural gas and coal demand. Nearly three-quarters of new energy demand across the globe was served by fossil fuels. At the same time, America saw another yearly drop in carbon emissions, which IEA says was assisted by renewables. But with more and more carbon-free nuclear plants slated for closure across the U.S., many worry t...
Apr 05, 2018•49 min
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for two of Silicon Valley’s top car companies. After a pedestrian was killed by one of Uber’s autonomous cars in Arizona, the company’s AV operations were suspended. Other driverless car companies are now weighing the consequences to the technology, and regulators are asking if we need to slow down real-world testing. Tesla is dealing with two crashes of its own. The crash of a Model X is raising questions about autopilot mode, and its stock has crashed 25 percent...
Mar 29, 2018•36 min
In the early 2000s, investors weren't very interested in SunEdison's business plan to finance solar with power purchase agreements. "No one wanted to hear about physical infrastructure," said Jigar Shah, who drafted the business plan and co-founded the company. It took until 2006 to raise venture capital. But soon after, PPA customers started rolling in: Staples, Ikea, then Whole Foods. "It was an idea who's time had come," said Shah. The PPA is now the backbone of solar. In this week's edition ...
Mar 26, 2018•56 min
There are three forces coming together in the transportation sector: vehicle autonomy, vehicle sharing, and vehicle electrification. On their own, app-based sharing and electric vehicles are powerful agents of change. Together with automation, "they're revolutionary," argues Dr. Dan Sperling, author of a new book on the subject. "It will change our lifestyles, it'll change the automobile industry, it'll change land use and cities, it'll change energy," he explains on this week's podcast. Sperlin...
Mar 16, 2018•59 min
Amazon's analytical approach to understanding the customer allowed it to move beyond books and dominate the retail space. Entire industries are getting upended and transformed as a result. This story about disruption is a familiar one. We’ve seen how it plays time and time again – and it’s not pretty for the incumbents who fail to catch up with technology. It's a compelling narrative in the utility space, where we are smack in the middle of an Amazon moment. Electricity consumers want choice. Th...
Mar 06, 2018•38 min
Last June, comedian John Oliver devoted a long segment to the struggling coal industry on his HBO show Last Week Tonight . He turned his attention to Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, one of the most bombastic advocates of coal. And then Murray sued Oliver for defamation. That defamation lawsuit was thrown out by a judge last week. But the saga tells us a lot about Robert Murray, one of the most influential figures behind the Trump Administration's coal policies. In this week's episode, w...
Mar 01, 2018•49 min
If storage is the Swiss Army Knife of the electric grid, then U.S. energy regulators are breaking out their tool belts. Last week brought a historic ruling at FERC. Commissioners told regional grid operators to create rules valuing the grid services of energy storage. Will it screw natural gas peakers – or maybe cut, saw, file, prune, hook, or crimp them? Later in the podcast, an infrastructure redux. The White House’s infrastructure plan is out. When it comes to energy, the Trump Administration...
Feb 23, 2018•47 min
Since the White House slapped penalties on solar panels made outside America, a handful of companies say they’re likely to ramp up production in the U.S. In recent weeks, two Asian producers -- Jinko Solar and United Renewable Energy -- said they're planning to set up new module assembly plants. Other domestic producers are making plans to hire new employees. How should we interpret this activity? Does this mean the tariffs are working? On this week's Energy Gang , we're joined by GTM Senior Edi...
Feb 07, 2018•45 min
There are tens of thousands large-scale wind turbines scattered across America. That means over a million and a half households are located five miles from a turbine. And they’re actually inching closer to homes on average, according to government researchers . So how do those machines impact our property values, our soundscapes, and our quality of life? The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has a slew of new data on the impact of wind turbines on our lives. In this week's podcast, we’re going to d...
Feb 01, 2018•42 min
The Trump Administration just imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported solar cells and modules. How much will it stunt solar growth in America? Will it spark a broader trade war? There are a lot of questions about the impact. In this podcast, we’re giving you the answers – or, as many answers we have, just a day after the decision. This week, we'll bring together our teams from The Interchange and The Energy Gang together to answer listener questions about the tariffs. We'll also talk with GTM Res...
Jan 23, 2018•44 min
The next sector ripe for electrification: aviation. Electric airplanes could completely make over the regional airline sector -- fundamentally changing the way we move around the country and creating new economic opportunities. On this week's Energy Gang , we'll talk with Ashish Kumar, the CEO of Zunum Aero, about the company's electric propulsion system and hybrid-electric airplane model. We'll discuss design challenges, battery requirements, immediate market opportunities, and the long-term ec...
Jan 19, 2018•48 min
