In nearly every corner of the country, energy storage projects are finding their way onto the grid — they’re getting bigger, cheaper, more diverse, and even a little bit weirder. Most of all, they’re just becoming normal. This week, we’re talking about the new normal for power operations. It includes a lot of batteries. And maybe some air tanks, water pumps and cranes too. GTM Staff Writer Julian Spector joins us as a guest co-host to round up the most topical projects and tell us where the stor...
Aug 23, 2019•44 min
Solar and wind sent European utilities into financial disarray, and U.S. utilities are facing a similar fate. Are global oil companies next? A new report from one of the world’s biggest banks, BNP Paribas, says that solar and wind paired with electric cars provide up to 7 times more useful energy for mobility than gasoline dollar for dollar. And that economic reality could hit oil companies sooner than they think. “The oil industry has never before in its history faced the kind of threat that re...
Aug 16, 2019•48 min
This week on Watt It Takes : How a former Apple engineer applied design principles from the iPod and the iPad to smart thermostats — jolting an industry badly in need of change. Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Matt Rogers, the co-founder and former chief product officer of Nest. Nest is best known for its elegant learning thermostat, the first major breakout hit in the smart home space. Google later acquired the company for $3.2 billion. In this interview, Rogers talks about his Apple...
Aug 02, 2019•1 hr 6 min
Note: after this episode, we will be on hiatus for a few weeks while Stephen Lacey goes on paternity leave. We’ll be back soon! On July 8, Donald Trump stood in the East Room of the White House and delivered a speech on his “environmental leadership.” What could he possibly talk about? Onlookers called the speech “Orwellian.” The Trump Administration has tried to pull America out of a global climate agreement, sent officials to try to sell coal at the latest UN climate summit, forced climate sci...
Jul 14, 2019•48 min
This week, we present a special episode produced on behalf of CohnReznick. There’s a bonanza sweeping across North America: cannabis. As more states legalize marijuana, the industry is attracting high-profile investors and bringing in $6.5 billion in yearly sales. But it also faces two major challenges: limited access to banking and high energy costs. Because cannabis is still illegal at the federal level, traditional banks are unwilling to do business with the thousands of companies serving the...
Jul 09, 2019•21 min
This week: we examine the Trump alternative to the Clean Power Plan, look at the gap between red and blue states on climate change, and review the presidential debates. Up first: how Trump's EPA is replacing Obama's major climate rule. Then, the red-blue climate divide. States are putting ambitious new climate plans in place. But they’re almost all in states dominated by democrats -- and the new EPA power plant rule only makes that gap bigger. What are the long-term economic consequences for the...
Jul 02, 2019•44 min
This week on Watt It Takes : How a Ukrainian immigrant quietly toiled away on a new battery chemistry and created a billion-dollar unicorn. Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Gene Berdichevsky, the CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies. Sila is developing a new lithium-ion battery chemistry that uses silicon in place of graphite — leading to an improvement in battery density by 20 percent. This spring, Daimler led a $170 million round in Sila, valuing the startup at $1 billion. Berdichevsky was t...
Jun 23, 2019•58 min
It’s been a decade since the fracking boom reshaped U.S. energy markets — so when will we ever use our drilling prowess to create a similar geothermal boom? That’s the hope. The Department of Energy just released a massive new report revisiting America’s geothermal potential in conventional hydrothermal, enhanced geothermal, direct use and heat pumps. And the potential is enormous — but it’s just sitting there, largely untapped. We’re going to open up DOE’s report and see which borehole it takes...
Jun 13, 2019•39 min
It may be a couple election cycles late, but we’re finally getting a wave of climate plans from presidential candidates. The issue is now front and center in the Democratic primaries. We’ve spent the last week collecting the plans from leading candidates, surveying the stances of the rest of the field, and monitoring the reactions. We’ll sort through them in this week’s Energy Gang episode. In the first half of the show, we’ll compare and contrast the unique plans from Elizabeth Warren, Jay Insl...
Jun 03, 2019•40 min
A new report from the International Monetary Fund shows that the world spent $5.2 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. That’s half a trillion dollars more than in 2015. But it also shows that fossil fuel subsidy spending is down by half since 2012. What gives? How much are we actually spending to make fossil fuels cheaper? We’ll clarify the different ways economists are measuring that spending. Then, U.S. tax subsidies for solar and wind are set to ramp downward as part of a deal struck in...
May 23, 2019•57 min
It took four decades for America to install a million solar systems. And it took just three years to install the second million. From here on out, the U.S. market will likely see a million systems every couple of years, according to the latest data from Wood Mackenzie. To mark this new era of scale, we’re going to look back at the most important trends that got us to the first couple of million systems — and the most important trends that will keep many more millions coming. Then, Tesla has a ne...
May 16, 2019•52 min
For well over a decade, researchers have been modeling the cost of state renewable energy mandates. The results break down in predictable ways: conservative and progressive groups often come to very different conclusions based about costs and benefits. An authoritative 2015 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that compliance costs for state renewables targets only make up 2 percent of retail rates in most U.S. states. After a lull, the debate over the cost of renewable energy ta...
May 03, 2019•46 min
This week on Watt It Takes : How a product manager at Google saw promise in geothermal heat pumps — and applied the lessons of solar to an underserved market. In this episode, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Kathy Hannun, the co-founder of Dandelion, a home geothermal company that uses a proprietary drilling technique, simple product design, and financing to cut the cost of ground-source heating and cooling. For seven years, Kathy was on the rapid evaluation team at Alphabet X — forme...
Apr 24, 2019•33 min
This week, we present a special episode produced in collaboration with CohnReznick Capital. How do you broker billions of dollars worth of renewable energy deals — and do it again and again? It takes grit, sure. But it also requires empathy. And that, says Conor McKenna, is the real art of the deal. McKenna is a senior managing director at CohnReznick Capital Markets. He’s helped close 8 gigawatts of wind, solar and biomass projects over his career. We all know “The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trum...
Apr 23, 2019•22 min
The tech giants are all going long on renewables, but Amazon seems to be going long on oil and gas. A new story details Amazon’s budding romance with the fossil fuel industry, while also lagging behind its peers in buying clean energy for its operations. Other tech companies are using their analytics for helping extract more fossil fuels — but is the extent of Amazon’s pursuit unique? Then, a new study shows that three-quarters of all coal in the US is more expensive than new renewables. But the...
Apr 18, 2019•40 min
This week, the Green New Deal ripples through Washington. A few leading Republicans are responding to the progressive climate plan with some ideas of their own: the New Manhattan Project and the Green Real Deal. They’ve gotten a mostly cold response from the left. But have we finally broken the ice for a legitimate cross-party policy discussion on climate? We’ll look at the GOP responses. Then, Trump’s latest verbal convulsion. Speaking at a fundraiser, the president said wind noise causes cance...
Apr 12, 2019•42 min
This past week, we recorded a live show at the MIT Energy Conference. The theme of the show: what the grid may look like by 2040. As a topical show, we usually don’t know what we’re going to be discussing until a day or two in advance. But the theme of the MIT conference was "tough tech and the 2040 grid" — so we decided to take it head on. To start, we’ll adjust our brains to the 2040 timeframe with some fantastical scenarios. Then, we create our own plans. We will each outline a possible futur...
Apr 07, 2019•46 min
Lyft is set for an IPO on Friday; Uber is driving up to the IPO window soon. Investors seem enthusiastic, but skeptics see a lot of risks and a bumpy path to profitability. In 2018, transportation network companies — pretty much Lyft and Uber — gave 2.6 billion rides. Lyft gave a billion of those rides, doubling its revenue over 2017 to $2.2 billion. We know the consumer appetite is there. But as Lyft hits the public markets, many wonder if that volume can be turned into profits. Autonomous cars...
Mar 28, 2019•1 hr 3 min
We're on spring break this week. We'll be back on Thursday with our regular show. To get you through the next few days, we’re offering up an earlier episode of Watt It Takes about the origin story of Greentech Media. In this edition of Watt It Takes, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch interviews GTM Co-Founder Scott Clavenna about the beginning of the company, the challenges of being a startup in the cleantech world, and our recent acquisition by Wood Mackenzie. Watt It Takes is a live interview series...
Mar 24, 2019•54 min
The latest numbers for U.S. energy storage activity are out. They show a surge of activity coming over the next five years, leading to 6x market growth. By 2024, the storage market will be worth $4.7 billion dollars, driven evenly by utility-scale and behind-the-meter battery projects. On this week's episode, we'll unpack the numbers in the latest Energy Storage Monitor from Wood Mackenzie and the Energy Storage Association. They show a doubling and then a tripling of storage to come — making ba...
Mar 14, 2019•56 min
This week on Watt It Takes : Terry Jester has seen it all in her four-decade career in solar and electronics. As both an engineer and an executive, she’s learned that timing is everything in the energy business. “I think as I’ve gotten older, I understand when best to strike…a good idea can not make it for bad timing, and a bad idea can go too far.” In this episode, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Terry, who is now chief executive of SolPad, maker of a modular home solar-storage syste...
Mar 06, 2019•50 min
This week, we’ve got a bonus episode produced in collaboration with NEXTracker. It’s all about the risks and rewards of doing business in the roaring Latin American solar market. We are speaking with two of the most in-the-know people on the subject. We’re joined by Manan Parikh, Wood a solar analyst focused on the Americas for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. And we’ll hear from Alejo Lopez, a senior director at NEXTracker, who’s helped grow a 3-gigawatt pipeline of trackers in Latin Amer...
Mar 05, 2019•25 min
We weren’t planning on making the Green New Deal a weekly item on the show. Then a video of Senator Dianne Feinstein dropped over the weekend, where she appears to lecture climate-protesting kids. It set off a chain reaction of outrage. The social media fervor has since died down, but some really interesting journalism was left in its wake. This whole affair highlighted the crazy upheaval in climate politics — we’re going to tackle some of the bigger questions raised. Are kids a legitimate const...
Feb 28, 2019•43 min
It’s been one year since the Trump White House slapped 30 percent tariffs on solar cells and modules imported into the US. What happened since? The solar industry said tariffs would destroy tens of thousands of jobs and set the market back years. Turns out, the market is a lot more resilient than presumed. We now have the jobs numbers and installation data for 2018 — and yes, the tariffs definitely hurt solar, but not nearly as much as expected. We’ll take stock of how tariffs shaped America’s s...
Feb 21, 2019•55 min
The Green New Deal plan is out, and we’re suddenly having a national conversation about climate change again. It’s also injecting some early drama into the presidential primaries. This week, we’re digging into the plan. We’ll tell you what’s in it, assess the reactions, and look at whether it will amount to anything. Also: is the democratic-socialist agenda antithetical the “creating climate wealth” framing — or complimentary? Then, recycling is in crisis. You’re probably recycling wrong. China ...
Feb 14, 2019•59 min
This week on Watt It Takes : How David Crane worked his way up in the power business to become CEO of NRG Energy — only to get tossed out of the job for his bold stance on climate. In this episode, Emily Kirsch talks with Crane about taking risks in the conservative power industry. We’re going to hear from Crane about why being a CEO is so lonely, how his open exit letter to NRG employees went viral, the best investment he ever made, and his early career. Watt It Takes is a collaboration between...
Feb 08, 2019•1 hr 17 min
This week: a battle Royale for energy dominance. We're cross-posting an episode from our other Greentech Media podcast, The Interchange . The competitors: utilities, oil & gas majors, mobility providers and big tech. We’re pitting them against each other inside of a voice-activated, electrified cage to see who will emerge as the energy company of the future. Subscribe to The Interchange podcast via Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , Spotify or wherever you find your audio content....
Feb 05, 2019•45 min
What will the U.S. grid mix look like in 2050? It depends on which models you follow. The future according to the Energy Information Administration's latest report : wind will stop growing, coal will stop declining, demand for electricity will keep going up, and emission reductions will moderate. A lot of people are unhappy about it. It's no secret that EIA is ultra-conservative in its modeling. But why is there such a disconnect from the technological and economic shifts in energy markets? And ...
Jan 31, 2019•50 min
What is energy efficiency? That sounds like a pretty simple question. But it’s not. Defining efficiency used to be pretty straightforward: weatherize, upgrade equipment and lighting, use a bit of social science to cut consumption. But now efficiency is becoming just as much about shaping demand in real-time to support distributed energy. And that’s shaping how it gets defined, implemented and tracked. A confluence of factors — the rise of new consumer tech in the home, bundled distributed energy...
Jan 24, 2019•46 min
We are about to witness one of the most contentious and consequential bankruptcies in the history of energy. PG&E, California’s biggest utility, is reeling from wildfire costs — and it is now headed to the courts, where it will likely be dismantled. Will it crush California’s goals to clean up the electric grid? Or will lawmakers step in with a political fix? The stakes couldn’t be higher. We’re going to tackle the big questions raised by PG&E’s spiral. Then, why are hundreds of liberal ...
Jan 17, 2019•58 min
