Dan Yates and his co-founder Alex Laskey built Opower, an efficiency company that saves more energy every year than the hoover dam can generate. It was based on cutting-edge behavioral science -- but it wasn’t always clear how the science would play out. “It wasn’t okay with us to just know that there was going to be a result. It had to be a certain level, otherwise it wasn’t economic. And in the first few months, the results came in and they weren’t changing behavior. The floor fell out from un...
Jul 29, 2020•53 min
Joe Biden just released a plan to address climate change on a trillion-dollar scale. Along with focusing on rapid deployment of renewables, it also devotes resources to environmental justice, sustainable housing, clean transportation, and networking. What would it mean? And who's informing the ideas? We’ll dig in. Then Facebook's disinformation problem. We look at why Facebook is rejecting the conclusions of its fact-checkers on some articles about climate change. We’re joined by Emily Atkin, cl...
Jul 24, 2020•1 hr 1 min
A group of House lawmakers recently released a 547-page report on climate change. Reporters at E&E News call it “arguably the most comprehensive climate policy plan in American politics.” The report spells out in great detail how to use Congressional policy to decarbonize the economy. It was the result of nearly a year of input from hundreds of experts, 17 hearings, and thousands of meetings. This week, we’ll discuss why this report is so significant. We’ll also look at a companion infrastru...
Jul 17, 2020•1 hr 5 min
A rivalry is emerging between two companies trying to clean up the trucking industry: Nikola Motor versus Tesla Motors. Tesla thinks battery-electric semi models are superior. Nikola thinks hydrogen is the best choice. Neither company actually has a semi model on the road. But Elon Musk and Trevor Milton are talking up their visions for the future of heavy-duty trucks, with the hope of getting vehicles to customers in the next couple of years. This week on The Energy Gang : Which company is best...
Jun 26, 2020•58 min
This is an original, branded podcast from GTM Creative Strategies, produced in collaboration with CohnReznick. In 2004, Ted Gunther started a new job at a big accounting firm. He led the team overseeing transactions in newly-deregulated electricity markets. On his first day, he met the "Green Book," a thick, complicated book that sets standards for derivatives, hedging strategies and contracts structures. “I still remember it vividly. [...] I remember the partner at the time putting that book on...
Jun 25, 2020•13 min
Most decarbonization proposals play out over 30 years, aiming toward 2050. But a new roadmap from researchers at UC Berkeley and the policy firm Energy Innovation shows the grid can get 90% clean in just 15 years. No new fossil fuel plants. Lower rates for consumers. 85,000 lives saved. 500,000 additional jobs. Region by region, they lay out exactly how. Prices have fallen so quickly that our understanding of what’s possible hasn’t kept pace. And now, say researchers, we have the chance to decar...
Jun 19, 2020•1 hr 5 min
We’re back with another live show from quarantine. Europe is crafting a €750 billion recovery package in response to the economic impact of coronavirus. It will devote more than €200 billion directly to low-carbon infrastructure projects. That could enable hundreds of billions more for renewables, efficiency, clean public transport, and hydrogen. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., our recent stimulus sent billions of dollars to debt-laden oil producers. With potentially one shot left to pass another r...
Jun 11, 2020•1 hr 3 min
This week: as anger over police brutality explodes into the once-empty streets, we tackle an equally oppressive force for black Americans: environmental racism. Coronavirus has exposed an unsettling reality for black and brown people, who are dying at higher rates in the country’s most polluted communities. We’re suddenly talking again about structural racism in policing and criminal justice. But the story of race, energy and the environment is also very important to understanding the anger of t...
Jun 05, 2020•56 min
Gia Schneider and her brother Abe started Natel Energy based on a hydropower turbine their father designed. And after more than a decade of R&D, pilots, software development and a project for Apple, Natel is preparing for the next level of scale. “Our objectives have actually not wavered. But they haven’t wavered because of rigid adherence to dogma, they have not wavered because we check in consistently about ‘is this the right problem to solve?’” says Schneider. Natel is commercializing a t...
May 29, 2020•52 min
This week, we cover some hopeful signs amidst the economic destruction. First, we’ll look at the record-breaking activity in battery storage. A coal plant in North Dakota will be replaced in part with a one-acre battery array from Form Energy that uses a new technology capable of discharging for 150 hours – that’s more than 30 times longer than lithium batteries. Hawaii’s electric utility just awarded contracts for 16 projects that add up to more than 3 gigawatt-hours of storage, in order to rep...
May 22, 2020•51 min
This week, we look at sky-high layoffs in clean energy. How do we get people back to work? The first major analysis of unemployment in the clean energy sector has been released for April. According to E2 and BW Research, nearly 600,000 jobs were lost in energy efficiency, manufacturing, electric vehicles and clean power and fuels. We’ve seen a 17 percent drop in the green workforce since the start of the year. Those losses amount to double the employment growth in clean energy for the last three...
May 15, 2020•55 min
This week: while the country is distracted by infection rates, deaths and protests, what else have we been missing? We peek out from behind the quarantine curtain to see what the Trump administration has been up to on the energy front. The Trump administration has declared a national emergency over cyber threats to the power grid. Equipment vendors “where a foreign adversary has an interest” will be banned. Most transformers are built in China. Will this create uncertainty or slow grid work? The...
May 08, 2020•1 hr 1 min
This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Saul Griffith, the founder and chief scientist at Other Lab. Saul Griffith has a PhD in materials science and information theory. He’s co-founded over a dozen companies. And now he’s determined to prove that we already have what it takes to decarbonize the economy. “The reality is I think it's still possible to completely decarbonize by 2030 and save everyone money. And we just got to start thinking about it correctly,” says...
Apr 30, 2020•1 hr 7 min
This week, we bring you a joint episode of The Energy Gang and The Interchange , recorded in front of a live audience from our quarantine quarters around the country. When we started making our podcasts seven years ago, it was clear that the energy transition would be a difficult one. Both shows were designed as a forum to grapple with tough issues in an accessible, candid way. The clean energy industry has faced its share of crises over the years — but nothing quite like the current pandemic an...
Apr 24, 2020•1 hr 23 min
We’re doing a free live show from our homes! Sign up here to join us on Wednesday April 22nd. You can watch a behind-the-scenes recording with The Energy Gang and The Interchange . This week: The many ways that dirty energy has controlled the politics of clean energy. Dr. Leah Stokes, an expert on interest groups and their influence over policy, joins the gang. Her new book, Short Circuiting Policy , is the focus of our episode. Who are the truly bad actor utilities? How have they held back clim...
Apr 18, 2020•1 hr 5 min
The world is experiencing a sudden, dramatic drop in all kinds of air pollution. The skies are dramatically different. People can hear birds they didn’t even know were there, and see landscapes that have been shrouded for decades. It’s saved thousands of lives in averted asthma and heart attacks. When this is all over, will people clamor for cleaner air? We discuss the potential long-term impacts on this week’s episode. Then: the 2020 climate summit is postponed. Could that be a good thing? What...
Apr 10, 2020•46 min
This week: The coronavirus shockwave brings staggering losses of lives, jobs, and money. So many applied for unemployment last week – 5 times more than ever before – that it was hard for graphic artists to draw a Y-axis that would fit them in historical comparisons. We’re now at 10 million unemployment claims. With so much turmoil and uncertainty, we are going to dig back into some of the big themes of the week. First, we’ll have a recap of stimulus activity. The day after the unprecedented unem...
Apr 03, 2020•59 min
This is a special crossover episode between The Energy Gang and Climate 2020 . Coronavirus brought the 2020 election to a screeching halt. Climate was once a top issue in the Democratic primary, but it’s been overtaken by a virus and a looming economic apocalypse. Primaries are delayed. Traditional campaigning has stopped. Biden is hiding out, preparing for the general election. Bernie Sanders is hanging on. And the way we think about all kinds of issues has totally flipped. So how will climate,...
Mar 27, 2020•1 hr 4 min
This is an original, branded podcast produced in partnership with Enel X and GTM Creative Strategies. Electric vehicle chargers now outnumber gas stations in some countries. They’re getting easier to find. They’re easier to install in homes. And they’re getting way smarter. So how can we harness all these chargers for the benefit of the grid and consumers? In this special podcast episode, produced in partnership with Enel X, we’re exploring the vast potential of electric vehicle chargers. We’ll ...
Mar 25, 2020•13 min
This week: how coronavirus could accelerate or decelerate the energy transition. We’re facing an oil shock amid a pandemic, supply chains are still in disarray, economic gears are grinding to a near halt, and countries are scrambling to put stimulus packages in place. How will this shape the energy system? We’re going to break the conversation into three parts: the impact on fossil fuels and renewables; long-term prospects for decarbonization; and a blueprint for a low-carbon stimulus. Where wil...
Mar 19, 2020•58 min
This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Robyn Beavers, the co-founder and CEO of Blueprint Power . Blueprint works with real estate companies to turn their buildings into clean energy power plants. Blueprint developed software that helps building owners optimize their use of co-generation, fuel cells, solar or batteries. Robin has a long history in the worlds of tech, real estate and energy. She was an early employee at Google, and went on to found the company’s e...
Mar 12, 2020•1 hr 7 min
What to do with all this climate money moving around? The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, says he is going to channel $10 billion of his own dollars into climate solutions. Is this the biggest climate philanthropy ever? And where should he be devoting those dollars? We’ll help him spend it. Then, the mushy middle. Our own Jigar Shah’s Generate Capital has raised another billion dollars to fund climate tech that is less attractive to some investors – fuel cells, microgrids and unconventiona...
Mar 05, 2020•45 min
Just weeks after taking over as CEO of BP, Bernard Looney unveiled a series of climate targets. This isn’t the first time BP has tried to make a push into clean energy and decarbonization -- is this time different? In this week’s episode, we’ll look at the pressures that BP is facing. What does it take for a publicly-owned company to reevaluate its core product? And how do you reduce the carbon intensity of a hydrocarbon business? We’ll dig through the details. Then, natural gas is suddenly in t...
Feb 21, 2020•58 min
This week: The cutting-edge business of bringing power to the last billion people on Earth without it. We’ll follow the money, the markets, the business models and ask whether distributed renewables are providing a real alternative to slow grid connections. Investments in off-grid power in Africa and Asia have skyrocketed in the last five years. Thirty times more money went into the sector in 2018 compared with 2013. More than $500 million dollars was invested in electrification in 2018, for the...
Feb 14, 2020•57 min
This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Dr. Christine Ho, the co-founder and CEO of Imprint Energy . Imprint Energy is the company created to commercialize Christine’s invention: a tiny, zinc-based solid-state battery that can be screen printed. It’s being integrated into sensors and other tiny devices across the internet-of-things. Christine’s father was an entrepreneur. She saw the highs and lows of that life. She followed his path -- and has faced her own simil...
Feb 08, 2020•1 hr 6 min
This week: The largest utility in one of the West’s reddest states will go carbon-free by 2050. The power company that has poured tens of millions of dollars into electing friendly regulators and fighting renewable energy says it’s all in for zero carbon electricity — even if the exact pathway isn’t yet clear. Wasn’t APS investing heavily in keeping the Four Corners coal plant open longer? What happened? And how will this impact the way the utility starts planning its resource mix today? Then, C...
Jan 31, 2020•58 min
This week: Microsoft is setting a new standard for corporate climate targets. The technology company promised to remove all of the carbon that it’s ever put in the atmosphere -- going back to when it was founded in an Albuquerque garage in 1975. That includes $1 billion in carbon removal technologies and methods. Can it pull off such an ambitious plan? And will it force other corporates to follow? Then, a landmark climate case. Twenty-one young people who sued the federal government for the righ...
Jan 24, 2020•39 min
The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, is suddenly putting sustainability and climate risk at the center of its investment strategy. “Investors are increasingly...recognizing that climate risk is investment risk. These questions are driving a profound reassessment of risk and asset values. And because capital markets pull future risk forward, we will see changes in capital allocation more quickly than we see changes to the climate itself,” wrote BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in his yearly inve...
Jan 17, 2020•50 min
This week, a look at the bushfires in Australia — their impact to the country, to the grid, and to politics of climate. Then, a big change could be coming to a foundational federal policy in America. Are the proposed changes to PURPA a thoughtful response to market conditions and cheap renewables, or a political play? Finally, we learn to code. Joe Biden is the latest democrat to push the idea that laid-off miners should learn to code. Why did it spark so much derision? Recommended reading: The ...
Jan 11, 2020•49 min
We have some bonus listening as we close out the year! We present one of our most popular episodes of The Interchange : The Deep Decarbonization Draft . It's like fantasy sports for energy nerds. The premise is simple: Shayle and Stephen choose their teams of decarbonization technologies and methods, and then pit them against each other to determine who’s best at saving the planet. Go subscribe to The Interchange anywhere you get your podcasts. It's the perfect compliment to The Energy Gang . Ha...
Dec 26, 2019•46 min
