First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then they transform? This week: a look at some positive trends guiding the utility sector. What are power providers that are leading the energy transition doing right? We’re joined by Julia Hamm , the president and CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance. We’re talking about SEPA’s 2021 utility transformation profile -- a survey and ranking system of over 130 electric utilities in the US. There are thousands of power companies....
May 16, 2021•1 hr 2 min
The lack of progress on offshore wind in America is one of the most baffling and frustrating stories in energy. The technology and resource availability are tremendous. Europe has de-risked the technology and proven it can be deployed at scale, and at low cost, with minimal disruption. U.S. states are setting big targets. And at a national-scale, people want it. And yet, we have not been able to get any meaningful amounts of offshore wind capacity in the water. That may be about to change . In l...
May 07, 2021•57 min
In 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry called the Paris climate treaty a “tremendous victory.” In the years since, $3.8 trillion has flowed into fossil fuels globally. Now Kerry and other White House officials are focusing on banks and insurers that are still offering a lifeline to new fossil fuel projects. Can they slow the flow of cash? This week: why finance is the main pressure point for climate. Today, all the major banks are collectively supporting hundreds of billions of dollars wort...
Apr 30, 2021•1 hr 6 min
In 2005, it looked like heat-trapping gases from power plants were only going up. That year, the EIA put out a projection: CO2 emissions from power plants would steadily rise every year, thanks to the incumbency of coal and gas. Today, they’re half of what was projected. A new report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab calls it “halfway to zero” -- meaning we are already halfway to a zero-carbon grid. This week: why the path to net-zero may surprise us once again. Then: America’s climate image o...
Apr 22, 2021•47 min
Every few seconds, a new residential HVAC system or water heater is installed around America. Most of them are designed to burn oil and gas -- locking in 15-20 more years of carbon pollution. So how do we electrify 100% of that new equipment rapidly? This week: a wide-ranging conversation about how to unlock the residential market. Katherine and Stephen are joined by Nate Adams, the co-founder of HVAC 2.0 . He’s called “ the house whisperer ” for a reason. They discuss the benefit of home electr...
Apr 15, 2021•57 min
California is the proving ground for every major change that President Biden wants to accelerate nationally: 100% carbon-free electricity, fossil fuel phaseouts, climate-resilient grid hardening. The state wants to make 100% of retail electricity sales carbon-free by 2045. To that, it’ll need to match its best year ever for renewable energy installations -- for 25 years more years in a row. It’ll amount to $4.5 billion in yearly spending. California is moving fast. Is there such a thing as too f...
Apr 09, 2021•59 min
The systems that support growing, shipping and processing food make up one-third of heat trapping gases. How can Agtech help us tackle this tangled and underserved sector? We’ll look at investment activity, technological solutions, and policy levers. Then, we revisit long-duration storage. A net-zero grid will require new ways to store and discharge energy over long periods. How’s it shaping up? Plus, is carbon pricing back on the table here in the US? This week, Katherine and Stephen are joined...
Apr 02, 2021•52 min
This week, the nuts and bolts of climate policy: infrastructure. With a $2 trillion covid relief package under his belt, Biden looks to harness another $3 trillion on building clean energy, hardening the electric grid, installing electric car chargers, and updating roads and bridges. We’ll game out what’s needed and what’s possible. Then: is this the moment for the black climate agenda? And if so, what are the priorities? Finally, how will pressure campaigns over new fossil fuel infrastructure p...
Mar 25, 2021•53 min
This week: natural gas bans are the newest flash point in the energy transition. What does it mean for the electrify-everything movement -- and the gas industry’s public relations battle? Then: how do we build back better for everybody? We’ll look how Biden’s recent stimulus and climate agenda could mend America’s growing wealth and race divide. Plus: it’s been a year since the start of the pandemic. What transformed, and what didn’t? What did we get right and wrong? We’ll revisit the last 12 mo...
Mar 18, 2021•56 min
This week, we present a crossover episode of our sister podcast, The Interchange . In this episode, host Shayle Kann talks with fellow venture capitalist Abe Yokell about the state of climate tech investing. It’s safe to say that this year has brought some of the biggest changes to the space we’ve ever seen. Shayle and Abe try to separate what’s real from what’s hype. Thanks to everyone for their kind emails and social media reactions after Jigar's final episode. The show goes on! We’re currentl...
Mar 09, 2021•52 min
Jigar Shah has been our co-host since 2013. But now he's moving on to new pastures. Starting this this week, Jigar will be leading the Department of Energy's loan programs office -- running the government's strategy to finance the deployment of up-and-coming clean energy technologies. In this episode, we reflect on Jigar's career and his role on the show. Plus, we'll learn more about his mission in the Biden Administration. Read the announcement. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy a...
Mar 03, 2021•42 min
This week, we have a bonus episode of Watt It Takes featuring Stephen Lacey, our founding host and executive producer. Back in December, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch interviewed Stephen for a holiday edition of Watt It Takes . They talked in front of an audience about his career in journalism, how the world of podcasting has evolved, and his entrepreneurial journey launching a production company. And great news! Watt It Takes is now a standalone series. You can subscribe on Apple , Spotify , Goog...
Feb 26, 2021•51 min
Even for energy veterans, the depth of failures in Texas last week were breathtaking. As arctic air froze power plants, gas lines, and mechanical instruments, the grid was shut down -- leaving 4 million people without electricity, unknown millions without heat, and three times that many without water. Texas has been through freezes like this before in 2011, 2014 and 2018. Regulators were warned. So who is to blame for this historic catastrophe? This week, we’ll talk about what happened in Texas ...
Feb 24, 2021•1 hr 3 min
This week: climate change is certainly the most urgent issue we face. But should it be formally declared an emergency? There’s a real conversation over the label in the US -- and it could have a very real impact on what the president can do. This has been a growing priority for environmental groups. Grist reported that in December, more than 380 of them sent a letter to Joe Biden’s transition team, urging him to issue an executive order mobilizing the National Emergencies Act. And now, Rep. Earl...
Feb 12, 2021•57 min
Net-zero pledges are becoming common for utilities. But a huge number of them are failing to decarbonize on any timeframe that truly matters. They’re not phasing out coal, they’re building lots of new gas plants, and they’re not building enough clean energy. We’ll talk about a damning new analysis of utility climate goals from the Sierra Club that digs into the actual numbers. Then, the urgency of a national clean energy standard. What are the new political pieces in place to get a nationwide ta...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 2 min
It was hard to keep up with the destruction of the Trump era. And it’s already getting hard to keep up with the rebuilding. This week brought a series of actions on climate change from the White House that are building a framework for the climate economy. Sam Ricketts, a prominent climate policy advisor, told the Los Angeles Times : “This is the most ambitious climate platform put forward by an American president...It is mobilizing the entirety of the federal government in an unprecedented way. ...
Jan 29, 2021•1 hr 3 min
This week, we finally left behind a destructive regime that thwarted environmental policy at every turn. We exchanged it for a government putting climate experts and clean-energy doers in its highest ranks in a way that no prior administration has done before. What comes next? First up this week: If Biden wants his $2 trillion climate spending plan to make a bigger impact, should he emphasize rooftop solar and small-scale batteries? A leading modeler says a local solar-storage plan could save hu...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr
BlocPower CEO Donnel Baird is on a mission to clean up old, inefficient buildings in America’s cities -- and help people who are exposed to the worst pollution. BlocPower was founded in 2012. It’s raised venture capital from Kapor Capital and Andreesen Horowitz. But that process was not easy for a company with a mostly non-white leadership team. As a black founder, Donnel was turned down 200 times before any venture firms were willing to back his vision. “It was really difficult for us raising c...
Jan 14, 2021•1 hr
In the final moments of 2020, the most important U.S. energy legislation in a decade flew in under the radar, attached to the coronavirus relief and government funding bill. It’s an astonishing collection of measures. It sets aside $35 Billion in new funding for clean energy R&D, phases out some of the most egregious greenhouse gases, and extends tax credits for wind, solar, nuclear, and carbon capture. What’s the impact? It would have been a bill big enough to discuss this whole episode. Bu...
Jan 08, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Goodbye 2020. We’re not sad to see you go. Even though this year brought a lot of outright bad stuff, it also brought a lot of positive, nuanced storylines in energy. We’re going to tackle as many of them as possible, using suggestions from our listeners as a guide. And no, they won’t be pandemic-related. Not explicitly anyway. You can listen to our previous episode for our pandemic picks. We’ll tackle your suggestions: breakout technologies, political corruption, corporate momentum, energy just...
Dec 20, 2020•1 hr 16 min
We’re featuring an episode of Google’s new podcast about data centers, called Where the Internet Lives . What would it take to run data centers on clean electricity, everywhere, every hour of the day? In this episode, we look at the evolution of data center energy use in a world confronting the threat of climate change – and explore promising ideas that could fuel a carbon-free future. Subscribe anywhere you get podcasts. Or find it in these top platforms: Apple Google Podcasts Spotify Stitcher ...
Dec 15, 2020•42 min
As we close out 2020, we are diving into the top stories that defined this frenzied and heavy year. This week, we’ll start the show with a look back at how Covid re-shaped the energy transition. We’re going to revisit some predictions that did -- and didn’t -- come true. Next episode, we’ll look at a wider range of (non-pandemic) 2020 stories. Then later in the show, advertising and PR professionals are suddenly being pressured to reveal how much of their income is from fossil fuel clients. Are ...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Climate risk is now the topic du jour in Washington. The Biden transition team identified it as a powerful policy lever in the business world that could help the president-elect’s climate agenda without Congress. But how? Could it happen at the Securities and Exchange Commission where companies disclose legal and other threats? What about a role for the Federal Reserve? What can Biden himself do? This week, we’ll look at how federal action may happen -- and what impact it would have on emissions...
Dec 03, 2020•54 min
Cathy Zoi has seen it all. She’s studied and worked in oil, gas and clean energy since the Reagan Era. Now as CEO of charging company EVgo , she knows the future of energy is coming fast. “Rideshare drivers are now starting to drive EVs, those folks need to charge once a day away from home, and they need to do it fast. When COVID hit, delivery drivers for food deliveries needed to charge on our network. Fleet companies like Amazon. So every month that goes by, there is a new opportunity, says Zo...
Dec 02, 2020•48 min
In the 1960s, scientists who worked for General Motors and Ford discovered that the exhaust from their cars was very likely changing the climate. They made presentations at conferences. They briefed senior executives. And then, they were publicly contradicted and their work was suppressed. We’ll talk to Maxine Joselow, the journalist who reported the story for E&E News over many months. She talked with more than two dozen former GM and Ford employees, retired auto industry executives, academ...
Nov 20, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Has 2020 – which seemed irredeemable – just done a 180? We’ll be back in the Paris agreement, Biden’s got a zero-emissions plan, East Asia’s making big moves, and there might even be a vaccine for Covid-19. President-Elect Joe Biden has already named his environment transition team. And he discussed climate change with four European heads of state this Tuesday. He also has a “ Build Back Better ” one-pager that looks a lot like the green recovery plans in Europe we’ve been discussing for months....
Nov 13, 2020•1 hr 4 min
This sponsored episode was produced in collaboration with GTM Creative Strategies and the Opower team at Oracle Utilities. The last two years have brought a surge of plans for zero-carbon energy from some of the biggest power providers in the world. Dozens of U.S. utilities have committed to decarbonizing by 80% or more by 2050. "Two thirds of U.S. consumers are now served by utilities with carbon or emissions reduction goals," says Scott Neuman, group vice president of Opower, at Oracle Utiliti...
Nov 10, 2020•29 min
This week: the future of the planet depends on the mail. The mail-in votes are still being counted, but it’s increasingly likely that Joe Biden will become America’s next president. As of this recording on Thursday morning, Biden’s path to the presidency looks much better than Trump’s. It could be Thursday night or Friday when we get calls for Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina. We do not have an official result. But the direction feels clearer -- and we have plenty of local result...
Nov 05, 2020•48 min
We’re just a few days out from the election -- and how could we talk about anything else? Climate is finally beginning to play the kind of role that we have waited so long for. In this pre-election episode, we’ll recap where things stand: and how energy and climate are playing into late-stage messaging of Biden and Trump. Plus, what are some of the crucial down-ballot races we’re watching election night? And last: Five years have passed since the largest terrestrial natural gas disaster in U.S. ...
Oct 30, 2020•56 min
This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Solstice CEO Steph Speirs . Solistice is a community solar company trying to make PV accessible to everyone. Steph Speirs grew up one of three kids, first generation, in Hawaii. Her mom had immigrated from Korea. She knows what eviction feels like, and what it’s like to skirt homelessness. And she knows how a poor credit score can sink a human being. She got a scholarship to a private high school, became a National Merit sch...
Oct 23, 2020•53 min
