Congress has directed the nation’s regulator for natural gas and electricity infrastructure to be more responsive to community and environmental concerns. Will FERC’s new Office of Public Participation deliver on the promise of public inclusion? --- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission increasingly finds itself at the center of controversy as momentum in the United States builds for a cleaner and more sustainable energy system. As the regulator of the nation’s natural gas and electricity net...
Jun 15, 2021•42 min•Season 5Ep. 19
Heidi Binko, Executive Director of the Just Transition Fund, discusses the challenges coal communities face in adapting to a post-coal future, and strategies for economic transition. --- Over the past decade the number of workers directly employed in the U.S. coal industry has fallen by half, as coal has been replaced by cheaper sources of energy such as natural gas and renewable power. From the Appalachian mountains in the East, to the Powder River Basin and tribal communities in the West, the ...
Jun 01, 2021•41 min•Season 5Ep. 16
Sheila Oparaocha of the International Network on Gender and Sustainability discusses the global effort to ensure gender equality in energy access, as an essential foundation for economic development and public health. --- One billion people around the world lack access to electricity, and three times as many do not have access to fuel and appliances that allow for clean and safe cooking inside the home. The lack of clean and reliable energy is a major barrier to economic development and an ongoi...
May 18, 2021•43 min•Season 5Ep. 17
Nature-based climate solutions can play a major role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. But biodiversity risks, and community impacts, loom large. --- Technology often seems to be the focus when conversation turns to solutions to address climate change. Clean energy, carbon capture and even geoengineering dominate headlines and attract the attention of climate-focused investors. When it comes to protecting coastal communities, infrastructure projects like sea walls and raised roads lik...
May 04, 2021•44 min•Season 5Ep. 17
One-third of American households struggle to afford basic energy needs. The University of Michigan’s Tony Reames explores the role of policy in overcoming energy poverty. --- Energy justice and poverty have come to the forefront of public dialogue, and are part of long-standing inequities that continue to persist in the United States. In this country, one-third of households struggle pay for their basic energy needs. In response, federal and state agencies have turned increasing attention toward...
Apr 20, 2021•36 min•Season 5Ep. 15
President Biden will rely upon regulatory agencies like the EPA to push his ambitious clean energy and climate agenda. Yet increasingly conservative courts could stand in the way of Biden’s plans. --- President Joe Biden has set an ambitious clean energy and environmental agenda that includes a $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan, and a renewed commitment to the Paris Climate agreement. To achieve his climate goals, Biden is likely to rely on regulatory agencies, such as the EPA, to craf...
Apr 06, 2021•48 min•Season 5Ep. 14
Carbon Dioxide Removal is an industrial-scale strategy to hold climate change in check. Five experts weigh in on CDR’s potential, challenges and moral hazards. --- The global effort to slow the pace of climate change will require that two basic strategies be implemented on a massive scale. The first strategy is well known, and involves shifting away from today’s fossil-fuel dependent energy system, and toward a future where nearly everything will run on electricity produced by zero-carbon resour...
Mar 23, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 5Ep. 13
Corporate renewable energy deals equaled a quarter of total U.S. electric power additions in 2020. The Renewable Energy Buyer’s Alliance talks policies to accelerate clean energy purchasing. --- Corporate America’s appetite for renewable energy is booming. In 2020, large businesses signed deals for over 10 GW of new clean generation, equal to a quarter of the total electric power capacity added in the United States for the year. The growth in corporate deals for clean power comes as the price of...
Mar 09, 2021•45 min•Season 5Ep. 12
The U.S. forfeited leadership in the global effort to combat climate change when it left the Paris Agreement. Now back, will the U.S. resume its former role? --- On Friday, February the 19th, the United States officially rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, bringing to an end an extended period of national disengagement from the global effort to address climate change. As the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gasses, and today’s second largest emitter behind China, U.S. engagement is criti...
Feb 23, 2021•38 min•Season 5Ep. 11
New research disproves the assumption that exposure to climate-related natural disasters motivates people to support climate policy. --- A common assumption is that direct exposure to climate-related disasters such as severe wildfires and flooding motivates people to support policy to address climate change. Yet new research proves that this assumption doesn’t hold up in reality. Matto Mildenberger, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, discusse...
Feb 09, 2021•44 min•Season 5Ep. 10
New Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been tasked with combating climate change. What climate action is the Treasury likely to take under her leadership? --- Joe Biden has made the fight against climate change a focus of his new administration. Consistent with that focus is his appointment of Janet Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chairman and an advocate for climate action, to the role of Secretary of the Treasury. The Treasury Department is responsible for guarding the United States’ economi...
Jan 26, 2021•39 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Hydrogen energy is a key part of Europe’s plan to zero out carbon emissions by mid-century. But can the bloc build hydrogen capacity, and demand, in time to reach its goal? --- In August the European Commission introduced its strategy to aggressively expand the market for hydrogen energy as part of its plan to go carbon neutral by the year 2050. The plan envisions using green hydrogen, produced mainly with wind and solar power, as an energy resource in a broad array of industries. In particular,...
Jan 12, 2021•40 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Electricity storage technologies have proven their worth in balancing daily fluctuations in wind and solar power output. But can storage address the challenges presented by the decarbonized grid of the future? --- President-Elect Joe Biden’s clean energy plan aims to make America’s electricity system carbon neutral by the year 2035. To reach its goal, the plan will seek to develop the nation’s clean energy infrastructure, and expand the role of wind and solar power. Yet renewable energy presents...
Dec 15, 2020•41 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Georgia’s runoff election will determine the balance of power in the Senate, and the degree to which Joe Biden will count on Congress to back his ambitious clean energy agenda. --- On January 5th a special runoff election in the state of Georgia will determine who will fill the state’s two seats in the United States Senate and which political party, Republican or Democrat, will control the upper chamber of Congress. The runoff election will be the final act in a tumultuous election season, in wh...
Nov 24, 2020•27 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Large scale offshore wind development will require a rethink of how America’s electric grid is designed, and paid for. --- Over the coming decade, a number of states along the East Coast of the U.S. will deploy massive offshore windfarms in the Atlantic Ocean as part of their efforts to meet clean energy goals and reduce global warming emissions. Planning for the wind farms is well underway, and the first projects sponsored by New York, New Jersey and other coastal states are expected to begin g...
Nov 10, 2020•31 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Electricity market deregulation promised to bring more affordable and reliable electricity to consumers. A quarter of a century after deregulation began, has its promise delivered for all Americans? --- The process of deregulating electricity markets began a quarter of a century ago, with the aim of leveraging competitive market forces to provide consumers with abundant and reliable electricity more economically than ever before. As experience has shown, however, deregulation has brought both be...
Oct 27, 2020•41 min•Season 5Ep. 4
In September the U.S. electricity regulator, the FERC, held its first conference to explore carbon pricing in the nation’s electricity markets. Is a carbon price finally on the way? --- In late September the regulator of America’s electricity markets, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, took the unusual step of convening a conference at which it, and members of the electricity industry, considered putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions. The meeting came as wholesale electricity market...
Oct 13, 2020•48 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Outmoded and often discriminatory zoning laws block clean energy development in low-income urban neighborhoods. An effort is underway to update rules, and enable clean energy equity. --- An energy transformation is underway in the United States, with clean energy and energy efficiency reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. Yet the advantages of clean energy aren’t enjoyed equally throughout the country. Clean energy development has lagged in older, densely built urban areas. Low-income neighbo...
Sep 29, 2020•30 min•Season 5Ep. 2
An environmental lawyer examines the legal and social challenges that could complicate managed retreat from areas at risk to climate-related disaster. --- When policymakers talk about adapting to climate change, they often focus on measures to reinforce towns and cities against natural disasters, such as the wildfires and flooding that have become more severe across the United States in recent years. Yet what is often more difficult to contemplate is the idea that some places may inevitably need...
Sep 15, 2020•41 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Much attention has been paid to the ways we humans are changing our climate. Yet, how has an ever-evolving climate changed us? --- Climate change is one of the monumental challenges of our day, but the reality of climate change is nothing new. In recent decades, scientific advances have expanded our understanding of prehistory, and brought into ever sharper focus the connection between historic variations in climate and the development of humanity and society. By taking a look at the history of ...
Aug 04, 2020•48 min•Season 4Ep. 24
Most carbon tax proposals include a border adjustment to protect American industry from foreign competition. Yet research suggests that benefits won't extend to consumers. --- Most economists agree that the best way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming is by implementing a carbon tax, and making it more expensive to buy products and services with a high carbon content. Yet by putting a price on carbon, countries may drive up costs for domestic businesses, putting them at ...
Jul 21, 2020•33 min•Season 4Ep. 24
President Trump has gone to great lengths to undo the regulatory accomplishments of his predecessor. But the President’s methods could come back to haunt him, dooming his deregulatory energy and environmental agendas. --- The Trump Administration has taken aggressive steps to undo the regulatory accomplishments of former president Obama, with some of the highest profile rollbacks taking place in the energy and environmental arenas. In his three years in office, President Trump has repealed the C...
Jul 07, 2020•35 min•Season 4Ep. 22
The social cost of carbon provides an estimate of the economic damage caused by carbon emissions. A climate economist tells how it's calculated. --- One of the most hotly debated issues in climate policy is the value of the social cost of carbon, which is an estimate of the damage that will come from releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The social cost of carbon is a useful measure to help us understand the price that should be placed on carbon today to limit carbon dioxide emissions, a...
Jun 23, 2020•27 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Climate change, and policies to address it, will change where Americans live and work, and produce energy and food. Two environmental designers discuss an atlas of the country’s future. --- A year ago, Democratic members of Congress introduced a resolution to address climate change and economic inequality, with a plan that promises to fundamentally alter Americans’ relationship to their natural and built environments. That vision, the Green New Deal, recalls an earlier bold plan of action for th...
Jun 09, 2020•43 min•Season 4Ep. 20
An economist looks at how economic worries, and political ideology, have made carbon taxes a tough sell. --- Economists generally agree that the most efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming is by putting a price on carbon in the form of a carbon tax. Consumers, though, can tend see things differently. The idea of taxing the fuels that run our cars, and power our homes and jobs, has given Americans pause and, as a result, no carbon tax has been levied to date in...
May 26, 2020•42 min•Season 4Ep. 19
More states are targeting 100% clean energy, but is the electric grid ready? An expert in energy policy and economics looks at the policy challenges to creating a robust, carbon-free electricity system. --- Across the U.S., a growing number of states have adopted ambitious clean energy goals that will require the bulk of their electricity to come from carbon-free sources by the middle of this century. Yet clean energy will place new demands on the electricity system, which will need to accommoda...
May 12, 2020•38 min•Season 4Ep. 18
Political scientist Leah Stokes examines interest groups’ power to shape, and resist, progressive energy policy. --- Interest groups play a central role in American politics, and nowhere has their influence been felt more acutely than in the areas of energy and environmental politics. Leah Stokes, assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, discusses the outsized role of special interests in shaping debate around clean energy and in defining policies ...
Apr 28, 2020•53 min•Season 4Ep. 17
The residential solar power industry faces the expiration of a key tax break and resistance to net-metering. But the addition of battery storage, and an emerging role in grid services, make solar a valuable tool for grid resiliency. --- Last year, solar power accounted for 40 percent of new electric generating capacity additions in the U.S. Yet the industry faces a number of challenges, including the ending of federal incentives for solar projects and an uncertain future for net metering, both o...
Apr 14, 2020•47 min•Season 4Ep. 16
Energy projects bring economic opportunity, but host communities often suffer disproportionate health and environmental impacts. An expert in environmental regulation looks at community efforts to exert control over energy development. --- Communities across the United States are coming into conflict with their state governments over where and how energy projects may be built. The issue has drawn attention in energy-rich states like Texas, where a half decade ago the state government introduced ...
Apr 03, 2020•33 min•Season 4Ep. 15
Nobel Laureate Daniel Kammen, head of U.C. Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, discusses efforts to build clean energy solutions that meet the social and developmental needs of the communities they serve. --- Discussions around today’s clean energy transition tend to focus on technological challenges, and the costs and climate benefits of renewable energy. Yet the social and cultural implications of a transition to clean energy are often overlooked. Nobel Prize laureate Danie...
Mar 17, 2020•45 min•Season 4Ep. 14
