The landscape for peaker power plants in New York is changing. Over the next two years, dozens of aging oil- and gas-fired plants will be phased out around New York City, thanks to stronger air quality rules and the state’s climate law. Under the rules, some of National Grid's peaking generation will shut down permanently, and some will steadily ramp down. The plan to overhaul these plants is part of National Grid's Northeast clean energy vision – which will create hubs of clean energy projects ...
May 01, 2023•16 min
Around the US, cities are passing laws to phase fossil gas out of buildings. But the culinary industry is pushing back, saying that gas bans hurt chefs and restaurant owners. This week, the California Restaurant Association successfully won a lawsuit challenging Berkeley's pioneering gas ban. Chris Galarza is on a mission to show chefs that industrial induction cooking is far superior to gas. He’s the founder of Forward Dining Solutions, a company focused on kitchen electrification. Chris is als...
Apr 19, 2023•34 min
We're sharing an episode of a podcast we love, Drilled from our friends over at Critical Frequency. Four years ago, the Drilled podcast asked a question that changed how people thought about climate stories: What if we stopped acting like the climate crisis was inevitable and instead treated it like it truly is… the crime of the century? Now, the original true crime podcast about climate change is back with a new season all about the opportunistic oil industry. The story is packed with high stak...
Apr 17, 2023•29 min
Up until six months ago, artificial intelligence might not have squeaked into the top five areas of climate tech for most people. But the Cambrian explosion of large language models – led by ChatGPT – has suddenly hooked hundreds of millions of users, offered mind-boggling creative capabilities that have surprised almost everyone, and kicked off an AI arms race in the tech world. What are the most compelling applications for AI in energy? This week, we feature a live conversation with Priya Dont...
Apr 12, 2023•55 min
In five years, we've tripled the amount of solar capacity connected to America's grid. Wind capacity has grown 60% in the last 5 years. And in just the last year alone, battery capacity has doubled. But there’s also a surge in opposition to local projects. According to the Sabin Center for Climate Law at Columbia University, there are now 121 local policies that restrict or outright ban wind and solar in 31 states – a nearly 18% increase from 2021. What’s causing it? The opposition is coming in ...
Apr 05, 2023•35 min
In 2021, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s supercomputer found that Los Angeles can hit 100% clean power within a decade and a half. But how will it be implemented in reality – in a way that benefits everyone? That’s the $86 billion question for the city. There are many other questions to answer: How will a utility serving four million residents phase out coal and gas, triple its yearly build-out of renewables and batteries, electrify 80% of homes and cars, build new transmission, and r...
Mar 28, 2023•28 min
Silicon Valley Bank was a mid-sized bank that catered to entrepreneurs in the tech sector. The bank was an early supporter of the climate tech and sustainability space, with over 1,500 clients across the industry . But things quickly unraveled this month after SVB executives told investors they'd sold off a massive portfolio of mortgage bonds – creating a historic run on the bank and a government takeover. For a couple days, it looked like many climate startups would lose their cash. They narrow...
Mar 20, 2023•31 min
A few weeks ago, TIME Magazine staff writer Alejandro de la Garz a found himself on the floor of a hotel room in Nevada with two guys trying to cook sulfur dioxide out of a tin can. Luke Iseman and Andrew Song are the co-founders of Make Sunsets, a startup claiming to be implementing solar geoengineering by launching weather balloons filled with SO2 into the stratosphere. Their first experimental launch in the Mexican state of Baja resulted in a swift regulatory response from the Mexican governm...
Mar 15, 2023•25 min
Discarded is a series from Lemonada Media . If you like The Carbon Copy , then we think you’re going to enjoy Discarded . The shadow of Goliath is looming over St. James Parish, Louisiana, and it’s called The Sunshine Project. This $9.4 billion proposed petrochemical plant would sprawl across 2,400 acres, pushing up against the community that has lived and died there for generations. Our David is lifelong resident Sharon Lavigne. After teaching special education at the local school for over 30 y...
Mar 13, 2023•49 min
Come watch a live episode of The Carbon Copy! Canary Media and Post Script Media are hosting a live event at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Ma. on April 6. record a live episode of The Carbon Copy with some very special guests. Get your tickets today . In 2020, the top five Western oil & gas supermajors – ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Total – saw combined losses of $76 billion. That was caused by the radical drop in energy consumption when Covid shut down the global economy. That year, ...
Mar 08, 2023•51 min
Come watch a live episode of The Carbon Copy! Canary Media and Post Script Media are hosting a live event at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Ma. on April 6. record a live episode of The Carbon Copy with some very special guests. Get your tickets today . Batteries are everywhere. In our electronics, our power tools, our electric grid, and in our cars. And almost all those batteries use a lithium-ion chemistry. To make an all-electric world possible, we're going to need a lot of lithium. Prices are ...
Mar 01, 2023•21 min
For the last 12 years, coal generation in America has been in steady decline. In 2022, wind, solar, and hydro collectively generated more electricity than coal plants. There's no escaping it: the coal fleet is getting creaky. Despite this, hundreds of coal plants are still in operation nationwide. A team of analysts at Energy Innovation and the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to know how many of those aging coal plants are more expensive to run than wind and solar. The results were st...
Feb 22, 2023•26 min
Last month, new research showing that 12 percent of childhood asthma can be linked to gas stoves took over the news cycle. Suddenly, gas stoves were a hot topic on nightly news programs across America. The study ignited backlash from conservative pundits, especially after a commissioner from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission said stricter regulation of gas stoves was on the table. But there’s nothing new about the connection between gas stoves and health. The latest findings build off de...
Feb 15, 2023•26 min
Visions for the energy-smart home of the future haven’t panned out. In the mid-2000s, the internet-enabled consumer dashboard was going to be the thing that revolutionized energy in the home. Even Google and Microsoft got in on the action – and then shut down their energy dashboards when no one was using them. Then came the smart thermostat, pioneered by Nest. Many hoped the rise of smart thermostats marked the start of a wave of technology adoption that would enable millions of energy-aware hom...
Feb 08, 2023•27 min
Canary media senior reporter Maria Gallucci recently took a pretty unconventional road trip – shadowing a truck driver as he drove around New Jersey, sucking grease, beef tallow, and used cooking oil out of dumpsters behind airports and restaurant chains. This grease will soon be turned into a sustainable aviation fuel known as hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids, or HEFA. With hydrogen and batteries still not ready to move our airplanes, the airline industry is relying on cooking grease to de...
Feb 01, 2023•20 min
Five years ago, venture investors, tech companies and automakers were pouring tens of billions of dollars into driverless cars. Tesla, General Motors, Lyft, Uber, and Google's Waymo were promising large fleets of robotaxis with fully autonomous vehicles by the turn of the decade. In 2017, Ford took a big swing. The company invested $1 billion in Argo AI, a startup developing level-four driverless systems. Later, VW entered the partnership. The automakers promised to make a fully autonomous car b...
Jan 25, 2023•28 min
America enters 2023 faced with two opposing realities: greenhouse gas emissions are going up, but the opportunity to slash those emissions has never been better. Heat-trapping gasses in the U.S. rose again last year , according to the Rhodium Group. Even though renewables outpaced coal on the grid, emissions climbed in the buildings, heavy industry, and transportation sectors. Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act could reverse that trend over the next decade. The law, which was the result of y...
Jan 19, 2023•40 min
To decarbonize our economy, we need to electrify everything. That means installing millions of heat pumps, EV chargers, electric water heaters, and rooftop solar panels. But there’s one big problem: finding the electricians to make it happen. Electricians across the country are flooded with demand – and just as demand is skyrocketing, the field is also continuing to age out. This week, in a special collaboration with Grist, guest contributor Emily Pontecorvo tries to answer the question – where ...
Jan 11, 2023•28 min
This week, Stephen provides some end-of-year updates on the new focus of The Carbon Copy . We’ll be taking a pause until mid-January while we prepare to relaunch the show. In 2023, we’ll be focusing much more tightly on the business, tech, and policy forces that are shaping climate solutions. You asked, we listened! Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you in January.
Dec 14, 2022•5 min
This is the final week of our listener survey . Fill it out for a chance to win a $100 Patagonia gift card. And don’t forget to donate to Canary Media to support in-depth journalism on the energy transition! In the last year, venture investments in carbon removal have doubled . Top tech companies are buying credits or taking equity stakes in cutting-edge projects to pull carbon out of the air and oceans. And it’s not just propellerheads who are talking to themselves about the technology – a new ...
Dec 06, 2022•37 min
We want your feedback! Fill out our listener survey for a chance to win a $100 Patagonia gift card. Join us on November 30 for a live , virtual episode of Climavores. Come ask a question about food, nutrition, and eating for the climate. The age of the electric vehicle is coming, and it’s going to transform more than just the auto industry. EVs are also set to remake the fueling industry. But who will own the electric charging future? That is the question that journalist David Ferris, reporter f...
Nov 23, 2022•23 min
We want your feedback! Fill out our listener survey for a chance to win a $100 Patagonia gift card. Join us on November 30 for a live , virtual episode of Climavores. Come ask a question about food, nutrition, and eating for the climate. There’s no doubt that corporations are thinking differently about climate risk and action. But are they making real progress? This week, we have two conversations on the murkiness of corporate sustainability. We’ll talk with Siduja Rangarajan, a senior investiga...
Nov 16, 2022•26 min
As the cost of living with hurricanes grows, coastal cities across the country are starting to ask the trillion dollar question: what can we build to protect ourselves, and how much are we willing to pay? This week, producer Alexandria Herr takes us to Texas, where the largest civil engineering project in U.S. history may soon put those questions to the test. The Houston area is a sitting duck for a hurricane that scientists say could cause an environmental and economic catastrophe. But the $31 ...
Nov 09, 2022•37 min
New York has a puzzle that it needs to solve – fast. In less than a decade, the state is aiming to radically increase renewable electricity generation, all while helping New Yorkers electrify their homes and businesses. The state's ambitious policy plan for 70% renewables by 2050 will succeed or fail based on how it can develop the supporting infrastructure, like transmission, ports, and batteries. So how will the nuts and bolts of New York's energy transition play out? This week, we have a pane...
Nov 02, 2022•46 min
Michael Grunwald is an energy and climate journalist who lives in south Florida. He loves Florida. But he also loves to poke fun at Florida's poor planning. In 2017, he wrote a piece for POLITICO about Cape Coral -- the boomtown built on swampland that is uniquely vulnerable to hurricanes. Cape Coral is a city of 200,000 people in Southwest Florida. It's basically a wetland, nestled next to Fort Myers – one of the fastest growing areas in the country. Construction of Cape Coral started in the la...
Oct 24, 2022•22 min
This week, producer Alexandria Herr takes a trip to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and gets a peek into the future. What is now an empty stretch of concrete sandwiched between a Costco and the Upper New York Harbor will soon be transformed into a hub of green industry: a facility to assemble offshore wind turbines. Norwegian energy giant Equinor has designated the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal as the future hub of its offshore wind operations. Community leaders in Sunset Park, a neighborhood that has l...
Oct 13, 2022•23 min
In mid-September, the outdoor clothing company Patagonia posted a 10-second video on Instagram featuring Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. The camera zooms in on Chouinard writing one sentence in a notebook: "Earth is now our only shareholder.” It was an understated clip unveiling an unprecedented move: Chouinard is giving away his company to an entity that will steer all profits into climate solutions. The move will funnel $100 million a year into climate-positive investments, make Patagonia a ...
Oct 05, 2022•34 min
Don’t miss our live episode of Climavores in New York City on October 20! Sign up here for a night of live audio and networking with top voices in climate journalism. On September 18, almost exactly five years after Hurricane Maria wiped out Puerto Rico's electric grid, Hurricane Fiona once again pushed the island’s electric system to failure. Earlier this year, we brought Canary Media reporter Maria Gallucci on the show to talk about Puerto Rico’s grid failures in the months and years after Hur...
Sep 29, 2022•19 min
Don’t miss our live episode of Climavores in New York City on October 20! Sign up here for a night of live audio and networking with top voices in climate journalism. One third of the world is currently facing water stress. The horn of Africa is in the middle of a devastating drought, putting millions at risk of famine. In China, low water levels are causing cuts to hydropower in Sichuan Province. Two thirds of Europe is currently under some kind of drought warning, making it the worst in 500 ye...
Sep 21, 2022•21 min
Don’t miss our live episode of Climavores in New York City on October 20! Sign up here for a night of live audio and networking with top voices in climate journalism. This week, we’re featuring an episode of Climavores. Climavores is a show for eaters who are trying to navigate the complex relationship between healthy food and a healthy planet. Journalists Tamar Haspel and Mike Grunwald are trying to figure it out, too. Each week, Tamar and Mike explore the complicated, confusing, and surprising...
Sep 15, 2022•57 min
