When I first started looking into 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) — a company or city matching its electricity consumption with clean electricity production on an hourly basis, throughout the year — I intended to write a single post on it. That worked out about as well as usual. Below are summaries of and links to each of the 24/7 CFE posts. Above is a 24/7 CFE mega-pod, with the last three pods strung together into one podcast. * An introduction to energy's hottest new trend: 24/7 carbon-free ele...
Nov 29, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Over the course of the last few days … [checks calendar] … er, month, I’ve been digging into the new trend in voluntary climate action: procuring 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE), matching consumption with production every hour of every day. In my first post , I introduced the idea and explained what motivates it and what it entails. In my second , I puzzled through the biggest controversy around it, which is about whether it’s the right goal at all — whether companies and cities ought instead...
Nov 24, 2021•18 min
Last week, I wrote an introduction to the hot new trend in energy: 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE), i.e., matching a company or city’s power consumption with production of clean electricity throughout the day, every hour of every day. If you haven’t read it yet, you’ll want to check it out before reading this post. Today, I want to talk about a big debate around 24/7 CFE, regarding whether it’s the right goal for companies and cities to adopt at all. Exploring that debate will help us get our head...
Nov 19, 2021•25 min
Hey y’all, just a quick thing today (as I work on my follow-up to Friday’s post ). I was on Pod Save America last week: One of the things I talked about is the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, which wrapped up last week with a final agreement that … say it with me … represented real progress but fell short of what’s needed. Just like all the other COP agreements. I had a pretty deflationary take on the whole thing on the pod. Given the melodramatic rhetoric around COP26 — the same rhet...
Nov 15, 2021•9 min
When a company or city claims to be “100 percent powered by clean energy,” what it typically means is that it has tallied up its electricity consumption, purchased an equal amount of carbon-free energy (CFE), and called it even. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But now, the next horizon of voluntary climate action has come into view: a brave few companies and cities aspire, not just to offset their consumption with CFE on a yearly basis, but to match their consumption with CFE production every ho...
Nov 12, 2021•26 min
In this episode, journalist and researcher Amy Westervelt discusses the history of the public relations industry in the US and the ubiquitous, if largely unacknowledged, role it has played, and still plays, in shaping how Americans think about the environment. Amy has tons of great stories! Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Amy Westervelt, October 27, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: In recent years, there’s been a lot of talk about America’s polluted information environment — the ub...
Oct 27, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) finally stopped playing games and said that he will not vote for a budget reconciliation bill that contains the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP). You can read my interview with Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) for more on the CEPP and this post to understand why it is so centrally important to serious climate policy. I won’t get into all those arguments again. Suffice it to say, it’s a good policy and losing it is bummer. Insofar as Manchin has offered any re...
Oct 20, 2021•16 min
In this episode, longtime carbon market analyst and strategist Kingsmill Bond explains why he is so optimistic about the future of renewable energy. Though it remains a small portion of total global energy, its rate of growth and declining costs indicate that it is on the precipice of enormous, rapid expansion. Markets and geopolitics will be transformed by it. (There is also an abridged version of our conversation available on Canary .) Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Kingsmill Bond,...
Oct 11, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Over the years, readers, I have had numerous occasions to be irritated with economists, particularly economists acting as political pundits. I thought today I would explain why. There are those in climate circles who lay most of the blame for the failure of climate action to date at the feet of economists. I’m not one of those people. I just lay … some of the blame at their feet. The fact is, rapidly transforming the entire industrial base of every country on earth was always going to be difficu...
Oct 08, 2021•16 min
In this episode, I talk with Sarah Smith of the Clean Air Task Force about methane, the greenhouse gas that falls out of the atmosphere more quickly than carbon dioxide but trap a lot more heat while it’s there. We discuss sources of methane pollution, opportunities for reduction, and recent policy developments. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Sarah Smith, September 29, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: Methane is having a moment. Methane — chemical name CH4 — is a fuel. It is the p...
Sep 29, 2021•55 min
Here’s a question: is it better to drive somewhere or to take a ride-hailing service like Uber or Lyft? I don’t mean better for you personally — faster or cheaper. I mean better for the world, for society, for the air and atmosphere … better, all things considered. A clever new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University attempts to answer that question. Ride-hailing services carry more external costs than private vehicles In the paper , Jacob Ward, Jeremy Michalek, and Constantine Sama...
Sep 27, 2021•13 min
In 2016, Illinois passed a decent enough energy bill . It shored up the state’s (relatively modest) renewable energy standard and kept its existing nuclear power plants open. It was a compromise among varied interests, signed into law by a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor. At the time, I figured it was the best any state in the coal-heavy Midwest was likely to do. Well, that will teach me to go around figuring. Just five years later, Illinois has raised the bar, passing one of th...
Sep 22, 2021•20 min
In this episode, veteran solar advocate Adam Browning reflects on 20 years of running campaigns as the founder and leader of Vote Solar, one of the scrappiest and most successful solar advocacy organizations in the US. Browning, who is stepping down from leadership this year, helped grow the group from four people to 40, and along the way he’s learned a few things about how nonprofit campaigns can succeed against better funded opponents. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Adam Browning, ...
Sep 17, 2021•1 hr 2 min
After months of anticipation, Democrats have begun to reveal pieces of their upcoming Build Back Better Act (aka the budget reconciliation bill), including the key clean energy provisions. On Monday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began markup of its full set of recommendations for the bill . Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee released its draft tax package for the bill, including the clean energy tax credits. As negotiations around the reconciliation bill move forward, I’ll ...
Sep 15, 2021•23 min
As a dog walker and kitchen cleaner, I listen to a lot of podcasts. One that I’ve been enjoying quite a bit lately is Know Your Enemy , which bills itself as “a leftist's guide to the conservative movement.” Sponsored by Dissent Magazine and hosted by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell , it typically interviews experts, analysts, and activists about the current (lamentable) state of the US conservative movement. It is unusually smart and thoughtful, offering more illumination than rage bait. Rece...
Sep 10, 2021•1 hr 34 min
In this episode, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) discusses a policy that she has proposed in the Senate and is working to get included in the upcoming reconciliation bill: a Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP), which would aim to reduce carbon emissions in the US electricity sector 80 percent by 2030. She also shares some excellent thoughts on the filibuster! Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), September 1, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: There are lots and lots of...
Sep 01, 2021•37 min
As we speak, Democrats in Congress are hashing out the details of the budget reconciliation bill that will contain the vast bulk of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. It is meant to be passed alongside the recent bipartisan infrastructure package that came out of the Senate. One of the unique features of this political moment is that virtually every individual Democrat has the power to sink the whole enterprise — there are zero Dem votes to spare in the Senate and only a handful in the House...
Aug 25, 2021•13 min
A trickle of transcripts! First up, an administrative note: many, many people have requested written transcripts of the Volts podcasts. And I want to provide them. But it’s going to take a while. I could produce the transcripts in a few hours if I were willing to simply send the sound files through a robot transcriber like Otter and accept the somewhat choppy results (which are generally around 85 percent accurate). However, I’m way too anal retentive to do that. And Volts readers deserve better...
Aug 18, 2021•16 min
This is it, folks! The home stretch. It’s time to pay attention, call your members of Congress, and mobilize your networks. Congress is working on what is likely to be its last big shot at climate change policy for a decade or more. If things go well, the legislation will include a clean energy standard (CES) and clean energy tax credits, which together would revolutionize the US electricity system. If things don’t go well, there will be no substantial climate legislation for many years to come....
Aug 07, 2021•12 min
(If you prefer listening to reading, just click Play above.) I’ve spent a lot of time on Volts discussing energy storage. As those who read my battery series know, lithium-ion batteries (LIB) currently dominate short-duration storage — in devices, cars, and buildings — and the durations they are able to economically provide are creeping up, from two to four to eight hours and beyond. However, as I explained in a separate post , the grid of the future, run primarily on renewable energy, will also...
Aug 04, 2021•12 min
Fossil fuel subsidies are a vexed and peculiar topic. On one hand, everyone seems to agree they’re bad and should be eliminated ( it’s in Biden’s jobs bill , for instance). On the other hand, they never go anywhere. In part, it’s because we lack a clear understanding of what constitutes a subsidy and what impact they have. Analysts are forever arguing over exactly what counts , trying to tally up the total subsidies fossil fuels receive , but there are very few bottom-up attempts to document the...
Jul 30, 2021•13 min
In this episode, Rep. Sean Casten (D-Il.), the House Democrats’ resident clean-energy expert, discusses the importance of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the influence it has over US decarbonization, and the urgent need for Biden to appoint a new commissioner. We also get into our favorite FERC orders! Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Rep. Sean Casten, July 28, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: Greetings. Welcome to the Volts Podcast. I am your host, David Roberts. As Volts...
Jul 28, 2021•1 hr 12 min
In this episode, career environmental regulator Cynthia Giles discusses the rampant rule-breaking common in environmental rule and regulations and how to solve the problem — not with greater enforcement, but with smarter rule design. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Cynthia Giles, July 14, 2021 ( PDF Version ) David Roberts: The US has hundreds of environmental rules and regulations on the books, meant to achieve various environmental goals — clean up coal plants, reduce toxins in cons...
Jul 14, 2021•1 hr 16 min
Last week, I wrote that there is no “moderate” position on climate change . Either we act rapidly and at massive scale to avoid the worst consequences … or we suffer the worst consequences. Either outcome involves radical change. There’s no avoiding radicalism. Lots of activists, politicians, and ordinary citizens understand this need for ambitious action — they are convinced by the scale and severity of the problem — but there is less clarity about what qualifies as ambitious. In an atmosphere ...
Jul 09, 2021•13 min
In this episode, longtime activist Tzeporah Berman discusses the need to track and reduce fossil fuel production (not just consumption) and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty that she and other activists created to help coordinate those efforts. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Tzeporah Berman, July 7, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: For as long as I've been covering climate change, it's been conventional wisdom among economists — and the kind of people who aspire to please e...
Jul 07, 2021•1 hr
Perhaps the most politically difficult aspect of climate change is that, after decades of denial and delay, there is no longer any coherent “moderate” position to be had. To allow temperatures to rise past 1.5° or 2°C this century is to accept unthinkable disruption to agriculture, trade, immigration, public health, and basic social cohesion. To hold temperature rise to less than 1.5° or 2°C this century will require enormous, heroic decarbonization efforts on the part of every wealthy country. ...
Jun 30, 2021•17 min
In this episode, Saul Griffith (co-founder of Rewiring America ) and Arch Rao (founder and CEO of Span , which makes smart electrical panels) discuss the need to electrify US homes, the challenges standing in the way, the kinds of solutions that will ease the process, and much more. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Saul Griffith and Arch Rao, June 28, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: Those of you who have been reading or listening to Volts for a while know that I am fairly obsessed ...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 12 min
Here at Volts, I recently spent a week … OK, a month writing about batteries, which store energy for electronic devices, electric vehicles, and, at least for short periods of time (four to six hours), the power grid. Lithium-ion batteries are extremely good at those tasks — and they’re getting better, and cheaper, all the time. But here’s the thing: a net-zero-carbon grid is going to need storage that lasts a lot longer than six hours. It’s going to need durations of up to 100, 300, 500 hours or...
Jun 09, 2021•26 min
Long-time readers know that I am a veteran hater of the US Senate, the graveyard of good ideas and progressive policies. America’s upper chamber is one of the world’s least productive and most ridiculous legislative bodies, its dysfunctions matched only by its boundless self-regard. Don’t get me started. Instead, get Adam Jentleson started! Now there’s a guy who has earned his ire at the Senate. As a senior aide to Democratic leader Harry Reid from 2011 to 2016, Jentleson saw up close and person...
Jun 04, 2021•53 min
(If you’d rather listen than read, just click Play above.) Energy nerds love arguing over the value of distributed energy resources (DERs), the rooftop solar panels and customer-owned batteries that are growing more popular by the day. There’s a fight in California right now over the value of energy from rooftop solar, just the latest skirmish in a long war that has ranged over numerous states . The conventional wisdom in wonk circles is that the value provided by DERs is not sufficient to overc...
May 28, 2021•27 min
