In this episode, international scholars Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan discuss the geopolitical tensions that could be caused or exacerbated by the clean-energy transition, including supply constrictions in oil and gas and the geographical concentration of key clean-energy minerals. This episode is a great antidote to the notion that clean energy is going to make for smooth sailing in geopolitics. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan, January 19, 20...
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min
In this episode, writer and director Adam McKay reflects on the critical and audience reaction to his movie Don’t Look Up . We also talk about making an emotional connection to climate change, some of the other climate-related projects he’s working on (or at least thinking about), and why he ended the movie the way he did. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Adam McKay, January 12, 2022 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: The film Don’t Look Up , available on Netflix as of late last month, has...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 25 min
My last substantial post of last year was a summary of where things stand with Congress and climate . I ended by reiterating my confidence that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has been such an impediment throughout the process, would find his way to supporting some form of the Build Back Better Act, the Democrats’ last and only hope of taking substantial action on climate change. Mere days later, Manchin threw up his hands and said, “I can’t get there — this is a No on this legislation.” So much fo...
Jan 07, 2022•9 min
In this episode, messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio — a researcher, campaigner, author, and speaker — discusses the elements of an effective message, what’s required to spread messages, and the right way to test whether they’re working. We also get into the best way to craft climate messages and the current debate over “popularism.” Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Anat Shenker-Osorio, December 20, 2021 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: People involved with politics are obsessed with me...
Dec 20, 2021•1 hr 24 min
The year is coming to a close, which means us bloggers are obliged to do a year-end post, looking back on the year’s events and looking ahead to what’s next. I’ll be honest, I had second thoughts about whether to publish this post at all — my outlook is pretty gloomy and I don’t want to be a spreader of gloom — but I figure you pay me for the straight scoop. So here it is. The broad story is that, as bad as it sometimes felt going through it, we are coming to the end of the most productive year ...
Dec 17, 2021•17 min
One of the most devilish aspects of climate change is that it resists good art. But Adam McKay, director first of comedies like Anchorman and later of more serious fare like The Big Short, has cracked the code. Don’t Look Up (in theaters today; coming to Netflix on Dec. 24) is the first climate movie — the first work of art about climate change of any kind — to hold my rapt attention from start to finish. It is fantastic. One reason it’s so good is that it isn’t really about climate change at al...
Dec 10, 2021•12 min
On Dec. 7, 2020, one year ago, I sent out the first Volts post . At the time, I was extremely nervous. I had left behind a stable job at Vox and had no idea if a newsletter dedicated to clean energy and politics would find any readers, much less readers who would pay. Over the last year I dug into carbon markets , transmission systems , lithium-ion batteries , and 24/7 carbon-free energy . I profiled new clean-energy legislation in Washington state, Colorado , and Illinois . There was a little p...
Dec 07, 2021•7 min
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
