In this episode, Anthony Wang, co-founder of ETFuels, describes his company’s business model of using renewable energy to make green hydrogen, then using the hydrogen to make carbon-neutral methanol. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Anthony Wang, a mechanical engineer by training, spent years as a researcher on hydrogen technologies. He worked with governments to develop policy and infrastructure plans — he was project manager on the EU's big hydrogen backb...
Jun 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Unlike other parts of the country, the 11 western US states have not joined together in a regional transmission organization (RTO) to more efficiently and cost-effectively administer their respective electrical transmission systems. In this episode, Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, discusses the current status of a potential western RTO and the political factors affecting the conversation. ( PDF transcript ) ( Ac...
Jun 23, 2023•1 hr 14 min
Will the US clean-energy transition be hampered by a shortage of electricians, plumbers, and skilled construction workers? In this episode, Betony Jones, director of the DOE’s Office of Energy Jobs, talks about the challenge of bringing a clean energy workforce to full capacity and the need for job opportunities in communities impacted by diminished reliance on fossil fuels. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Now that the Inflation Reduction Act has lit a fir...
Jun 16, 2023•57 min
In this episode, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona of Way to Win discusses the ins and outs of Democrats’ notoriously ineffective political messaging, and what needs to be done about it. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts If there is one thing upon which almost everyone in US politics agrees, it is that Democrats suck at messaging. They constantly find themselves on the back foot, struggling to respond on culture war issues that make them uncomfortable. Biden's approv...
Jun 14, 2023•1 hr
Hey Voltrons! I’ve got no guest today, just a couple of little announcements. First: At long last, we have gotten serious about transcripts around here. I hired a company called Fanfare and they are methodically going back through the Volts catalogue and transcribing everything. I believe they’re back to May 2022. Before too long, every pod will have transcripts. Also, they are transcribing new episodes quickly — usually within a day or two of posting. Each transcript comes in three forms. The f...
Jun 09, 2023•3 min
In this episode, Maryland state Delegate Lorig Charkoudian, author and primary sponsor of the state’s newly passed Promoting Offshore Wind Energy Resources (POWER) Act, shares about the exciting policy innovations embedded in the ambitious bill and what they have the chance to accomplish. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Maryland was one of the first states in the US to see the potential of offshore wind energy. It passed its first offshore wind bill in 201...
Jun 07, 2023•51 min
Many transit systems are reeling financially in the aftermath of the pandemic, and the situation in California is particularly dire. In this episode, Nick Josefowitz of SPUR and Beth Osborne of Transportation for America discuss the urgent need for the state budget to boost transit funding, and the catastrophic implications if it doesn’t. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts The pandemic was devastating to America's transit systems — not only the lockdowns, but...
Jun 05, 2023•53 min
In this episode, Emily Morris of startup Emrgy discusses the promise of small-scale hydropower and the opportunities it could provide for both power infrastructure and water management. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Hello Volts listeners! I thought I would start this episode with what I suppose is a disclaimer of sorts. I suspect most of you already understand what I’m about to say, but I think it’s worthwhile being clear. Every so often on this show, li...
May 31, 2023•1 hr 4 min
In this episode, environmental social scientist Holly Jean Buck discusses the critique of emissions-focused climate policy that she laid out in her book Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough . ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Over the course of the 2010s, the term “net-zero carbon emissions” migrated from climate science to climate modeling to climate politics. Today, it is ubiquitous in the climate world — hundreds upon hundreds of nations, citie...
May 22, 2023•49 min
States don’t (yet) have the administrative capacity to smoothly implement the ambitious policies in the IRA; in this episode, policy strategist Sam Ricketts of Evergreen Action discusses how federal programs can help them get there. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts States are central to climate and energy policy. After the failure of the Waxman-Markey climate bill in 2010, states carried the torch of climate policy during the long decade that Democrats were...
May 17, 2023•56 min
In this episode, Jessica Wilkinson and Nels Johnson of The Nature Conservancy discuss the pathway they see for a rapid, low-cost clean energy transition that minimizes impact on environmentally sensitive land. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts A great deal of confused and misleading information is circulating about the land-use requirements of the energy transition. Everyone agrees that building the amount of clean energy necessary to reach net zero carbon e...
May 12, 2023•56 min
In this episode, Washington State House Rep. Jessica Bateman talks about championing an ambitious and successful bill that aims to increase housing density in Washington, and the politics of housing in general. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts After decades of effort by urbanists, which often felt like the work of Sisyphus, housing has arrived as a political issue. Big environmental groups have come around to the idea that dense housing is a crucial climate...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 25 min
In this episode, Vero Bourg-Meyer of the Clean Energy States Alliance discusses the barriers that keep lower- and medium-income customers from installing rooftop solar, the types of efforts most likely to overcome these barriers, and how to keep momentum moving forward. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts For all its explosive growth in recent years, rooftop solar is far less frequently installed by low- and middle-income households than by wealthy ones. Thoug...
Apr 28, 2023•57 min
The Inflation Reduction Act is ambitious climate policy, but history shows that ambitious policy is not always followed by ambitious implementation. In this episode, Hahrie Han of Johns Hopkins University and David Beckman of the Pisces Foundation talk about Mosaic, a grant-making coalition that aims to help build a robust movement infrastructure to ensure that vulnerable and underserved groups can take full advantage of the significant funding offered by the IRA. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active tra...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min
In this episode, Sabeel Rahman, former acting administrator of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, discusses updates to regulatory policy that reflect a positive new approach to how climate (and other) regulations will be assessed and crafted. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts When President Biden first took office, his administration released a series of " Day One executive actions ." Among them was reforming the way federal regulation...
Apr 21, 2023•1 hr 8 min
In this episode, Jennifer Garson of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office discusses the state of hydropower in the US and where the industry is headed. (a) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts For decades, hydropower has been most common source of renewable electricity in the world. (In the US, it was passed by wind a few years ago .) Pumped hydro — large hydropower facilities in which water is pumped up and run down hill to store energy — remains the most co...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Various options are at play in the EPA’s planned greenhouse gas standards for new and existing power plants. In this episode, Lissa Lynch of NRDC discusses the implications. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts A couple of weeks ago, the policy analysts at the Rhodium Group put out a new report showing that the Biden administration's legislative achievements are not quite enough to get it to its Paris climate goals. But those goals could be reached if the legis...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr
A few years ago, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett and their two children moved from Vancouver, Canada, to Delft, a small city in the Netherlands where 80% of journeys are taken by foot, bicycle, or public transit. Their new book, Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives , is about what it's like to live in a truly low-car city, and how other cities can capture some of the same benefits. Reading the book was a joy for me -- it reinforced so many of my priors! -- so I was excite...
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 10 min
In this episode, Dan Lashof of the World Resources Institute discusses the trajectory of biofuels since the early 2000s and the implications of new biofuel standards recently proposed by the US EPA. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts My fellow olds will recall that, back in the 2000s, biofuels were an extremely big deal in the clean-energy world, one of a tiny handful of decarbonization solutions that seemed viable. Biofuels — and the many advanced versions t...
Apr 07, 2023•56 min
In this episode, Project InnerSpace founder and executive director Jamie Beard, who has been instrumental in influencing oil and gas personnel to move into the geothermal industry, discusses exciting recent developments in geothermal and the opportunities ahead. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Things are starting to come together for geothermal. Political awareness has seen an uptick. Investment is flowing in. Startups, many staffed by veterans of the oil ...
Mar 31, 2023•1 hr 7 min
The exact definition of “clean” hydrogen, interconnected with the definition of “clean” electricity, has enormous implications for the distribution of federal tax credits to boost the industry. In this episode, hydrogen expert Rachel Fakhry of the Natural Resources Defense Council discusses what’s at stake. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Volts subscribers understand that a decarbonized energy system will require lots and lots of hydrogen, to store energy ...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 31 min
A full quarter of global energy use goes toward heat that powers industrial processes. To provide clean industrial heat but avoid the variability often associated with renewable energy, a company called Rondo makes a thermal battery, storing renewable-energy heat in bricks. In this episode, Rondo CEO John O’Donnell talks about this breakthrough technology and the opportunities that thermal storage promises to open. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Electrici...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr 26 min
What do the US 2022 midterm elections mean for climate and energy policy? To help go through the results, I contacted Whitney Stanco, a senior analyst at Washington Analysis LLC, an independent research firm out of Washington, DC. She has been tracking energy policy for decades and in particular has kept a close watch on the states. With Whitney's help, I walk through the election results, first at the Congressional level and then in the states, and contemplate their implications for energy poli...
Mar 24, 2023•57 min
BIPOC communities are most likely to bear the effects of climate change, but BIPOC-led environmental justice groups are severely underfunded in climate philanthropy. In this episode, Abdul Dosunmu of the Climate Funders Justice Pledge talks about his group’s aim to challenge big donors to give more equitably. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Whether it’s suffering the effects of fossil fuel pollution or fighting back against it, black, indigenous, and peopl...
Mar 22, 2023•48 min
In this episode, Erik M. Conway discusses his new book The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market , coauthored with Naomi Oreskes. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts In 2010, historians of technology Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes released Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming , a book about weaponized misinformation that proved to be...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Every year, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy partners with BloombergNEF to produce the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook , a compilation of charts, graphs, and statistics about the US clean-energy industry and where it's headed. The 2023 edition is out and it shows a record year for investment in clean energy and installations of renewables — alongside record demand for natural gas and record investment in gas infrastructure. To chat about some of the numbers, I contacted Lisa Ja...
Mar 15, 2023•54 min
Under a new partnership, Heirloom Carbon Technologies captures carbon dioxide from the air, then passes it to CarbonCure Technologies, which permanently sequesters it in concrete. In this episode, CEOs Shashank Samala of Heirloom and Robert Niven of CarbonCure give the lowdown on this pioneering carbon removal project. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Last month saw the announcement of a pioneering project: a company called Heirloom Carbon Technologies will...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr
Even if greenhouse gas emissions halted entirely right now, we would continue to feel climate change effects for decades due to existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — and warming could accelerate, as we reduce the aerosol pollution that happens to be acting as a partial shield. In this episode, Kelly Wanser of nonprofit SilverLining makes the pitch for solar radiation management, the practice of adding our own shielding particles to the atmosphere to buy us some time while we step up our gr...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 7 min
In this episode, Brian Deese, outgoing director of the National Economic Council and an influential advisor to President Biden, discusses the opportunities and challenges in Democrats’ new focus on industrial policy. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Brian Deese has had a remarkable two years. As President Joe Biden’s top economic advisor and director the National Economic Council, he has played a key role in defining and implementing Biden's policy approach...
Feb 22, 2023•1 hr
The lowly circuit breaker was first patented by Thomas Edison and hasn’t been updated much since — until Atom Power CEO Ryan Kennedy came along and made a digital version. In this episode, he describes the basics of the digital circuit breaker, the ways it’s making a difference in the EV charging market, and its gamechanging potential. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts There is perhaps no building block of the electricity grid more fundamental, ubiquitous, a...
Feb 17, 2023•1 hr 8 min
