District energy refers to a system in which a shared central plant distributes steam, hot water, and/or chilled water to multiple buildings via underground pipes. In this episode, Rob Thornton of the International District Energy Association shares about district energy’s newfound popularity and the role it could play in the clean energy transition. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts District energy is one of the oldest concepts in all of energy, dating back ...
Oct 25, 2023•1 hr
Iceland aims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral nation; thanks in large part to hydropower and geothermal, it’s well on track to meet that goal by 2040. In this episode, Halla Hrund Logadóttir of the Iceland Energy Authority reflects on the country’s energy history and looks to its ambitious future. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Iceland is an island just south of the Arctic Circle, perched directly atop a rift where two tectonic plates are drifting a...
Oct 18, 2023•49 min
In this episode, veteran journalist Brian Beutler waxes nostalgic about the past 20 years of political journalism and muses about its future. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) I’ve known political journalist Brian Beutler for a long time. We met back in the late 2000s in DC, in the heady days leading up to Obama’s victory, and have kept in touch fitfully ever since. Brian, one of the smartest and most insightful political analysts writing today, has published in a wide variety of outlets,...
Oct 11, 2023•1 hr 27 min
In this episode, Antora Energy CEO Andrew Ponec talks up his company’s game-changing approach to thermal energy storage. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Back in March, I did a podcast on the possibility of using wind and solar electricity to decarbonize industrial heat , which represents fully a quarter of all human final energy consumption. The trick is to transform the variable energy from wind and solar into a steady, predictable stream of heat by using...
Oct 06, 2023•1 hr 6 min
In this episode, Minnesota State Representative Larry Kraft shares about the state’s ambitious, progressive transportation policy, which includes climate accountability measures that no other state has implemented. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts In 2022, Democrats narrowly won a trifecta in Minnesota — House, Senate, and governor — whereupon they launched into an absolute frenzy of activity , passing bills on everything from abortion to paid leave to gun ...
Sep 27, 2023•52 min
In this episode, Maine State Senator Nicole Grohoski discusses an upcoming ballot measure that gives Maine voters the opportunity to replace the state’s unpopular for-profit utilities with a nonprofit public utility. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Maine’s two big investor-owned power utilities — Central Maine Power and Versant Power — are not very popular. In fact, they boast among the lowest customer satisfaction scores of any utilities in the country, p...
Sep 22, 2023•1 hr
In this episode, organizer Jeff Ordower of 350.org talks about how the environmental movement can shift its focus from blocking what it doesn’t like to building what it does. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts It is a much-discussed fact that the environmental movement cut its teeth blocking things — mines, pipelines, power plants, and what have you. It is structured around blocking things. Habituated to it. However, what we need to do today is build, build, ...
Sep 20, 2023•1 hr 1 min
How can the US make it easier, faster, and cheaper for homeowners to install rooftop solar? In this episode, Sunrun CEO Mary Powell shares her vision for boosting not only residential solar, but other forms of residential electrification too. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts In Australia, one out of three households has solar panels on the roof. In the US, it’s one out of 25. That probably has something to do with the fact that in the US, rooftop solar is t...
Sep 15, 2023•1 hr 10 min
Clean-energy transmission lines in the US are horribly congested, and buildout of new ones is agonizingly slow. Yet while other parts of the world use grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) to significantly improve performance of existing transmission lines, the US system has been resistant to deploying them. In this episode, Julia Selker, head of a GETs trade group called the WATT Coalition, discusses the potential of GETs. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts One...
Sep 13, 2023•55 min
In this episode, Reed Hundt, the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, discusses the merits of green banks, quasi-public or nonprofit institutions that provide seed capital to accelerate the growth of clean energy. There are more than 20 active green banks at the state level. Now Biden has proposed a federal green bank. Hundt explains how it could help. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Reed Hundt, August 13, 2021 ( PDF version ) ( Active version ) As we speak, Democrats in Congress a...
Sep 11, 2023•51 min
Energy storage as deployed on the US grid today has a dirty secret — it actually increases carbon emissions. In this episode, Tierra Climate founders Jacob Mansfield and Emma Konet discuss their vision to incentivize emission reductions by making batteries and other energy storage eligible for carbon offset. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts It is widely understood that decarbonizing the grid will require a large amount of energy storage. What is much less w...
Sep 06, 2023•55 min
In this episode, right-wing media critic Matt Sheffield and I discuss the disinformation crisis and the climate change crisis, and how they are deeply intertwined. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Matt Sheffield started his first conservative media website, bashing news anchor Dan Rather for liberal bias, way back in 2000, and in subsequent years became a key figure in right-wing media criticism. But the rise of Trump left him disillusioned and he has since...
Aug 30, 2023•2 hr 1 min
In this episode, Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project shares a progressive vision for permitting reform and the factors that could speed up the US clean-energy buildout. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts To achieve its Paris climate targets, the US is going to have to build out an enormous amount of clean energy and clean-energy infrastructure in coming years. But that buildout is going slowly — painfully, excruciatingly slowly — relative to t...
Aug 30, 2023•1 hr 6 min
In this episode, Australian comedian Dan Ilic hosts me on The Greatest Moral Podcast Of Our Generation. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts While I was down under in Australia, I appeared on a show called A Rational Fear , a pod about climate change which is, I’m told, the winner of Australia’s Best Comedy Podcast. More specifically, I appeared on a spinoff show they’re doing called [ahem] The Greatest Moral Podcast Of Our Generation, a series of interviews wi...
Aug 21, 2023•31 min
In this episode, Saul Griffith — co-founder of Rewiring America and, more recently, Rewiring Australia — chats about all the things that energy nerds love to chat about. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts If you are a Volts subscriber, you are almost certainly familiar with Saul Griffith. I've been following him and his work for years, and I think I can say without hyperbole that he is the smartest person I have ever met. An Australian by birth and an MIT PhD...
Aug 18, 2023•56 min
In this episode, activist Miriam Lyons gives an overview of Australian climate policy past, present, and future. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts G’day mates! As you all know, I’m in Australia at the moment, on a whirlwind speaking/listening tour regarding this country’s response to the Inflation Reduction Act. I’ve been learning a ton about Australia’s history with climate policy, its clean-energy resources, and its current politics. It’s all much more com...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 2 min
The US is nowhere close to being able to build the amount of long-distance power lines it will need for a clean energy transition. In this episode, electricity transmission expert Liza Reed breaks down the many problems with the current dysfunctional system, and what it will take to build up the needed infrastructure. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Electricity transmission has been having a moment lately, getting more attention from analysts and policymak...
Aug 10, 2023•1 hr 8 min
In this episode, clean grid expert Chaz Teplin demystifies interconnection queues. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts By now, you’ve probably heard that tons of new renewable energy projects are “ stuck in the interconnection queues ,” unable to connect to the grid and produce electricity until grid operators get around to approving them, which can take up to five years in some areas. And you might have heard that FERC recently implemented some reforms of the...
Aug 09, 2023•51 min
In this episode, influential climate blogger Joe Romm discusses whether carbon offsets are, per the title of his recent white paper, “unscalable, unjust, and unfixable.” ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Carbon offsets — whereby one party pays another party to reduce carbon emissions — are an extremely convenient thing to have for people, businesses, and institutions that have money to spend, want to do something green, and either won't or can't reduce their...
Aug 04, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Geothermal developer Fervo Energy has successfully brought online the first ever full-scale commercial power plant sourcing from enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) — a groundbreaking development both literally and figuratively. In this episode, Fervo CEO Tim Latimer discusses the company’s accomplishment and where flexible geothermal is headed. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Traditional geothermal power, which has been around for over a century, exploits n...
Jul 21, 2023•1 hr 21 min
In this episode, I have a conversation (IRL!) with longtime energy analyst Ramez Naam about a wide range of nerdy but fascinating topics. (PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts As I previewed a few weeks back , on Wednesday, June 28, Canary Media held a live event in the downtown Seattle home space of beloved local independent radio station KEXP. It’s a gorgeous space, with a coffee shop and a small vinyl store, well worth a visit if you make it up this way. In ad...
Jul 14, 2023•59 min
In this episode, Kelly Mitchell of journalistic watchdog group Documented discusses Republicans’ furious pushback against ESG funds due to their ostensible greenness, and the ridiculousness of said vehemence since ESG ratings are actually a poor reflection of companies’ true environmental impact. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts For the last few years, the fastest growing segment of the global financial services industry has been ESG (environmental, social,...
Jul 12, 2023•1 hr 6 min
In this episode, Priya Donti, executive director of nonprofit Climate Change AI, speaks to how artificial intelligence and machine learning are affecting the fight against climate change. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts As you might have noticed, the world is in the midst of a massive wave of hype about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) — hype tinged with no small amount of terror. Here at Volts, though, we’re less worried about theore...
Jul 05, 2023•1 hr
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
