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Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time on this show talking about the grid, why it needs to expand, where it’s falling short, and what it will take to meet growing demand. We’ve talked about improving how the grid gets planned and built, and the bottlenecks that slow projects down. But even if those bottlenecks are resolved, the system itself is becoming harder to manage. Demand is rising fast, driven by electrification and data centers powering AI. At the same time, the grid is getting more ...
At a moment when the energy conversation is increasingly focused on markets, infrastructure, and scale, it can be easy to lose sight of something more fundamental: access. Roughly 750 million people around the world still live without electricity. And while the industry debates timelines, technologies, and capital flows, that reality remains unchanged for a huge portion of the global population. This month’s guest, Alex Honnold, is best known for something completely different, but has spent the...
Here’s a question: how many corporations do you know that have made a public commitment to cut their carbon emissions? Probably a lot. About 40% of the world’s largest companies have set full net-zero targets across Scopes 1, 2, and 3, according to Accenture’s Destination Net Zero 2025 report, with target-setting rising for the fourth consecutive year. But how many actually know how to achieve those goals? Only about 16% are on track to reach net zero in their operations by 2050. That gap betwee...
On this episode of Watt It Takes, we explore another approach to long-duration energy storage: compressed air. Curtis VanWalleghem, Co-Founder and CEO of Hydrostor, started the company in 2010 after confronting surplus power challenges at Bruce Power. Without a traditional founder background, he set out to build storage systems that use compressed air and underground hard rock caverns to deliver ten-plus hours of grid-scale power. What began as experiments with underwater balloons evolved into l...
If you spend any time on the water, you’ve probably heard the joke that the two best days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat… and the day they sell it. For today’s guest, that line isn’t just a joke. It’s a problem statement. Mitch Lee grew up around boats. He loved being on the water, but he also experienced firsthand how loud, smelly, maintenance-heavy, and frustrating boat ownership can be. And once electric vehicles started proving what was possible on land, one idea kept c...
As an aging grid faces rising demand, increasing complexity, and more frequent stress events, one thing has become clear: we don’t just need more power, we need power that can show up at the right time, in the right place, and at the right price. What’s far less settled is how we get there. Should large energy users build their own power? Should they treat the grid as something to work around rather than work with? Or is there a way for new load to actively strengthen the grid by contributing ca...
As load growth pushes the grid to its limits, the energy transition increasingly depends on one technology: storage. Batteries are becoming the backbone of reliable, clean power, and according to a recent UBS analysis, AI-driven data centers are set to trigger a “boom cycle” for energy storage in the next five years. As more clean energy comes online and global energy demand surges, batteries are proving essential to a flexible and resilient grid. But operating them is complex. Unlike wind or ...
At a moment when our country can feel deeply divided, and when progress on clean energy can feel uncertain, this month's guest — former U.S. Secretary of Energy and two-term Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm — couldn’t be timelier. It was the perfect moment to take stock of where we are as an industry. After years of historic progress, we’re now facing growing uncertainty about what comes next. The optimism that followed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastruc...
Brian Janous, co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, discusses bridging the "Wattbit Spread"—the critical gap between electricity costs and computing value. His company develops powered land sites, integrating real estate, utilities, and community support to accelerate data center growth and energy-intensive infrastructure projects. He shares insights from his journey from Microsoft to entrepreneurship, the challenges of securing funding for capital-intensive ventures, and the importance of hiring for culture and community engagement for successful project delivery.
The U.S. power sector serves more than 160 million electricity customers—across homes, businesses, and factories in all 50 states. But the grid that supplies that electricity wasn’t designed for the world we live in now, let alone the one that’s coming. Electrification is accelerating. Data centers—driven by the explosive growth of AI—are demanding more power than ever, often in places where the grid is already strained. And while decarbonization remains technically optional—for those serious ab...
If cement were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, behind only China and the United States. That’s because cement production alone accounts for about five and a half percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. And while that might seem really high, it actually makes sense. Just look around you: from roads to bridges, sidewalks to buildings, cement is everywhere. It’s a critical building block of modern infrastructure. What’s striking about cemen...
It’s been a few years since we last covered geothermal on Watt It Takes. Our 2021 episode with Tim Latimer, Founder and CEO of Fervo Energy, explored how next-generation geothermal was just beginning to emerge. Since then, the sector’s momentum has only grown. Meanwhile, electricity demand is rising fast, driven by data centers, AI, and the broader push to electrify everything. That’s putting pressure on the grid and renewing interest in consistent, around-the-clock power, often referred to as b...
You don’t meet many people like Jigar Shah. He’s one of the rare leaders who has shaped the clean energy transition from every angle — as a founder, as an investor, and most recently, as a government leader. If you know Jigar, you already know the headlines: He founded SunEdison, led Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, co-hosted the Energy Gang podcast, co-founded Generate Capital, and most recently, ran the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, better known as LPO. If you don’t know Jigar...
There are a handful of people in the clean energy and infrastructure world whose knowledge and voices serve as guiding lights. Shayle Kann is one of those people. Known for his deep expertise, unique perspective, and distinct voice, Shayle has covered and shaped the energy transition for years. While regular listeners will know, we typically feature startup founders. But Shayle’s long-standing influence—from GTM and The Interchange to EIP and Catalyst —made it a true pleasure to turn the mic aro...
Here’s a thought experiment. You’re a seasoned clean energy developer. You’ve got a pipeline of projects. You’ve navigated permitting, secured financing, refined your technology stack. Everything’s lined up, and you’re ready to build. There’s just one problem: interconnection. To connect your projects, you have to go through a complex study process run by your utility, or your Regional Transmission Organization (RTO), or your Independent System Operator (ISO). They need to evaluate how your proj...
As a new year unfolds, 2025 has already brought devastating natural disasters. From blizzards to wildfires, climate chaos is impacting our neighbors and communities in real time. My heart goes out to the people of Los Angeles for the profound losses they suffered last month, and for the difficult path of rebuilding that lies ahead. This devastation brings to mind a tragedy that struck even closer to home in 2018. I remember driving through Oakland that year, watching ash fall from the sky as the...
2024 was a landmark year for the energy transition. With record-setting investments in climate infrastructure, we saw the price of renewables out-compete just about every electricity source worldwide, we saw advancements in industrial decarbonization (which we’ve featured prominently on this show), and we saw a breakout year for next generation energy storage just to name a few. While momentum is definitely on our side, with the electrification of everything, our industry will face new hurdles i...
As we touched on in our last episode with John O’Donnell of Rondo Energy, industry is a major contributor to global CO2 emissions, and it is only forecasted to get worse. According to a recent report from Rhodium Group, by 2050, the industrial sector could emit as much CO2 as the power, transportation, and building sectors combined. A term worth highlighting in this month’s episode is “Hard-to-abate”. This term refers to industrial sectors like cement, petrochemicals, and steel that people have ...
In the same way that “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” went from scientific terms to colloquial ones, “Decarbonization” is slowly permeating modern discourse. Decarbonization is the process of significantly reducing or eliminating CO2 and other GHG emissions that result from human activity. “Human activity” encompasses a lot of different sectors. From agriculture and forestry, to transport and industry, we are emitting a lot of greenhouse gasses. And with the demand for industrial materials ...
Humans produce a lot of trash. How much trash you ask? We produce 2.3 billion tons of trash per year. That’s enough to fill about 800,000 Olympic pools every year. So, what do we do with it all and how does it get managed? Some of it, depending on your municipality, can be composted, some of it gets recycled, but despite our best intentions, most of it ends up in our landfills. In an ideal world, the majority of our trash would be reused and recycled, but recycling, despite its promises, is actu...
Extreme weather events are becoming more and more common. In July, Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast, causing 3 million Texans to lose power in the midst of a soaring heat wave, which killed 23 people. Critics have raised questions about Houston’s power providers preparedness for a disaster like Beryl, and have raised concerns about the long delay in restoring power at a time where access to AC and power could have saved lives. Ever increasing extreme weather events like Beryl requ...
Carbon is everywhere, not just in the air around us, but also in the materials we use everyday. We talk a lot about reducing the overall amount of carbon in the atmosphere through approaches like avoided emissions or removal. But, what do we do in a world where GHG avoidance and removals are not at the scale required to tackle all of the emissions that come from heavy industry like agriculture and steel? Research from the Ellen McArthur Foundation shows that switching our energy use to more effi...
One in ten American families own a Recreational Vehicle, and yet, the RV industry hasn’t seen meaningful innovation in decades, due in part to extreme consolidation and lack of competition. Despite this, 300-500,000 RVs are sold in the US every year, 90% of which are towable. Towing an RV can seriously affect the fuel economy of your car. Drivers can expect their gas mileage to decrease about 1-2% for every 100 pounds they tow. The average weight of a large travel trailer is about 6,700 pounds, ...
Even if all emissions stopped tomorrow, the excess carbon currently in the atmosphere would take thousands of years to naturally dissipate through processes like photosynthesis, oceanic absorption, or mineralization. In addition to forests, soils, and the ocean, naturally occurring minerals are one of our planet’s most important carbon sinks. Over the span of hundreds or thousands of years, carbon dioxide in air and water binds to minerals, and eventually turns to stone, thus removing the carbon...
According to the World Economic Forum, if we want to reach a carbon-neutral future, the world will depend on emerging markets to build energy systems that rely on clean energy instead of fossil fuels. However, only one fifth of global clean energy investments are being channeled into emerging markets. Financing the development of distributed renewable energy projects has been slow and challenging for interested investors and project developers. In order to facilitate the growth of distributed re...
Residential energy use accounts for about 20% of greenhouse emissions in the U.S., making it one of the most important sectors to decarbonize. As the world electrifies and consumers become more climate-conscious, energy will become one of the next consumer engagement frontiers. The WattBuy platform connects clean energy providers with residential customers, helps consumers save money on their energy bills, and helps companies engage customers with insights and provide enhanced offerings and serv...
Some experts are calling 2024 the “make or break year” for the voluntary and compliance carbon markets, which were rocked by a shaky 2023. To usher in a new era of effective and impactful carbon markets, the verification process needs a major tech update, and a serious credibility boost. Marion Verles founded SustainCERT to be the first fully digital carbon project verification platform and Scope 3 emissions verification solution. The team at SustainCERT is employing a novel approach to verify a...
On November 17th, 2023 the average global temperature was temporarily 2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrialization, an event with ominous climate implications. To slow global climate change, we need to find ways to supercharge natural carbon removal processes like ocean alkalization, and do it in a way that is good for the planet. That’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes Guest, Ben Tarbell, Co-Founder and CEO of Ebb Carbon, is doing. The team at Ebb is approaching carbon removal in ...
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need to return Earth’s atmosphere to 280 parts per million of CO2 for the health of human existence and that of the planet. To achieve that goal, industry experts believe we’ll need to be removing 10-20 billion tons of carbon per year by 2050. Removing carbon is exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Peter Reinhardt, Co-Founder and CEO of Charm Industrial, is doing. The team at Charm has developed a novel process for removing...
According to researchers around the world, fusion could be a nearly waste-free, carbon-free, and all-geography answer to creating enough dispatchable power to get us through the energy transition. To achieve this, all components of a fusion power plant need to be built so that when fusion energy becomes a reality, we have the industry, infrastructure, and processes in place to distribute the power, and it has to be cost competitive. This is exactly what Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Common...
