In a previous post , I offered a broad overview of the problems related to minerals needed for the clean-energy transition. To recap: * clean-energy technologies are more minerals-intensive to build than their fossil-fuel counterparts; * the growth of clean energy will rapidly raise demand for a set of key minerals; * mining and processing of those minerals is geographically concentrated, often in countries with weak labor and environmental protections; * mineral mines and processing facilities ...
Feb 07, 2022•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Jigar Shah, the recently appointed head of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), discusses how he and his team have reformed the office and pulled into into the modern age, the kinds of help LPO is offering entrepreneurs, and the frontier technologies that have him most excited. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Jigar Shah, February 2, 2022 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: Back in 2010, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) briefly became ...
Feb 02, 2022•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, Panama Bartholomy, head of the Building Decarbonization Coalition, discusses the need to decarbonize buildings, the many challenges facing the effort, and the cities and states that are making progress. You better believe we get way into heat pumps and induction stoves. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Panama Bartholomy, January 28, 2022 ( PDF version ) David Roberts: Fossil-fuel combustion in buildings — mostly natural gas for space and water heating — is responsible ...
Jan 28, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Arguments over carbon taxes go back as far as discussions of climate change itself. Economists have long insisted that pricing carbon is the most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gases. For years, they hijacked the climate discourse, with untold money and effort put behind proposals for various increasingly baroque pricing schemes, to very little effect. Over time, political experience with carbon taxes has highlighted a truth that should have been obvious long ago: carbon taxes are taxes, and...
Jan 24, 2022•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Recently, there’s been a lot of talk in the energy world about the minerals needed by clean-energy technologies and whether mineral supply problems might pose a threat to the clean-energy transition. To hold warming beneath 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. To do that, it must radically ramp up production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), electrolyzers for hydrogen, and power...
Jan 21, 2022•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hey Volties! As you know, last week I interviewed Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay for the podcast. Then the talented folks at Canary Media’s Carbon Copy podcast (which you should subscribe to) interviewed me — about the movie, climate change in art, and McKay — and interweaved bits of that interview with bits of my interview with McKay. The result is the first-ever Volts/Carbon Copy crossover episode! They did an amazing job. Even if you’ve already listened to my interview with McKay, I think ...
Jan 20, 2022•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•2 hr 34 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 
