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...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Sep 12, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep 80•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast 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, ...
May 28, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep 76•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Apr 03, 2024•51 min•Ep 75•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Feb 15, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 30, 2024•59 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Dec 13, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Nov 28, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Oct 31, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast Climate change-fuelled natural disasters and vulnerable transmission infrastructure have defined some of the worst natural disasters of the past decade, including the 2020 wildfires in California. It’s clearer than ever that in high-risk areas, above-ground transmission lines need to be dug underground to protect communities from fires and to ensure their access to electricity in the face of increasing natural disasters. And that’s exactly why this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Kim Abrams, founde...
Aug 31, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast From induction cooktops and heat pumps to the rooftop solar needed to power it all and the batteries to store excess energy for use during blackouts, we’ve had incredible success building the tools we need to decarbonize our homes. But to the regular consumer, the universe of electrified solutions can be overwhelming. What we need is a home battery system and an integrated ecosystem of all electric products to make it easier than ever for homes to switch from gas to electricity, alongside softwa...
Jul 27, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast If the world is going to make the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy, we’re going to need lots of energy storage, and a lot of lithium. The global transition to clean energy is expected to trigger a 40-fold increase in the demand for lithium by 2040. Lithium is in high demand, but current methods for lithium extraction make it difficult and expensive to source. Conventional extraction methods take up lots of land, use lots of water and energy, and often have devastating environmental impac...
Jun 30, 2023•55 min•Ep 67•Transcript available on Metacast As we speak, there are 600 million people in Africa who lack access to even basic electricity. That’s driven in part by low levels of domestic and foreign investment into electricity infrastructure across the continent: over the last decade, just 3% of capital invested into energy infrastructure worldwide went to Africa. To enable universal energy access in Africa, we’ll need innovative climate financing solutions that get the right kind of capital to the right kind of projects at the right time...
May 31, 2023•54 min•Ep 66•Transcript available on Metacast Concrete is the second most-used material in the world, right behind water. It’s everywhere – in our bridges, our buildings, our homes, our roads. It’s the literal foundation for much of our lives. And cement is a key ingredient in that foundation. It acts as the glue that binds together the water and aggregate to make concrete. Globally, we produced more than four billion tons of cement in 2021, and demand is expected to grow. But for each ton of cement produced, a ton of carbon is emitted due ...
Apr 25, 2023•59 min•Ep 65•Transcript available on Metacast The U.S. is on track to deploy 550 gigawatts of new renewables on the grid by 2030 . That's a massive amount of solar, wind, and other renewables powering buildings, EVs, appliances, and industrial processes in our increasingly electrified world. Last year electric vehicles (EVs) hit a massive milestone by making up 5% of all new car sales in the U.S . And Bloomberg estimated that more than half of new car sales could be EVs by 2030. That future looks bright, but to keep the headlights on and th...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep 64•Transcript available on Metacast Forests make up a third of all land on Earth, and they're one of our major defenses against a warming world. 45% of the carbon stored in land exists in forests. Today, our forests are struggling to adapt to human activity and a rapidly changing climate. Deforestation and wildfires continue to ravage habitats like the Amazon. In the U.S.destructive wildfires have increasingly ravaged the West. To protect these valuable ecosystems and carbon sinks, we need to radically change the way we restore, c...
Mar 16, 2023•59 min•Ep 63•Transcript available on Metacast Industrial processes are one of the hardest sectors of the economy to decarbonize. Fossil fuels have been the go-to way of powering the facilities that make paper, plastics, food, beverages, and chemicals. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions from industry means changing the way companies produce their raw materials. The problem: sometimes the hardest sectors to decarbonize are the ones that may not believe in climate change at all, and thus don’t feel the need to change their practices. And that's...
Feb 14, 2023•57 min•Ep 62•Transcript available on Metacast Large swaths of the global economy are very hard to decarbonize with renewables and batteries alone. Steel, cement, aviation – these industries are run on the high heat and explosive force of burning fossil fuels. Together, these activities make up the industrial basement of society; the often overlooked and essential sectors of the economy that can only be made possible, in part, by burning liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons. Cleaning up these sectors requires an energy-dense alternative that can ...
Dec 28, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast Over the last decade, solar growth has exploded. Just last year, the U.S. added a record 13 gigawatts of utility-scale solar to the grid. And despite supply chain disruptions and inflation, the average solar panel cost still dropped by 11%. New solar plants are now cheaper to build than new gas or coal-fired power plants. But according to the Department of Energy, for the country to achieve a zero-carbon grid by 2050, we'll need 1,600 gigawatts of solar compared to the 13 we added last year. Thi...
Dec 20, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast To deploy enough solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries needed to decarbonize the grid, we'll need more of the critical minerals that make these technologies possible. Growing demand for clean technology means an even bigger need for lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and other minerals. Right now the world is on track to double its overall mineral requirements for clean technology by 2040. Yet our domestic mining capacity for these materials is a frac...
Dec 06, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast The energy we use in our homes remains one of the largest sources of emissions in the country. About 20 percent of our energy-related GHG emissions comes from the fossil fuels used to power gas furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and AC units. With the U.S. predicted to add more than 62 million new homes by 2050 , getting fossil fuels out of our houses, apartments and condos is crucial. And we have the tools to do it. Weatherization, insulation, and heat pumps can drastically reduce emissions. But ...
Nov 01, 2022•53 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast Earlier this year, solar reached a historic milestone: 1 terawatt of capacity around the world. One trillion watts is a huge achievement. But solar still only makes up 3 percent of the world's electricity. To deploy dozens of terrawatts in the coming years, we'll need to do something about the bottlenecks holding back the planning, design, and construction of the massive solar farms that will make up a renewable-powered grid. Enabling dozens of terawatts of solar development is exactly what this...
Sep 07, 2022•55 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast Our homes account for 20 percent of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. The fastest way to cut those emissions is to electrify the systems that heat, cool, and power our homes with heat pumps, solar, batteries, and EVs. These technologies are the pillars of residential electrification. But, as more and more homeowners seek to electrify, they’re discovering that a key piece of antiquated technology in their homes is holding them back from their all-electric dream: their electrical panel. That's w...
Aug 11, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast Heavy industries like manufacturing, food processing, mining, and construction require a staggering amount of energy, often in the form of heat. But until recently, there hasn’t been a good way to generate that amount of heat using electricity. As a result, we burn fossil fuels to make these essential materials and products. About a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from these industrial processes. Learning how to generate these high temperatures without burning fossil fuels i...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast Tens of millions of delivery vans and semi trucks move around the clock to keep supply chains humming. These medium- and heavy-duty vehicles make up more than 25 percent of transportation emissions in the US — even though they only make up 10 percent of all vehicles on the road. We need to electrify medium and heavy-duty vehicles to meet our climate goals. But, how do we build and operate the charging infrastructure to power them? That charging network is exactly what our guest, TeraWatt Infrast...
Jun 01, 2022•42 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast 
