Energy Gang

This week, we cover some hopeful signs amidst the economic destruction.  First, we’ll look at the record-breaking activity in battery storage. A coal plant in North Dakota will be replaced in part with a one-acre battery array from Form Energy that uses a new technology capable of discharging for 150 hours – that’s more than 30 times longer than lithium batteries.  Hawaii’s electric util...

This week, we look at sky-high layoffs in clean energy. How do we get people back to work?  The first major analysis of unemployment in the clean energy sector has been released for April. According to E2 and BW Research, nearly 600,000 jobs were lost in energy efficiency, manufacturing, electric vehicles and clean power and fuels.  We’ve seen a 17 percent drop in the green workforce sin...

This week: while the country is distracted by infection rates, deaths and protests, what else have we been missing? We peek out from behind the quarantine curtain to see what the Trump administration has been up to on the energy front.  The Trump administration has declared a national emergency over cyber threats to the power grid. Equipment vendors “where a foreign adversary has an interest”...

This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Saul Griffith, the founder and chief scientist at Other Lab. Saul Griffith has a PhD in materials science and information theory. He’s co-founded over a dozen companies. And now he’s determined to prove that we already have what it takes to decarbonize the economy. “The reality is I think it's still possible to completely deca...

This week, we bring you a joint episode of The Energy Gang and The Interchange , recorded in front of a live audience from our quarantine quarters around the country.  When we started making our podcasts seven years ago, it was clear that the energy transition would be a difficult one.  Both shows were designed as a forum to grapple with tough issues in an accessible, candid way. The cle...

We’re doing a free live show from our homes! Sign up here to join us on Wednesday April 22nd. You can watch a behind-the-scenes recording with The Energy Gang and The Interchange . This week: The many ways that dirty energy has controlled the politics of clean energy. Dr. Leah Stokes, an expert on interest groups and their influence over policy, joins the gang. Her new book, Short Circuiting Polic...

The world is experiencing a sudden, dramatic drop in all kinds of air pollution. The skies are dramatically different. People can hear birds they didn’t even know were there, and see landscapes that have been shrouded for decades. It’s saved thousands of lives in averted asthma and heart attacks. When this is all over, will people clamor for cleaner air? We discuss the potential long-term impacts...

This week: The coronavirus shockwave brings staggering losses of lives, jobs, and money. So many applied for unemployment last week – 5 times more than ever before – that it was hard for graphic artists to draw a Y-axis that would fit them in historical comparisons. We’re now at 10 million unemployment claims.  With so much turmoil and uncertainty, we are going to dig back into some of the bi...

This is a special crossover episode between The Energy Gang and Climate 2020 . Coronavirus brought the 2020 election to a screeching halt. Climate was once a top issue in the Democratic primary, but it’s been overtaken by a virus and a looming economic apocalypse.  Primaries are delayed. Traditional campaigning has stopped. Biden is hiding out, preparing for the general election. Bernie Sande...

This is an original, branded podcast produced in partnership with Enel X and GTM Creative Strategies. Electric vehicle chargers now outnumber gas stations in some countries. They’re getting easier to find. They’re easier to install in homes. And they’re getting way smarter. So how can we harness all these chargers for the benefit of the grid and consumers? In this special podcast episode, produced...

This week: how coronavirus could accelerate or decelerate the energy transition. We’re facing an oil shock amid a pandemic, supply chains are still in disarray, economic gears are grinding to a near halt, and countries are scrambling to put stimulus packages in place. How will this shape the energy system? We’re going to break the conversation into three parts: the impact on fossil fuels and renew...

This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Robyn Beavers, the co-founder and CEO of Blueprint Power .  Blueprint works with real estate companies to turn their buildings into clean energy power plants. Blueprint developed software that helps building owners optimize their use of co-generation, fuel cells, solar or batteries. Robin has a long history in the worlds...

What to do with all this climate money moving around?  The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, says he is going to channel $10 billion of his own dollars into climate solutions. Is this the biggest climate philanthropy ever? And where should he be devoting those dollars? We’ll help him spend it. Then, the mushy middle. Our own Jigar Shah’s Generate Capital has raised another billion dollars...

Just weeks after taking over as CEO of BP, Bernard Looney unveiled a series of climate targets. This isn’t the first time BP has tried to make a push into clean energy and decarbonization -- is this time different? In this week’s episode, we’ll look at the pressures that BP is facing. What does it take for a publicly-owned company to reevaluate its core product? And how do you reduce the carbon in...

This week: The cutting-edge business of bringing power to the last billion people on Earth without it.  We’ll follow the money, the markets, the business models and ask whether distributed renewables are providing a real alternative to slow grid connections.  Investments in off-grid power in Africa and Asia have skyrocketed in the last five years. Thirty times more money went into the se...

This week on Watt It Takes : Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Dr. Christine Ho, the co-founder and CEO of Imprint Energy . Imprint Energy is the company created to commercialize Christine’s invention: a tiny, zinc-based solid-state battery that can be screen printed. It’s being integrated into sensors and other tiny devices across the internet-of-things. Christine’s father was an entrepr...

This week: The largest utility in one of the West’s reddest states will go carbon-free by 2050.  The power company that has poured tens of millions of dollars into electing friendly regulators and fighting renewable energy says it’s all in for zero carbon electricity — even if the exact pathway isn’t yet clear.  Wasn’t APS investing heavily in keeping the Four Corners coal plant open lon...

This week: Microsoft is setting a new standard for corporate climate targets. The technology company promised to remove all of the carbon that it’s ever put in the atmosphere -- going back to when it was founded in an Albuquerque garage in 1975.  That includes $1 billion in carbon removal technologies and methods. Can it pull off such an ambitious plan? And will it force other corporates to f...

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, is suddenly putting sustainability and climate risk at the center of its investment strategy.  “Investors are increasingly...recognizing that climate risk is investment risk. These questions are driving a profound reassessment of risk and asset values. And because capital markets pull future risk forward, we will see changes in capital allocation...

This week, a look at the bushfires in Australia — their impact to the country, to the grid, and to politics of climate. Then, a big change could be coming to a foundational federal policy in America. Are the proposed changes to PURPA a thoughtful response to market conditions and cheap renewables, or a political play? Finally, we learn to code. Joe Biden is the latest democrat to push the idea tha...

We have some bonus listening as we close out the year! We present one of our most popular episodes of The Interchange : The Deep Decarbonization Draft . It's like fantasy sports for energy nerds. The premise is simple: Shayle and Stephen choose their teams of decarbonization technologies and methods, and then pit them against each other to determine who’s best at saving the planet. Go subscribe to...

We’re closing out the decade this week with a retrospective.  We have been doing this show since 2013. So we are going to share some of our top story lines in energy and cleantech of the last 10 years — many of which played out while we were doing this show. We’ll start with some personal retrospectives. What was consuming us back in 2009? How did that story shake out? Then we’ll choose the m...

This week on Watt It Takes: Emily Kirsch sits down with Dr. Etosha Cave , the co-founder and chief science officer of Opus 12. Opus 12 is a team of engineers, electrochemists and materials scientists working on a technology that converts carbon dioxide into useable products. They are developing a metal catalyst that can turn CO2 into synthetic gas for fuels and ethylene for plastics. If the tech w...

This is a branded podcast made in collaboration between CohnReznick Capital and GTM Creative Strategies.  Sheslie Royster is the person that big companies turn to when making an acquisition, investing in real estate, or finding a creative way to use tax credits. She’s a tax expert, focused mostly in wind and solar. Those deals include a lot of numbers and math, of course. But Sheslie says the...

Truck buyers are historically some of the most brand-loyal auto consumers But recent surveys suggest that loyalty is loosening. Into the picture steps Elon Musk, who dropped the Tesla Cybertruck last month. This space-age truck concept is truly putting the shift in consumer preferences to the test. It’s also tearing a lot of opinionated people apart. In this episode: what is the Cybertruck an...