Energy Transition Talk

Welcome to episode three of the Future of Energy podcast sponsored by the Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition at the University of Southern California. While all of our guests are special, we may have outdone ourselves in this interview. In our episode today and we have a different format where we went on the road and traveled to Denver, Colorado to the headquarters of Liberty Energy to talk to...

Our second interview in season two focuses on the global policy making process that leads to climate policy. We talk to Arthur Lee who as an industry representative to the IPCC and UNFCCC for several decades helps us to decode all the acronyms and look behind the headlines on how the work to build collaboration between more than a hundred countries and countless other stakeholders unfolds at meeti...

We want to welcome everyone to season two of the Future of Energy podcast, sponsored by the Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. We hope you followed us in season one if so welcome back. If you are new to the program we try to cover the vast size and complexity of the energy transition by interviewing experts in a wide...

We are back for a second season of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition podcast! We are joined by two new student co-hosts, Milla and Rochan. Our first episode of season two shares the origin story of the podcast, with important introductions by Dean Yannis Yortos on sustainability and Dr. Don Paul on how the Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition got started....

In our final episode (!!) of Season One of Energy Transition Talk, we look back at how far we’ve come, and look forward to where we hope to go from here. We start by chatting with Dr. Scott Tinker, a geology professor at UT Austin and the State Geologist of Texas. He is also a documentary filmmaker, host of the energy and climate talk show Energy Switch , and host of the radio program Earth Date ....

In this episode of Energy Transition Talk, we talk about the future of the energy workforce and how we can recruit and prepare the next generation energy workforce for the energy transition.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) anticipates that adopting clean energy technologies will create 14 million jobs by 2030. However, many students, concerned about the fossil fuel industry’s role in climat...

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S., and makes up about a quarter of all energy-related GHG emissions in the world. Thus, we have ambitious goals when it comes to transportation, such as California’s commitment to transition fully to electric vehicle sales by 2035. The U.S. bought over 1 million EVs through the end of 2023, which made almost 8% of all...

Much of the talk around renewable energy seems to be focused on wind and solar. But there are other renewable sources that may be worth paying attention to. In this episode, we discuss the potential for hydrogen to be another tool in transitioning away from fossil fuels. Hydrogen has been around for awhile, but as an energy source, could it be experiencing a revival? The Biden administration seems...

When it comes to clean energy, we often hear about wind and solar, but there are other, perhaps less-talked about, renewable sources to include in our energy transition portfolio. In this episode, we focus on geothermal, which uses heat from the earth to generate energy. You may have heard of the Geysers in northern California, the world’s largest geothermal field, or the Salton Sea in southern Ca...

In 2022, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached a high of 53 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent. To bring that down to net zero, we can either stop emitting GHGs into the atmosphere, or we can pull out CO2 that has already been emitted. In this episode, we focus on two solutions to address areas where energy emissions are hard to abate.  One solution is carbon capture and sequestration,...

What are the real costs of going green, and who is going to pay the bill? In Part B of our episode on the cost of going green, Jim chats with a panel of mineral economics students from Ghana at the Colorado School of Mines – Eben, John, Rueben and Felix – who help us better understand the challenges of sustainable development from a sub-Saharan Africa perspective. The group discusses perspectives...

What are the real costs of going green, and who is going to pay the bill? In Part A of our episode on the cost of going green, we bring expert guest Brad Handler onto the show. Brad is Program Manager for the Sustainable Finance Lab at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, and a former Wall Street Equity Research Analyst with 20 years of experience covering the oil...

We often take our energy for granted – as long as the lights turn on, the stove works, and the A/C is running, we’re happy. What we may not realize is that the electrical grid is a large and complex system — it has been called the largest machine in the world! How does the electric grid actually work and deliver the energy that we rely on, and does when we use energy matter? (Spoiler alert: Yes!)...

In this episode of Energy Transition Talk, we explore a hot topic – the future of oil and gas! First, Paulina leads a lively conversation with Dwayne Purvis and Michael Edwards, two experts on the Future of Oil and Gas. They discuss the environmental and social impacts of orphan, or abandoned, wells; new technologies being developed in oil drilling and production; how communities that depend on th...

In this episode of Energy Transition Talk, Justine speaks with Professor Jacobs, an energy law professor at Berkeley Law, about all things energy law – what it is and why it matters. Professor Jacobs walks us through some of the most important energy laws that affect our daily lives, from the Inflation Reduction Act at the national level to the myriad of laws California, as the nation’s leader in...

In this episode of the Energy Transition Talk, we explore our relationship with critical minerals. First, Paulina chats with Lauren Bridges, who researches industrial scale computing at Harvard University, and Zane Cooper, who researches digital media infrastructure and rare earth mineral extraction at the University of Pennsylvania. Lauren and Zane have also formed a research collaboration on cri...

In this episode of Energy Transition Talk, we explore the broader topic of energy supply and demand.  Justine and Paulina start by speaking with Dr. Don Paul, an engineering professor at USC and Executive Director of the USC Energy Institute. They talk about energy demand and supply trends globally and in California, what it takes to fully electrify our power grid, the impact of renewable energy o...

In our second episode of the Energy Transition Talk on energy poverty, Paulina and Justine first speak with Dr. Kelly Sanders, a Civil and Environmental Engineering professor at USC who has been recognized in Forbes’ 30 under 30 and MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35. We talk about what energy poverty is, what a “just transition” looks like, the challenges developing economies face in...

Welcome to our first episode of the Energy Transition Talk, where we explore the challenges and opportunities of transitioning to a low-carbon future. In this episode, hosts Jim, Justine, and Paulina introduce themselves and set the stage for what the energy transition is and why it matters. They speak with Dr. Ershaghi, Director of the Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition (E-CET), on the history...