Interchange Recharged

We’re constantly going through waves of hype in different energy sectors: flexible solar panels, vertical-axis wind, electric planes, vehicle-to-grid, the smart home, blockchain. Some are real, some are not. Some just need to mature. So what phase are we in now? In this episode, Shayle and Stephen are digging into different sectors and trends at various stages of the climate tech hype cycle. ...

We may be facing one of the worst economic downturns in American history, but it hasn’t stopped the surge in battery storage development. We’re constantly hearing the phrase “world’s largest” or “record breaking” as new gigawatt-scale projects are unveiled weekly.  Small-scale batteries are being attached to more than one-third of residential solar systems for leading installers, making distr...

The world looked bleak for startups in the spring.  According to figures from Crunchbase , venture capital deals were down 44 percent from March to June compared with last year. Seed-stage deals took the biggest hit, down nearly 60 percent. But series B deals also took a hit. It was difficult at any stage of funding. Deals are finally coming back. Obviously, travel startups won’t be a hot cat...

Coronavirus is reshaping the way we move around. Will we emerge from this pandemic with smarter planning? Or will it dismantle already-weakened public transportation systems? When economies across the world shut down all at once in March, the impact on transportation systems was immediate. According to the International Energy Agency, activity on roads globally was down 50% compared to the 2019 av...

Earlier this month, Sunrun, the largest residential solar company in the U.S., declared its intent to acquire Vivint Solar, the second largest installer. It’s an all-stock transaction that would value the combined entity at over $9 billion. It's a big deal -- literally. The enterprise value attached to Vivint is $3.2 billion, which makes it the largest single transaction in the history of the dist...

This week: is carbon transparency finally coming? Electronics maker Logitech became the most recent company to offer carbon labels on its products. Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell called carbon “the new calorie.” It’s one of many attempts by food and consumer goods producers to make the lifecycle emissions of their products clearer to consumers.  In this episode, we’ll examine the new generation...

There is a widely-held perception that data centers -- the giant facilities that hold networks of society’s supercomputers -- are an out-of-control energy suck. We’ve all seen headlines like this:  “Your Netflix binge may be frying the planet” “Cut back on email if you want to save the environment” “Every Google search you do contributes to climate change” “Bitcoin could be the final nail in...

A boisterous CEO who brags of “out-Eloning” Elon Musk; a reverse merger that makes a little-known fuel cell trucking company as valuable as Ford; and no actual cars or trucks in production. This week, we try to make sense of Nikola Motor.  Nikola Motor went public last week through a reverse merger, achieving a ~$13 billion valuation. As the markets closed on Wednesday, the company’s market c...

We use the term “energy transition” to define markets, technology, business models. But what about people? The transition away from fossil fuels isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. The hardest part isn’t building the clean resources. It’s shutting down the dirty stuff at a pace the science demands. And that means disrupting entire classes of employment and communities that depend on fossil fue...

Greed is good. At least, it’s good for decarbonization. This week on The Interchange podcast, we have a new edition of the fantasy decarbonization draft -- this one focused on acquiring and restructuring public companies.  We’re joining the ranks of corporate raiders like Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens and Gordon Gekko by taking over public companies and bending their strategies to our will. (F...

This week, we’re talking about the new wave of carbon offsets. Will startups and corporates be able to solve accountability problems? Right up until the global economy stopped working in March, the carbon offset market was surging. In 2019, offset sellers saw a 5-fold increase in purchases, after years of low demand in the wake of the financial crisis. Flight-shamed consumers were demanding them....

This week: where does the COVID detour take us as we map the energy transition? We’re once again thinking through the practical and theoretical consequences of the pandemic, in the near-term and well into the future.  Shayle and Stephen talk with Ramez Naam , a futurist, science-fiction author and energy expert. Ramez joined us last August to talk about some future scenarios for energy. The w...

Electricity grids can handle a lot of wind, solar and water resources. But what will help us get from 80% renewable energy to 100% renewable energy? The missing piece may be renewable synthetic fuels. “When we really want to decarbonize the whole electricity system, absolutely synthetic fuels will play a key role,” says Matti Rautkivi, the director of Business Development and Strategy at Wärtsilä....

Destruction. Dislocation. Collapse. A permanent reset. Read any news about oil markets, and these are the vivid descriptions you’ll encounter. We are now deep into an historic pause for oil demand across the globe -- shutting down oil fields, causing negative pricing, overwhelming our storage abilities, and forcing up to a million job losses this year. "We are looking at a major demand destruction...

Famed software pioneer and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is out with a new piece, called “ It’s time to build ,” that is making the rounds among the thinkfluencer crowd. It’s part call-to-arms and part flogging over America’s inability to build. “Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping ot...

This week, we bring you a joint episode of  The Interchange and The Energy Gang 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...

We have a live show coming up on Wednesday, April 22. It's free! Sign up here . And submit questions here . What will be the “new normal” in the energy economy when coronavirus starts to dissipate? The longer this goes on, the more dramatically it will alter how we make things, where we make them, what kind of companies grow or fail, and who suffers and who benefits This week, Shayle and Stephen s...

This week: coronavirus is rewriting the cleantech startup survival guide. The implosion for early-stage companies has been swift. According to a New York Times analysis , 6,000 people at 50 startups have lost their jobs since the middle of March.  Once fast-growing companies are losing their revenue overnight, laying off or furloughing up to 50 percent of their staff. Companies in travel, con...

We were feeling a little stir crazy this week, so we hopped behind the microphone with Chris Nelder, host of The Energy Transition Show for some wonkery while in quarantine. In this episode we are exploring two simple questions: What was an unknown about the energy transition five years ago that we now know? And what is a question that has emerged in 2020 that is still unanswered? And as expected,...

This week, we're coming to you from our home isolation, partially frozen in time. We're wondering how long things will be this way. How we will work? How he will keep healthy? How we will run our companies? How will we move forward?  It can feel like each day those answers are only further away. This week on The interchange , Shayle Kann and Stephen Lacey get real on how the pandemic has chan...

This week: What does the load curve look like in a time of pandemic?  We are in the middle of a sudden, jarring economic shift. Store fronts, arenas and office buildings are dark in many cities. Homes are becoming the center of our activity -- and for many of us, our work. That is causing sudden shifts in the way we consume energy. We’ve seen it play out in China, France and Italy. So what is...

This week: What can meal kits tell us about the energy intensity of the food system? When you get meal-kits delivered to your home -- are they a net benefit to the environment? Or are these time savers carbon-heavy? Since 2012, there’s been a surge in meal-kit delivery options. Online buying and delivery is now the norm. There’s a surge in interest in healthy eating. And we’re all insanely busy. A...

This week: what one entrepreneur's story tells us about the migration of talent from tech to climate. Jason Jacobs is the founder of My Climate Journey , a podcast, newsletter, and slack room that brings together a high-level group of people who are dedicating their careers to addressing climate change. Co-host Shayle Kann talks with Jason about his own journey -- and about what his story tells us...

The 100% renewable energy future doesn’t start with a country, state or region. It starts with a city. One power plant in a city, in fact. In Glendale, California. Glendale is a city of 200,000 people just north of Los Angeles. And in 2014, the was in a tricky spot. The city’s natural gas plant was old. The City Council faced a decision that would impact the city for decades to come: revamp the 25...

This week, we are talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and many ways they can decarbonize the economy. From optimizing buildings to modeling new industrial processes to better managing the grid, AI and machine learning are core to many technology strategies for addressing climate change. So how, exactly, will they be implemented? And what problems can they solve? With us is Pri...