Shift Key with Robinson Meyer

As electricity affordability has risen in the public consciousness, so too has it gone up the priority list for climate groups — although many of their proposals are merely repackaged talking points from past political cycles. But are there risks of talking about affordability so much, and could it distract us from the real issues with the power system? Rob is joined by Jane Flegal, a senior fello...

Just a handful of tech companies plan to spend nearly $700 billion combined this year investing in artificial intelligence — and much of that money will go to data centers and the energy used to keep them on. How is this boom transforming the American energy system, and what does it mean for clean energy? On this episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by Peter Freed, a founding partner at the Near Ho...

The Supreme Court just struck down President Trump’s most ambitious tariff plan. What does that ruling mean for clean energy? For the data center boom? For America’s industrial policy? On this emergency episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by  Jonas Nahm , a professor of economic and industrial policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. They discus...

President Donald Trump has essentially killed all fuel economy rules on cars and trucks in the United States. By the end of the year, automakers will face virtually no limits on how many huge gas guzzlers they can sell to the public — or what those purchases will do to domestic oil prices. But is the thinking driving this change up to date? Rob is joined by  Kenneth Gillingham , a professor o...

Rob is joined by  Jody Freeman , the director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, to discuss the Trump administration’s war on the endangerment finding. They chat about how the Trump administration has already changed its argument since last summer, whether the Supreme Court will buy what it’s selling, and what it all means for the future of climate law. They al...

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse announce some news about the show — and also debrief on how the Northeastern U.S. power grid performed during the past few weeks of unusually intense winter weather. They discuss why wintertime electricity demand is especially important to manage, whether it’s bad that New England got a whopping 40% of its electricity from oil, and how the region’...

Rob talks to Senator Martin Heinrich about whether Republicans and Democrats will reach a permitting reform deal this year. They chat about what Democrats would need to see in such a deal, how it could help transmission projects, and why such a deal will ultimately need to constrain President Trump in some way. They also discuss the future of Democratic energy and climate policy — what Heinrich le...

President Trump  announced  on Monday that the U.S. would create a domestic stockpile of critical minerals for civilian use — essentially a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but for lithium, copper, rare earths, and other rocks central to electronics and decarbonization. It’s one of many experimental and unusual steps that the administration has taken to boost U.S. mineral production over the...

It’s been a huge few weeks for the electric vehicle industry — at least in North America. After a major trade deal, Canada is set to import tens of thousands of new electric vehicles from China every year, and it could soon invite a Chinese automaker to build a domestic factory. General Motors has also already killed the Chevrolet Bolt, one of the most anticipated EV releases of 2026. How big a de...

America’s estimated greenhouse gas emissions rose by 2.4% last year — which is a big deal since they had been steady or falling in 2023 and 2024. More ominously, U.S. emissions grew faster than our gross domestic product last year, suggesting that the economy got less efficient from a climate pollution perspective. Is this Trump’s fault? The AI boom’s? Or was it a weird fluke? In this week’s Shift...

Every year, Heatmap asks dozens of climate scientists, officials, and business leaders the same set of questions. It’s an act of temperature-taking we call our Insiders Survey — and our 2026 edition is live now . In this week’s Shift Key episode, Rob puts Jesse through the survey wringer. What is the most exciting climate tech company? Are data centers slowing down decarbonization? And will a coun...

Over the weekend, the U.S. military entered Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. Maduro will now face drug and gun charges in New York, and some members of the Trump administration have described the operation as a law enforcement mission. President Donald Trump has taken a different tack. He has justified the operation by asserting that America is going to “take ove...

​​Shift Key is off for the holidays, but we hope you’ll enjoy this classic episode. Rooftop solar is four times more expensive in America than it is in other countries. It’s also good for the climate. Should we even care about its high cost? Yes, says Severin Borenstein, an economist and the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business...

2025 has been a rough year for climate and energy news. But enough about that. Let’s start looking at 2026! On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by some of Heatmap’s writers and editors to discuss our biggest stories and predictions for 2026 — what we’re tracking, what could surprise us, and what could happen next. We also discuss a recent op-ed in The New York Times arguing that Dem...

Over the past decade, the oil and gas industry has sharpened its drilling skills, extracting fossil fuels at greater depths — and with more precision — than ever before. What if there was a way to tap those advances to generate zero-carbon energy? The Canadian company Eavor (pronounced “ever”) says it can do so. Its closed-loop geothermal system is already producing heat at competitive prices in E...

China’s electric vehicle industry, it’s now well understood, is churning out cars that rival or exceed the best products coming out of the West. Chinese EVs are cheaper, cooler, more innovative, and have better range. And now they’re surging into car markets around the world — markets where consumers are hungry for clean, affordable transportation.  On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob ta...

2025 has been incredibly eventful for decarbonization — and not necessarily in a good way. The return of Donald Trump, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the rise of data centers and artificial intelligence led to more changes for climate policy and the clean energy sector than we’ve seen in years. Some of those we saw coming. Others we really did not.  On this week’s episode of Shift K...

It’s been a tumultuous year for climate politics — and for climate nonprofits. The longtime activist group 350.org suspended its operations in the U.S. (at least temporarily), and Bill Gates, the world’s No. 1 climate funder, declared that the decarbonization movement should make a “strategic pivot” to poverty reduction. How should someone who wants to help the global climate navigate this moment?...

The boom in artificial intelligence has become entangled with the clean energy industry over the past 18 months. Tech companies are willing to pay a lot for electricity — especially reliable zero-carbon electricity — and utilities and energy companies have been scrambling to keep up. But is that boom more like a bubble? And if so, what does that mean for the long-term viability of AI companies and...

It’s been a huge few weeks for climate news. Democrats swept state and local elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York City — and won two crucial regulatory races in Georgia. A few weeks before, the climate tech investor and philanthropist Bill Gates released a memo arguing for a pivot on climate funding vis a vis global health. On this special episode of Shift Key, Rob talks to...

​Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins are off this week. Please enjoy this selection from the Shift Key archive. China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially flat in 2024 — or they recorded a tiny increase, according to  a November report  from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA. A third of experts surveyed by the report believe that its coal emissions have peaked....

Data centers aren’t the only driver of rising power use. The inexorable shift to electric vehicles — which has been slowed, but not stopped, by Donald Trump’s policies — is also pushing up electricity use across the country. That puts a strain on the grid — but EVs could also be a strength. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk to Apoorv Bhargava, the CEO and cofounder of Weavegr...

Electricity prices are the biggest economic issue in the New Jersey governor’s race, which is perhaps next month’s most closely watched election. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate and frontrunner, has pledged to freeze power prices for state residents after getting elected. Can she do that?  On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob talks to Skanda Amarnath, the executive director of Em...

Simply operating America’s buildings uses more than a third of the country’s energy. A major chunk of that is temperature control — keeping the indoors cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Heating eats into families’ budgets and burns a tremendous amount of fuel oil and natural gas. But what if we could heat and cool buildings more efficiently, cleanly, and cheaply?  On this week’s epis...

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. His first book, We Survived the Night , was released this week — it uses memoir, reporting, and literary anthology to tell the story of Native families across North America, including his own.  NoiseCat was previously an environmental and climate activist at groups incl...