Shift Key with Robinson Meyer

Donald Trump’s second term has now entered its second month. His administration is doing much to slow down renewables, and everything it can to slow down offshore wind. Jael Holzman is a senior reporter at Heatmap and the author of our newsletter, “The Fight,” about local battles over renewable permitting around the country.  On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk to Jael abo...

Longtime listeners of Shift Key will recognize the name Intersolar and Energy Storage North America, one of the country’s premier solar industry conferences. Shift Key was live at this year’s event, hosting a panel on the present and future of the solar industry featuring a pair of marquee panelists: Tom Starrs, currently the vice president for government and public affairs at EDP Renewables, Nort...

Congress is still debating the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act, but the Trump administration has already torn up energy and climate policies across the federal government. It’s time to step back and try to take stock. How much damage has the Trump administration already done to decarbonization? What’s most worrying? What was going to happen anyway? And what might still be saved?  On this...

The most important energy regulators in the United States aren’t all in the federal government. Each state has its own public utility commission, a set of elected or appointed officials who regulate local power companies. This set of 200 individuals wield an enormous amount of power — they oversee 1% of U.S. GDP — but they’re often outmatched by local utility lobbyists and overlooked in discussion...

The first few weeks of the new Trump administration have seen an onslaught of anti-climate actions: an order punishing the wind industry, an attempted reversal of the Environmental Protection Administration’s climate authority, and a brazen — and possibly unconstitutional — attempt to freeze all spending under Biden’s climate laws. Democrats’ climate legacy seems to be under assault. How will they...

Over the past 30 years, the U.S. automaking industry has transformed how it builds cars and trucks, constructing a continent-sized network of factories, machine shops, and warehouses that some call “Factory North America.” President Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports will disrupt and transform those supply chains. What will that mean for the automaking industry and the tran...

On February 1 — that is, three days from now — President Donald Trump has promised to apply a tariff of 25% to all U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, crude oil very much not excepted. Canada has been the largest source of American crude imports for more than 20 years. More than that, the U.S. oil industry has come to depend on Canada’s thick, sulfurous oil to blend with America’s light, sweet do...

The Los Angeles wildfires have killed at least 27 people, destroyed more than 17,000 structures, and displaced tens of thousands. In the next few months, the billions of costs in damage to homes and property will ripple through the state’s insurance market — and likely cause its insurer of last resort to run out of money. Benjamin Keys has studied how natural disasters, rising sea levels, and incr...

Hydrogen. What are you even supposed to think about it? If you’ve spent serious time focusing on climate policy, you’ve heard the hype about hydrogen — about the miraculous things that it might do to eliminate carbon pollution from cars, power plants, steel mills, or more. You’ve also seen that hype fizzle out — even as governments have poured billions of dollars into making it work. On this week’...

China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially flat this year — or they recorded a tiny increase, according to a recent 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. Has the world’s No. 1 emitter of carbon pollution now turned a corner on climate change?   Lauri Myllyvirta is...

Happy new year! On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse answer some of the questions they’ve received from readers throughout the year. Hot topics include: What happened to the Green New Deal, and is the Inflation Reduction Act part of its legacy? Should U.S. policy prioritize solar manufacturing or solar deployment? And how can normal people keep AI-driven data centers from blowing up...

The rise of artificial intelligence and the associated expansion of data centers is driving surging demand for new power supply. Earlier this fall at the annual meeting of Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Jesse sat down with a panel of experts to discuss how society can meet the growing energy demands of AI while staying on track broader decarb...

Jennifer Granholm has long been one of the most interesting figures in the Democratic Party. A former federal prosecutor, she was the governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, leading the state during the Great Recession and subsequent auto bailout. Since 2021, she has been the 16th U.S. Secretary of Energy. While there, she has overseen the department’s transformation from an R&D-focused agency...

The Chinese electric automaker BYD is entering a new stage in its history. Last month, it sold more than half a million electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. BYD has already shipped more cars this year than Ford and Honda, and it is fast coming for Volkswagen, GM, and Toyota’s crowns as the world’s three largest automakers. Earlier this year, Rob and Jesse spoke with Ilaria Mazzocco , a senior fe...

The Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, is the biggest investment in clean energy in American history. It is also in danger. In January, the Trump administration and a GOP Congress will take over the federal government — and they have made a variety of promises about how they’ll disrupt the law, ranging from full repeal to a more “surgical” reform approach. On this...

It’s been a news-filled few weeks — so it’s time for a roundup. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk about what Trump’s cabinet selections might mean for his climate policy and whether permitting reform could still happen. Then Rob chats with Corey Cantor, senior EV analyst at BloombergNEF, about promising Q3 sales for U.S. automakers, General Motors’ turnaround, and how much th...

Here’s the bad news: The world is almost certainly going to miss the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The needed emissions cuts are too large and the direction of policy too slow to lead to any other outcome. In the next few decades, global warming will slip past the 1.5 degree mark — and temperatures will keep...

The rollbacks are coming. Donald Trump’s incoming administration is expected to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, weaken the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules for power plants and tailpipe pollution, and — potentially — rewrite or repeal big swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act. Each of those actions would seem to provide an opening for the world’s No. 1 polluter — China&nb...

Last night, Donald Trump secured a second term in the White House. He campaigned on an aggressively pro-fossil -fuel agenda, promising to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s landmark 2022 climate law, and roll back Environmental Protection Agency rules governing power plant and car and truck pollution. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob pick through the results of the elect...

It’s all happening. The presidential election is a week away, and our cohost Jesse Jenkins is back from vacation. There is so much to talk about in the world of decarbonization and energy. So we tried to catch up on all of it. Are EV sales starting to rebound in the U.S.? What’s up with the Cybertruck? And what about Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting reform bill?  On this week’s episode of Shi...

Over the past two months, the country’s biggest tech companies have announced a flurry of deals with advanced and conventional nuclear companies. At the same time, Democratic candidates running for federal office — including Kamala Harris and a handful of Senate candidates — have touted their support of building new nuclear power plants. Has nuclear’s moment finally arrived? On this week’s episode...

What’s next for the Biden administration — and for climate policy in the United States? Should Democrats negotiate with Republicans over permitting reform, even if it means making concessions to fossil fuel interests? And how should the country’s trade policy handle the problem of carbon pollution?   On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob speaks with Ali Zaidi , the national climate ad...

How can you fight climate change in your daily life? Last month, Heatmap published our attempt at answering that question: Called Decarbonize Your Life, it’s a series of stories and guides to help you make decisions that nudge the energy system away from fossil fuels. We consulted studies, ran our own analysis (with help from some friends), and used our expert judgment to arrive at six big, high-l...

This is a special Hurricane Helene edition of Shift Key. Our regular programming will resume next week. Nearly a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall, we are still coming to terms with the scale of its destruction. The storm killed at least 182 people, making it the deadliest cyclone to make landfall in the continental United States since Katrina. From Tampa Bay to Asheville, North Carolina,...

In just over a month, America will elect hundreds of thousands of people to state, county, and municipal offices. While those elections might lack the splashiness of the race for the White House or Congress, they could shape how and whether the United States fights climate change. So which elections matter most? On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Caroline Spears , the ex...