The Big Switch

Hydrogen could be essential for the zero-carbon economy, especially for cleaning up concrete, steel, and chemicals. It's also a promising fuel source for transportation and electricity that's attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in global investment. But there's a problem. Every year, the world produces millions of tons of hydrogen through a dirty process that creates  lots of CO2 and carbon...

Steel goes into pretty much everything around us – from buildings and bridges to the furniture in our homes. And decarbonizing the steel industry is essential because we need steel to decarbonize the world. Think about it. Solar panels, electric vehicles, even our power grid; steel goes into everything we need to fight climate change. But there's a problem. Steel manufacturing uses a lot of fossil...

St. James Parish, Louisiana sits in the middle of an 85-mile corridor along the Mississippi river that's home to more than 150 petrochemical plants. This concentration of petrochemical facilities has taken a toll on the health of nearby communities – a toll that falls disproportionately on Black communities. Cancer risk in some parts of this corridor is more than 50 times the national average, giv...

Petrochemicals. You might not have heard of them, but you certainly use them every day. These chemicals, made from oil, are in almost everything – plastics, medicines, clothes, toothpaste, even the insulation in your home.  So how can we decarbonize an industry that makes such a pervasive product?  This week, we spoke with climate solutions expert Deborah Gordon about how we can cut carbon emissio...

Things have shifted dramatically since we aired our last episode. There's now a crisis in Ukraine and sanctions on Russian oil and gas. This is all on top of record demand for petroleum products and electricity as the world emerges from lockdowns. So this week, we're bring you an episode about energy security from the other podcast that we have here at the Center on Global Energy Policy, the Colum...

This week: A love story about concrete. Melissa and Rebecca Dell , an industrial decarbonization expert, break down our relationship with concrete, and why it's so dysfunctional. The problem? Making concrete – especially its key ingredient, cement – is toxic to the climate. Only two countries in the world – the US and China – produce more greenhouse gas emissions than the concrete industry as a wh...

What does a toaster oven have to do with carbon emissions? This week, Melissa and producer Alexandria Herr dissect one to find out. Turns out carbon emissions are embedded in everything around us – from the clothes we wear to our kitchen appliances.  Melissa also talks to energy expert Chris Bataille about what it will take to decarbonize the heavy industries that p roduce these everyday objects. ...

We have something different today: A crossover between The Big Switch and The Carbon Copy. If you like this episode, go over to The Carbon Copy and hit subscribe.  When Covid disrupted the economy and shifted energy use, it sharply brought down economy-wide carbon emissions. Many wondered: would the pandemic-related changes to our energy system help or hurt the path to a net-zero carbon economy? T...

Aviation is a notoriously difficult sector to decarbonize. So as Melissa plans a family trip, she wrestles with her options. Which flights emit the least carbon? How well do offsets work? Should we even be flying at all? Melissa and colleague Kirsten Smith task producer Daniel Woldorff with calling up airlines to look for answers.  Engineer Alejandra Uranga imagines airplanes in a net-zero future....

When one of the biggest ships in the world got stuck in the Suez Canal, it threw a giant wrench into international supply chains. It exacerbated shortages of everything from semiconductors to snuggies .  Journalist Maria Gallucci explains how this overlooked sector plays an essential part in supplying – and decarbonizing – the global economy.  Lawyer and economist Aoife O'Leary covers our decarbon...

Heavy trucks emit an outsize share of greenhouse gasses and toxic pollutants. But we rely on them for nearly everything we buy. What will it take to decarbonize them? We hear from staff at the Community Center for Action & Environmental Justice. They're demanding clean air in "America's shopping cart," a polluted region dominated by warehouses and trucking. And Dr. Ben Sharpe of the International...

Electric autonomous vehicles shuttle us to high-tech mass transit hubs. Our fare system is contactless. We've already paid via a customized, equitable subscription model. All the trains and buses are on time. And we don't have to wait in traffic. This is a world in which we can hop in a car to get somewhere, but we don't have to. In this episode, the second in our five-part series on transportatio...

In the next five episodes, we'll take a deep dive into decarbonizing the entire transportation sector -- everything from bulldozers and planes to ships and trains. In this episode we start with cars. How do we switch the world's over 1 billion fossil-fuel-powered cars to zero-carbon alternatives, and fast?  Dr. Melissa Lott explores the most promising pathway -- electrification -- with Dr. Sonia Y...

In the first five episodes of this show, we talked about cleaning up our electricity system—the power grid. In upcoming episodes, we're going to explain how to make that Big Switch in every other sector of the economy—everything from cars and heavy trucking to industrial heat and buildings.   It's a lot to cover, and so we need a roadmap. In this episode, we're doing just that. Our host, Dr. Melis...

We have a whole year of episodes coming up. In the first five episodes of The Big Switch, we talked about cleaning up our electricity system--the power grid. Next, host Dr. Melissa Lott will talk with experts about how to transform every other sector of the economy, including transportation, industry and buildings. To slow climate change, we need to transform our buildings, our homes, cars, and th...

In episode 2, we explored how to build a championship zero-carbon "team" on the grid. We could have the best players in the world — rooftop solar, batteries, net metering, demand response, high-voltage transmission, and so many others — but if the rules prevent these technologies from playing ball, then we won't be able to decarbonize fast enough.  How do we make sure the rules strike the right ba...

Matching electricity supply and demand is a high-wire balancing act. As we add more solar, wind and batteries, and shut down thermal generation, it shifts the balance. New kinds of distributed resources can help to balance things out -- but they also make grid management more complex. In our fourth episode of season 1, Dr. Melissa Lott explores the new ways to manage the zero-carbon grid. We'll re...

If the grid system is the backbone of a low-carbon economy, then transmission lines are the nervous system. We need a dramatic build-out of the transmission system to connect renewable energy to the places that need it, while managing a wider range of local resources. How do we build it quickly, cheaply, and in a respectful way? In our third episode of season 3, Dr. Melissa Lott explores the role...

Building a low-carbon grid is like building a sports team with star players and supporting players. Or, more accurately, it's like re-building a sports team, where you have to go from underdogs to world champs.  First, you have to retire the under-performers like coal. Then, you have to grow your star players — namely wind and solar. Finally, you have to get your star players to work together with...

The electric grid is the vast machine that powers everything around us. It's also the part of the energy system where we're seeing the most dramatic changes as we address climate change. So what are the stakes, solutions and tradeoffs as we move to a net-zero energy system? In our first episode of season 1, Dr. Melissa Lott explores the intricacies of how the grid runs everything around us — and w...

Welcome to our first season of "The Big Switch." It's a five-part series that explores how the power grid works, how it's changing, and how those changes can benefit society. Your host is Dr. Melissa Lott of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. To slow climate change, we need to transform our buildings, our homes, cars, and the economy as quickly as possible. But how do we do it r...