Volts

In this episode, Astrid Atkinson, co-founder of Camus Energy, talks about her company’s “grid orchestration” work of helping utilities see, track, and coordinate the distributed energy resources in their territories. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts One of my favorite things I ever wrote was a 2018 piece for Vox on grid architecture — the basic structure of t...

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is poised to pass new policy that will expand regional transmission capacity, but how impactful will its new rule be? In this episode, grid policy expert Rob Gramlich gives the lay of the land. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts By now, it’s fairly well understood that the US badly needs more electricity transmiss...

As I previewed for Volts subscribers a few weeks ago, I attended the third annual Yale Clean Energy Conference last week. It was a blast! It’s always energizing (pardon the pun) to be surrounded by so many young people doing so much cool stuff. It gives this crusty old blogger some hope. While I was there, I recorded a podcast — live on stage! — with Sonia Aggarwal. Sonia is well-known in Energy W...

In this episode, Ólafur Teitur Guðnason of Icelandic company Carbfix discusses his company’s approach to carbon sequestration by essentially making fizzy water and burying it deep underground. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts The idea behind the Icelandic company Carbfix is simple: pack water full of carbon dioxide (literally carbonate it, like a SodaStream)...

Rural community pushback to new wind and solar farms has the potential to slow the US clean-energy transition, but very little research has been done on what rural Americans actually think about renewable energy. A recent survey of thousands of rural residents about their opinions on climate change and clean energy development sheds some light; in this episode, Robin Pressman of Embold Research an...

In this episode, Shayle Kann, cleantech investor and host of the podcast Catalyst, shares his educated opinion on the most overhyped and underhyped technologies and trends in clean energy. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts If you listen to Volts, you probably also listen to — or at the very least, should also be listening to — Catalyst , the Canary Media podca...

In this episode, Princeton professor and energy modeler Jesse Jenkins tackles the question of how we can build a decarbonized energy system that relies on inherently variable wind and solar power. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts If you’ve spent much time discussing clean energy on the internet, you’ve probably come across a disturbing piece of information: t...

District energy refers to a system in which a shared central plant distributes steam, hot water, and/or chilled water to multiple buildings via underground pipes. In this episode, Rob Thornton of the International District Energy Association shares about district energy’s newfound popularity and the role it could play in the clean energy transition. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text tr...

Iceland aims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral nation; thanks in large part to hydropower and geothermal, it’s well on track to meet that goal by 2040. In this episode, Halla Hrund Logadóttir of the Iceland Energy Authority reflects on the country’s energy history and looks to its ambitious future. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Iceland is an island ju...

In this episode, veteran journalist Brian Beutler waxes nostalgic about the past 20 years of political journalism and muses about its future. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) I’ve known political journalist Brian Beutler for a long time. We met back in the late 2000s in DC, in the heady days leading up to Obama’s victory, and have kept in touch fitfully ever since. Brian, one of the smarte...

In this episode, Antora Energy CEO Andrew Ponec talks up his company’s game-changing approach to thermal energy storage. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Back in March, I did a podcast on the possibility of using wind and solar electricity to decarbonize industrial heat , which represents fully a quarter of all human final energy consumption. The trick is to...

In this episode, Minnesota State Representative Larry Kraft shares about the state’s ambitious, progressive transportation policy, which includes climate accountability measures that no other state has implemented. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts In 2022, Democrats narrowly won a trifecta in Minnesota — House, Senate, and governor — whereupon they launched i...

In this episode, Maine State Senator Nicole Grohoski discusses an upcoming ballot measure that gives Maine voters the opportunity to replace the state’s unpopular for-profit utilities with a nonprofit public utility. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Maine’s two big investor-owned power utilities — Central Maine Power and Versant Power — are not very popular....

In this episode, organizer Jeff Ordower of 350.org talks about how the environmental movement can shift its focus from blocking what it doesn’t like to building what it does. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts It is a much-discussed fact that the environmental movement cut its teeth blocking things — mines, pipelines, power plants, and what have you. It is stru...

How can the US make it easier, faster, and cheaper for homeowners to install rooftop solar? In this episode, Sunrun CEO Mary Powell shares her vision for boosting not only residential solar, but other forms of residential electrification too. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts In Australia, one out of three households has solar panels on the roof. In the US, it...

Clean-energy transmission lines in the US are horribly congested, and buildout of new ones is agonizingly slow. Yet while other parts of the world use grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) to significantly improve performance of existing transmission lines, the US system has been resistant to deploying them. In this episode, Julia Selker, head of a GETs trade group called the WATT Coalition, discusse...

In this episode, Reed Hundt, the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, discusses the merits of green banks, quasi-public or nonprofit institutions that provide seed capital to accelerate the growth of clean energy. There are more than 20 active green banks at the state level. Now Biden has proposed a federal green bank. Hundt explains how it could help. Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring...

Energy storage as deployed on the US grid today has a dirty secret — it actually increases carbon emissions. In this episode, Tierra Climate founders Jacob Mansfield and Emma Konet discuss their vision to incentivize emission reductions by making batteries and other energy storage eligible for carbon offset. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts It is widely under...

In this episode, right-wing media critic Matt Sheffield and I discuss the disinformation crisis and the climate change crisis, and how they are deeply intertwined. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Matt Sheffield started his first conservative media website, bashing news anchor Dan Rather for liberal bias, way back in 2000, and in subsequent years became a key...

In this episode, Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project shares a progressive vision for permitting reform and the factors that could speed up the US clean-energy buildout. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts To achieve its Paris climate targets, the US is going to have to build out an enormous amount of clean energy and clean-energy infrastructure i...

In this episode, Australian comedian Dan Ilic hosts me on The Greatest Moral Podcast Of Our Generation. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts While I was down under in Australia, I appeared on a show called A Rational Fear , a pod about climate change which is, I’m told, the winner of Australia’s Best Comedy Podcast. More specifically, I appeared on a spinoff show...

In this episode, Saul Griffith — co-founder of Rewiring America and, more recently, Rewiring Australia — chats about all the things that energy nerds love to chat about. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts If you are a Volts subscriber, you are almost certainly familiar with Saul Griffith. I've been following him and his work for years, and I think I can say wit...

In this episode, activist Miriam Lyons gives an overview of Australian climate policy past, present, and future. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts G’day mates! As you all know, I’m in Australia at the moment, on a whirlwind speaking/listening tour regarding this country’s response to the Inflation Reduction Act. I’ve been learning a ton about Australia’s histo...

The US is nowhere close to being able to build the amount of long-distance power lines it will need for a clean energy transition. In this episode, electricity transmission expert Liza Reed breaks down the many problems with the current dysfunctional system, and what it will take to build up the needed infrastructure. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Electric...

In this episode, clean grid expert Chaz Teplin demystifies interconnection queues. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts By now, you’ve probably heard that tons of new renewable energy projects are “ stuck in the interconnection queues ,” unable to connect to the grid and produce electricity until grid operators get around to approving them, which can take up to f...