Volts

In this episode, influential climate blogger Joe Romm discusses whether carbon offsets are, per the title of his recent white paper, “unscalable, unjust, and unfixable.” ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Carbon offsets — whereby one party pays another party to reduce carbon emissions — are an extremely convenient thing to have for people, businesses, and insti...

Geothermal developer Fervo Energy has successfully brought online the first ever full-scale commercial power plant sourcing from enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) — a groundbreaking development both literally and figuratively. In this episode, Fervo CEO Tim Latimer discusses the company’s accomplishment and where flexible geothermal is headed. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcri...

In this episode, I have a conversation (IRL!) with longtime energy analyst Ramez Naam about a wide range of nerdy but fascinating topics. (PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts As I previewed a few weeks back , on Wednesday, June 28, Canary Media held a live event in the downtown Seattle home space of beloved local independent radio station KEXP. It’s a gorgeous spa...

In this episode, Kelly Mitchell of journalistic watchdog group Documented discusses Republicans’ furious pushback against ESG funds due to their ostensible greenness, and the ridiculousness of said vehemence since ESG ratings are actually a poor reflection of companies’ true environmental impact. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts For the last few years, the fa...

In this episode, Priya Donti, executive director of nonprofit Climate Change AI, speaks to how artificial intelligence and machine learning are affecting the fight against climate change. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts As you might have noticed, the world is in the midst of a massive wave of hype about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)...

In this episode, Anthony Wang, co-founder of ETFuels, describes his company’s business model of using renewable energy to make green hydrogen, then using the hydrogen to make carbon-neutral methanol. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Anthony Wang, a mechanical engineer by training, spent years as a researcher on hydrogen technologies. He worked with government...

Unlike other parts of the country, the 11 western US states have not joined together in a regional transmission organization (RTO) to more efficiently and cost-effectively administer their respective electrical transmission systems. In this episode, Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, discusses the current status of a...

Will the US clean-energy transition be hampered by a shortage of electricians, plumbers, and skilled construction workers? In this episode, Betony Jones, director of the DOE’s Office of Energy Jobs, talks about the challenge of bringing a clean energy workforce to full capacity and the need for job opportunities in communities impacted by diminished reliance on fossil fuels. ( PDF transcript ) ( A...

In this episode, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona of Way to Win discusses the ins and outs of Democrats’ notoriously ineffective political messaging, and what needs to be done about it. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts If there is one thing upon which almost everyone in US politics agrees, it is that Democrats suck at messaging. They constantly find themselves on the...

Hey Voltrons! I’ve got no guest today, just a couple of little announcements. First: At long last, we have gotten serious about transcripts around here. I hired a company called Fanfare and they are methodically going back through the Volts catalogue and transcribing everything. I believe they’re back to May 2022. Before too long, every pod will have transcripts. Also, they are transcribing new ep...

In this episode, Maryland state Delegate Lorig Charkoudian, author and primary sponsor of the state’s newly passed Promoting Offshore Wind Energy Resources (POWER) Act, shares about the exciting policy innovations embedded in the ambitious bill and what they have the chance to accomplish. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Maryland was one of the first states i...

Many transit systems are reeling financially in the aftermath of the pandemic, and the situation in California is particularly dire. In this episode, Nick Josefowitz of SPUR and Beth Osborne of Transportation for America discuss the urgent need for the state budget to boost transit funding, and the catastrophic implications if it doesn’t. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: D...

In this episode, Emily Morris of startup Emrgy discusses the promise of small-scale hydropower and the opportunities it could provide for both power infrastructure and water management. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Hello Volts listeners! I thought I would start this episode with what I suppose is a disclaimer of sorts. I suspect most of you already unders...

In this episode, environmental social scientist Holly Jean Buck discusses the critique of emissions-focused climate policy that she laid out in her book Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough . ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Over the course of the 2010s, the term “net-zero carbon emissions” migrated from climate science to climate modeling to clima...

States don’t (yet) have the administrative capacity to smoothly implement the ambitious policies in the IRA; in this episode, policy strategist Sam Ricketts of Evergreen Action discusses how federal programs can help them get there. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts States are central to climate and energy policy. After the failure of the Waxman-Markey climate...

In this episode, Jessica Wilkinson and Nels Johnson of The Nature Conservancy discuss the pathway they see for a rapid, low-cost clean energy transition that minimizes impact on environmentally sensitive land. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts A great deal of confused and misleading information is circulating about the land-use requirements of the energy trans...

In this episode, Washington State House Rep. Jessica Bateman talks about championing an ambitious and successful bill that aims to increase housing density in Washington, and the politics of housing in general. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts After decades of effort by urbanists, which often felt like the work of Sisyphus, housing has arrived as a political...

In this episode, Vero Bourg-Meyer of the Clean Energy States Alliance discusses the barriers that keep lower- and medium-income customers from installing rooftop solar, the types of efforts most likely to overcome these barriers, and how to keep momentum moving forward. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts For all its explosive growth in recent years, rooftop sol...

The Inflation Reduction Act is ambitious climate policy, but history shows that ambitious policy is not always followed by ambitious implementation. In this episode, Hahrie Han of Johns Hopkins University and David Beckman of the Pisces Foundation talk about Mosaic, a grant-making coalition that aims to help build a robust movement infrastructure to ensure that vulnerable and underserved groups ca...

In this episode, Sabeel Rahman, former acting administrator of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, discusses updates to regulatory policy that reflect a positive new approach to how climate (and other) regulations will be assessed and crafted. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts When President Biden first took office, his administration rel...

In this episode, Jennifer Garson of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office discusses the state of hydropower in the US and where the industry is headed. (a) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts For decades, hydropower has been most common source of renewable electricity in the world. (In the US, it was passed by wind a few years ago .) Pumped hydro — large hydro...

Various options are at play in the EPA’s planned greenhouse gas standards for new and existing power plants. In this episode, Lissa Lynch of NRDC discusses the implications. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts A couple of weeks ago, the policy analysts at the Rhodium Group put out a new report showing that the Biden administration's legislative achievements are...

A few years ago, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett and their two children moved from Vancouver, Canada, to Delft, a small city in the Netherlands where 80% of journeys are taken by foot, bicycle, or public transit. Their new book, Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives , is about what it's like to live in a truly low-car city, and how other cities can capture some of the same b...

In this episode, Dan Lashof of the World Resources Institute discusses the trajectory of biofuels since the early 2000s and the implications of new biofuel standards recently proposed by the US EPA. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts My fellow olds will recall that, back in the 2000s, biofuels were an extremely big deal in the clean-energy world, one of a tiny...

In this episode, Project InnerSpace founder and executive director Jamie Beard, who has been instrumental in influencing oil and gas personnel to move into the geothermal industry, discusses exciting recent developments in geothermal and the opportunities ahead. ( PDF transcript ) ( Active transcript ) Text transcript: David Roberts Things are starting to come together for geothermal. Political aw...