Watt It Takes

According to the World Economic Forum, if we want to reach a carbon-neutral future, the world will depend on emerging markets to build energy systems that rely on clean energy instead of fossil fuels. However, only one fifth of global clean energy investments are being channeled into emerging markets.  Financing the development of distributed renewable energy projects has been slow and challenging...

Residential energy use accounts for about 20% of greenhouse emissions in the U.S., making it one of the most important sectors to decarbonize. As the world electrifies and consumers become more climate-conscious, energy will become one of the next consumer engagement frontiers.  The WattBuy platform connects clean energy providers with residential customers, helps consumers save money on their ene...

Some experts are calling 2024 the “make or break year” for the voluntary and compliance carbon markets, which were rocked by a shaky 2023. To usher in a new era of effective and impactful carbon markets, the verification process needs a major tech update, and a serious credibility boost. Marion Verles founded SustainCERT to be the first fully digital carbon project verification platform and Scope...

On November 17th, 2023 the average global temperature was temporarily 2 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrialization, an event with ominous climate implications. To slow global climate change, we need to find ways to supercharge natural carbon removal processes like ocean alkalization, and do it in a way that is good for the planet.  That’s exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes Guest, Ben T...

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need to return Earth’s atmosphere to 280 parts per million of CO2 for the health of human existence and that of the planet. To achieve that goal, industry experts believe we’ll need to be removing 10-20 billion tons of carbon per year by 2050.  Removing carbon is exactly what this month’s Watt It Takes guest, Peter Reinhardt, Co-Founde...

According to researchers around the world, fusion could be a nearly waste-free, carbon-free, and all-geography answer to creating enough dispatchable power to get us through the energy transition. To achieve this, all components of a fusion power plant need to be built so that when fusion energy becomes a reality, we have the industry, infrastructure, and processes in place to distribute the power...

Climate change-fuelled natural disasters and vulnerable transmission infrastructure have defined some of the worst natural disasters of the past decade, including the 2020 wildfires in California. It’s clearer than ever that in high-risk areas, above-ground transmission lines need to be dug underground to protect communities from fires and to ensure their access to electricity in the face of incre...

From induction cooktops and heat pumps to the rooftop solar needed to power it all and the batteries to store excess energy for use during blackouts, we’ve had incredible success building the tools we need to decarbonize our homes. But to the regular consumer, the universe of electrified solutions can be overwhelming. What we need is a home battery system and an integrated ecosystem of all electri...

If the world is going to make the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy, we’re going to need lots of energy storage, and a lot of lithium. The global transition to clean energy is expected to trigger a 40-fold increase in the demand for lithium by 2040.  Lithium is in high demand, but current methods for lithium extraction make it difficult and expensive to source. Conventional extraction metho...

As we speak, there are 600 million people in Africa who lack access to even basic electricity. That’s driven in part by low levels of domestic and foreign investment into electricity infrastructure across the continent: over the last decade, just 3% of capital invested into energy infrastructure worldwide went to Africa.  To enable universal energy access in Africa, we’ll need innovative climate f...

Concrete is the second most-used material in the world, right behind water. It’s everywhere – in our bridges, our buildings, our homes, our roads. It’s the literal foundation for much of our lives. And cement is a key ingredient in that foundation. It acts as the glue that binds together the water and aggregate to make concrete. Globally, we produced more than four billion tons of cement in 2021,...

The U.S. is on track to deploy 550 gigawatts of new renewables on the grid by 2030 . That's a massive amount of solar, wind, and other renewables powering buildings, EVs, appliances, and industrial processes in our increasingly electrified world. Last year electric vehicles (EVs) hit a massive milestone by making up 5% of all new car sales in the U.S . And Bloomberg estimated that more than half o...

Forests make up a third of all land on Earth,  and they're one of our major defenses against a warming world. 45% of the carbon stored in land exists in forests. Today, our forests are struggling to adapt to human activity and a rapidly changing climate. Deforestation and wildfires continue to ravage habitats like the Amazon. In the U.S.destructive wildfires have increasingly ravaged the West. To...

Industrial processes are one of the hardest sectors of the economy to decarbonize. Fossil fuels have been the go-to way of powering the facilities that make paper, plastics, food, beverages, and chemicals.  Slashing greenhouse gas emissions from industry means changing the way companies produce their raw materials. The problem: sometimes the hardest sectors to decarbonize are the ones that may not...

Large swaths of the global economy are very hard to decarbonize with renewables and batteries alone. Steel, cement, aviation – these industries are run on the high heat and explosive force of burning fossil fuels.  Together, these activities make up the industrial basement of society; the often overlooked and essential sectors of the economy that can only be made possible, in part, by burning liqu...

Over the last decade, solar growth has exploded. Just last year, the U.S. added a record 13 gigawatts of utility-scale solar to the grid. And despite supply chain disruptions and inflation, the average solar panel cost still dropped by 11%.  New solar plants are now cheaper to build than new gas or coal-fired power plants. But according to the Department of Energy, for the country to achieve a zer...

To deploy enough solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries needed to decarbonize the grid, we'll need more of the critical minerals that make these technologies possible. Growing demand for clean technology means an even bigger need for lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and other minerals. Right now the world is on track to double its overall mineral requi...

The energy we use in our homes remains one of the largest sources of emissions in the country. About 20 percent of our energy-related GHG emissions comes from the fossil fuels used to power gas furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and AC units.  With the U.S. predicted to add more than 62 million new homes by 2050 , getting fossil fuels out of our houses, apartments and condos is crucial. And we have...

Earlier this year, solar reached a historic milestone: 1 terawatt of capacity around the world. One trillion watts is a huge achievement. But solar still only makes up 3 percent of the world's electricity.  To deploy dozens of terrawatts in the coming years, we'll need to do something about the bottlenecks holding back the planning, design, and construction of the massive solar farms that will mak...

Our homes account for 20 percent of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. The fastest way to cut those emissions is to electrify the systems that heat, cool, and power our homes with heat pumps, solar, batteries, and EVs. These technologies are the pillars of residential electrification. But, as more and more homeowners seek to electrify, they’re discovering that a key piece of antiquated technology...

Heavy industries like manufacturing, food processing, mining, and construction require a staggering amount of energy, often in the form of heat.  But until recently, there hasn’t been a good way to generate that amount of heat using electricity. As a result, we burn fossil fuels to make these essential materials and products. About a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from these...

Tens of millions of delivery vans and semi trucks move around the clock to keep supply chains humming. These medium- and heavy-duty vehicles make up more than 25 percent of transportation emissions in the US — even though they only make up 10 percent of all vehicles on the road.  We need to electrify medium and heavy-duty vehicles to meet our climate goals. But, how do we build and operate the cha...

Normally, we’d be bringing you an episode featuring an entrepreneur who’s making our climate-positive future a reality. But behind every founder with a big idea are scientists, engineers and policymakers working hard to turn those big ideas into reality. And right now, a lot of them are tackling one of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis – carbon So today, we have something new for you....

With 93 Fortune 500 companies committing to net-zero targets, and with the SEC preparing to require public companies to disclose climate risks, corporations are beginning to think deeply about how to track and manage their emissions.  That’s why Watershed Co-Founder and CEO Taylor Francis and his team built a platform to simplify the process — and help companies to decarbonize faster. From his co-...

We’re running a contest! Through April 19, each review on Apple podcasts or share on social media (using #WattItTakes) will enter you to win a limited-edition Watt It Takes crewneck — and enable more people to hear inspiring stories about entrepreneurs making our climate-positive future a reality. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, we need to electrify large swaths of the economy. But tha...