Energy Changemakers Podcast

Guest: Bruce Nordman, Retired Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

After nearly 40 years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Bruce Nordman has stepped into retirement — leav…

In this episode of Energy Changemakers, host Elisa Wood sits down with renowned energy economist Skip Laitner to explore the surprising ways our “stuff” — from food waste to excess parking lots — is …

As rising sea levels, floods, and wildfires continue to impact large swaths of the U.S., many people will be displaced from the coasts to the middle states. Hillary Brown, former director of the Urba…

Elisa Wood interviews Mark Feasel — a former leader at Schneider Electric and FuelCell Energy, and now an independent energy consultant — about the growing tension between energy demand and access in…

What exactly is a “digital grid”—and why is it the cornerstone of our energy future?

In this episode, Elisa Wood sits down with Ruben Llanes, CEO of the Digital Grid business at Schneider Electric, to…

Scaling microgrids has long been a sticking point in the clean energy conversation—custom-built and complex, they’ve traditionally defied mass deployment. But what if microgrids could be treated as p…

In this episode, Elisa Wood sits down with Tim Hade to discuss why now—despite, or perhaps because of—federal policy turbulence, the distributed energy industry is poised for massive transformation. …

In this insightful episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, Elisa Wood is joined by industry experts Lisa Cohn and Peter Asmus to explore the dynamic world of microgrids. They trace the evolution …

Is it time to rethink who controls the grid?

Elisa Wood sits down with legal expert and author Sandeep Vaheesan to discuss the rarely told—but critically important—history of public power in the Unite…

Most Americans have never heard of their state’s public utility commission—yet these low-profile regulatory bodies control over $200 billion in annual utility spending and directly influence the pric…

As uncertainty looms over the future of the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), many in the distributed energy sector are concerned about how to keep solar and storage projects economically viable. …

Across America, sunny driveways are abundant yet surprisingly overlooked as potential power generators. Now, a Florida-based startup, Gismo Power, is pioneering a remarkable innovation: a portable, p…

Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are often overlooked, misunderstood, or underrepresented in discussions about the future of the electric grid. In this episode, host Elisa Wood explores why DERs—l…

How do you make an ambitious clean energy goal a reality that benefits an entire community? In this episode, we sit down with Cody Hooven, principal and co-founder of Evolution Affairs, to explore ho…

AI is driving up power demand, but how much and how fast remains under debate. Bulls warn we’ll need far more electric power than we’re poised to produce. Bears say utilities inflate the numbers and …

Bill Prindle, principal of Better Energy Advisors, told us what distributed energy resource (DER) companies don’t get about utilities in episode 1 of this two-part series. Now he looks at the other a…

With an expensive push underway to build large power plants and transmission to meet growing electric demand, energy efficiency is gaining new importance. Creating more negawatts (energy reduction) r…

In this episode of the Energy Changemakers podcast, host Elisa Wood discusses the concept of non-energy benefits with Roger Lin, Senior Attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. They explore …

In this episode of the Energy Changemakers podcast, host Elisa Wood interviews Russell Lowes from Arizonans for Community Choice. They explore the potential of Community Choice Energy (CCE) programs …

In an interview with Elisa Wood, veteran energy innovator Steve Pullins, CEO of ResSET,  unveils his latest venture, a highly unusual sustainable apartment building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, set to be …