Volts

Today's electricity grids are kept stable by the inertia of spinning masses — mostly fossil fuel generators. But what happens when those spinning masses are replaced by inverter-based resources like …

Lithium-ion dominates the battery world, but alternative chemistries are finding their niches. I talk with Landon Mossburg, CEO of Peak Energy, about using sodium-ion batteries for large-scale grid s…

This week I talk with Dan Stein, whose organization Giving Green seeks to align climate philanthropy with the principles of effective altruism. But what does "effective" mean in the face of fossil fu…

Movement veterans Bill McKibben and Jamie Henn have been thinking about where climate activism goes from here. They argue for a new focus on celebrating and accelerating the miraculous global boom in…

In this episode, I'm joined by Frank Rambo of the Horizon Climate Initiative to discuss "uneconomic dispatch" — the costly and polluting practice of running coal plants even when cheaper, cleaner opt…

In this episode, I'm joined by Jake Higdon and Isabel Munilla, who helped develop the original "foreign entity of concern" (FEOC) standards for the Inflation Reduction Act, which sought to encourage …

In this episode, recorded live back in May, I'm joined by the one and only Jigar Shah to discuss Washington state climate policy and post-IRA policy in general. Jigar argues that to build political d…

I'm joined by Alon Levy of NYU's Transit Costs Project, whose work documents how expensive it is to build transit in the US relative to the rest of the world. We discuss how countries like Spain and …

Ann Arbor voted to create a parallel, municipal electric utility that offers only distributed renewables, and Missy Stults is the woman making it real. We explore the nuts and bolts: buying existing …

In this episode, Arc CEO Mitch Lee explains why the jump from gas-powered boats to electric boats is even bigger, in terms of quality and user experience, than the jump from gas-powered cars to EVs. …

I chat with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones, authors of a new Ember report, who find that solar-plus-storage costs have declined so much that it can now provide baseload-level power in sunny citie…

In this "What the F is Happening" episode, I'm joined by Jane Flegal and Jesse Jenkins to perform a wake for the Inflation R…

In this episode, I talk with Montana state senators Forrest Mandeville (R) and Ellie Boldman (D) about the bipartisan housing reforms their state has passed over the last two legislative sessions — r…

PG&E, California's notoriously troubled utility, is trying to prove it can innovate, so I invited Quinn Nakayama, head of its new GRiD program, to explain how. We discuss its strategy of publicly out…

The frantic buildout of AI data centers is threatening to overwhelm electric grids, but what if they could be part of the solution? I chat with Jeff Bladen of Verrus, a company designing data centers…

In this episode, I chat with fellow energy nerd-turned-ag-reporter Michael Grunwald about agriculture’s climate impact. We explore the folly of biofuels, the promise of meat alternatives, and the cen…

In this episode, I'm joined by two of California's leading housing champions, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks and Senator Scott Wiener, to discuss their bills to reform the state's notorious environmental…

In this episode, Rep. Mike Levin and I discuss the “Big Beautiful Bill” that raises energy bills, kills 830,000 jobs, and gifts China the next industrial revolution. We unpack the fossil-fuel cash be…

Washington state just passed one of the strongest transit-oriented development bills in the nation, and in this episode, I talk with Rep. Julia Reed and Alex Brennan from Futurewise about how they go…

On June 4, at a Canary Media event in Washington, DC, I sat down with Senator Martin Heinrich to dissect the GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — a sledgehammer aimed at the Inflation Reduction Act…