Volts

Fossil fuel subsidies are a vexed and peculiar topic. On one hand, everyone seems to agree they’re bad and should be eliminated (it’s in Biden’s jobs bill, for instance). On the other hand, they neve…

Last week, I wrote that there is no “moderate” position on climate change. Either we act rapidly and at massive scale to avoid the worst consequences … or we suffer the worst consequences. Either out…

Perhaps the most politically difficult aspect of climate change is that, after decades of denial and delay, there is no longer any coherent “moderate” position to be had.

To allow temperatures to ris…

Here at Volts, I recently spent a week … OK, a month writing about batteries, which store energy for electronic devices, electric vehicles, and, at least for short periods of time (four to six hours)…

(If you’d rather listen than read, just click Play above.)

Energy nerds love arguing over the value of distributed energy resources (DERs), the rooftop solar panels and customer-owned batteries that a…

It is now widely agreed among energy wonks that the fastest, cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to, as I like to put it, electrify everything. That means cleaning up the electricity s…

As you might have gathered from the name, when Battery Week began … a month ago, I did not anticipate it going on quite so long. Since it has dragged out a bit, I thought it might be helpful to pull …

(If you don’t want to read, you can listen! Just click play above.)

Hello! Welcome back to Battery Week here at Volts … where we use the term “week” somewhat loosely.

Up to now, we’ve been focusing on …

In May 2019, I wrote in Vox that “one weird trick can help any state or city pass clean energy policy.” Spoiler: the one weird trick is electing Democrats.

My home state of Washington elected a whole…

(Hey Volties! The following was going to be a column on Vox, but they decided they wanted something newsier, so I’ll be doing something about Biden’s pledge over there, soon. In the meantime, enjoy t…

(If you would rather listen than read, just click play above.)

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Battery Week!

We’ve talked about why lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are so important and we went throu…

(If you don’t want to read, you can listen. Just click play above.)

Greetings! Welcome back to Battery Week here at Volts. In my last post, I went over why lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are so importan…