Volts

In this episode, I speak with Heather House, a manager in RMI’s carbon-free transportation program, and Rushad Nanavatty, the head of Third Derivative, an early-stage climate tech accelerator co-foun…

The Inflation Reduction Act included a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, $27 billion to be disseminated primarily in vulnerable and under-resourced communities for clean energy and climate mitigation pr…

In this episode, Duncan Campbell of Scale Microgrid Solutions makes the case that distributed energy resources (DERs) — solar panels, EVs, home batteries, etc. — are, thanks to rising electricity dem…

This week, the Biden administration announced billions of dollars in grants for industrial emissions-reduction projects. In this episode, Rebecca Dell of the ClimateWorks Foundation and Evan Gillespi…

In this episode, I discuss the newly launched MethaneSAT — a satellite that can detect methane emissions on the ground — with Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund. We cover how it came t…

“Scope 3” greenhouse gas emissions — those that companies are indirectly responsible for, via supply chain, product disposal, investments, etc. — are an imprecisely measured but significant source of…

In his recent role as Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition in the White House Office of Science and Technology, Costa Samaras helped roadmap the cleantech future laid out by Democrats’ legis…

Is the Inflation Reduction Act, passed nearly two years ago, doing what it set out to do? In this episode, Trevor Houser of the Rhodium Group compares the predictions of pre-IRA energy-sector models …

In this episode, we go deep on industrial policy with Todd Tucker of the Roosevelt Institute. We discuss what it is, why it’s needed, what Biden’s particular version of it looks like, and how it coul…

In this episode, Huffington Post reporter Alexander Kaufman traces the recent history of US building codes, a surprisingly compelling and twisty tale of efforts at reform meeting stiff resistance fro…

In this episode, Cora Wyent walks us through Rewiring America’s “personal electrification planner,” a step-by-step how-to for homeowners (and renters!) looking to electrify their homes.

In this episode, I speak with Jigar Shah (head of DOE’s Loan Programs Office) about all things nuclear, including its recent performance, the strategies that could revive and accelerate it, new nucle…

In this episode, Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.) discuss their Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act, explaining where Democrats have found consensus around transmi…

In this episode, journalist Hamilton Nolan shares about his upcoming book The Hammer, a deep dive into the current tattered state of unions in the US and the prospects for their future.

In this episode, I interview Fourth Power CTO Asegun Henry and CEO Arvin Ganesan, who bring high-profile experience in energy research, policy, and regulation to their new and promising thermal stora…

Upgrading power lines — “reconductoring,” in the biz — is a straightforward way to boost the capacity of the electrical grid by enabling it to transmit more power and leak less of it. In this episode…

Given the trajectory of the electric vehicle industry and the expected lifespan of an EV’s lithium-ion battery, the US is only a few years out from needing large-scale, cost-effective, decarbonized w…

In this episode, Michigan State Senator Sam Singh details the ambitious clean energy policies that have been enacted since Democrats won a legislative trifecta in 2022, including some bold reforms of…

The Australian state of Victoria, home to the city of Melbourne, is the country’s most densely populated state and also its most dependent on fossil gas. In this episode, Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s …

In this episode, David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council explains what the Chevron doctrine is, why the federal judiciary has traditionally been deferential to agencies’ regulatory rea…