The Energy Gang

In recent years, news headlines are frequently filled with announcements of financial institutions, funds, and corporations making hefty pledges to transform their portfolios to ensure that they stay in line with net-zero targets. Is this new wave of support for the energy transition motivated by making a quick buck or has there really been a change of opinion on the opportunities in which going net-zero really has to offer? How is the changing climate affecting investments? How are investors driving the transition? These are some of the key questions we look to answer in this episode. The Energy Gang is delighted to be joined by two professionals who have spent the majority of their careers bridging the gap between finance and climate change. Our first guest, Shanu Mathew is the VP of Sustainable Investing and Net-Zero Research at Lazard Asset Management, one of the world's leading investment companies. Returning for another episode is Amy Myers Jaffe, the Managing Director of the Climate Policy Lab at

President Bidens Climate agenda has been reformed, and with the Build Back Better Act in a stalemate, should Americans give up hope on expecting anything to come of it?To discuss this and more, Ed Crooks is joined on the show this week by returning guest Dr. Melissa Lott from Columbia University, and Robbie Orvis from Energy Innovation, who makes his Energy Gang debut. The Build Back Better Act is up first. There’s a glimmer of hope on the horizon for the climate policies within the climate package. How much of the package will be saved and is there anything in it that’s different from before? Next, the gang looks at EVs. With the lack of federal climate action, states have now taken it upon themselves to make some policy changes within their own borders. New York, New Jersey, and Oregon all have taken the initiative within the past few months by pushing for cleaner energy and policies that could help with EV demand. Is this the natural evolution of policymaking when the “trickle-down effect” halts progr

It’s the first Energy Gang of the year. Ed Crooks is joined by Emily Chasan of Generate Capital and Amy Harder, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and Axios, now at Breakthrough Energy, which is the net-zero initiative founded by Bill Gates - find out more here: Cipher: Overview | LinkedIn - who joins the gang for the first time to kick off 2022 with a bang.With air travel over the holiday season bouncing back – despite the Omicron variant – what are the best prospects for taking the emissions out of aviation? In the US, in mid-December, more than two million people per day were passing through the TSA’s checkpoints. That is still significantly below pre-pandemic levels, but it is roughly double the numbers in the same period of 2020. Even with the pandemic still raging, people want to fly. That is a real problem for getting to net zero. Aviation emissions are small, accounting for a little under 2% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, but their share is rising. Sustainable aviation fuel and electric pl

Achieving net zero emissions requires collaboration from a multitude of government organizations and businesses.For a country the size of Australia, 24% of electricity coming from renewables is a huge accomplishment. But it does not come easy. Australia has two large interconnected energy networks, the National Electricity Market along the East Coast, with demand of 30-35 GW, and the Western Australia Electricity Market, with demand between 2-3 GW. Both networks are receiving a huge update of distributed solar which means the amount of energy generated by renewables is constantly increasing.Hitachi Energy, a longtime partner of The Energy Gang has played an integral role in helping Australia to achieve this, and on today’s episode, Ed Crooks is joined by two key representatives from Hitachi Energy, to discuss their work in Australia and examine some of the lessons that other countries can learn from Australia’s experience.Juergen Zimmerman is Business Development and Technology Manager for Hitachi Energy, bas

It’s a special edition of the Energy Gang this week, with the last episode of 2021 recorded for Wood Mackenzie’s Grid Edge Innovation series. Ed is joined by Emily Chasan from Generate Capital and Amy Myers-Jaffe from Tufts University, to look at how smart devices are changing energy retailing, and the role of SPACs in financing clean energy deployment. The gang wraps up 2021 with their top 5 stories in energy for the year, looking back on the success of investment company Engine No.1, developments in energy storage, green stimulus in Europe and more.The Energy Gang is brought to you by Bloom Energy. Bloom’s onsite energy platform provides unparalleled control for those looking to secure clean, reliable 24/7 power that scales to meet critical business needs. It eliminates outage and price risk while accelerating us towards a zero carbon future. Visit Bloom Energy to learn how to take charge today.The Energy Gang is brought to you by Hitachi Energy. What does your energy future look like? L

Zero-emission, low-cost electricity, delivered to the grid from natural-gas fuelled technology. A wright-brothers first flight kind of breakthrough in energy? The gang discuss the possibilities and scalability of NET Powers Technology, a Texas-based energy company who’ve made this exact claim. Ed is joined as usual by Melissa Lott from Columbia University, and Emily Chasan from Generate Capital.The other big story of the week was the collapse of British energy provider Bulb, the 6th largest provider in the country and an issue that has impacted some 2 million customers. Could the same thing happen in the US? Within those talks, the pros and cons of carbon capture technology are explored, and if the Biden administration made the right decision to release 50 million barrels of petroleum from the SPR to help ease the heightened holiday energy demand. The gang leaves you with some holiday-season free electrons, including a cracking joke from Ed, and find out why climate change is affecting Canada’s maple syrup pr

The COP26 circus has left town. Across 2 weeks of talks in Glasgow, what were the successes, and what were the failures? With current commitments putting the world on track to 2.4°C of warming, the cost of inaction on climate and health will vastly outweigh the costs of acting now, so which countries are snapping into action?Host Ed Crooks is joined by regular Melissa Lott, Director of Research at the Centre on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and Amy Myers-Jaffe, Managing Director of the Climate Policy Lab, at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, to give the final verdict. Also in the show, the gang looks at innovations in technology in carbon capture and storage; President Biden’s infrastructure bill proposes big commitments on CCS, what do these look like? Plus, nuclear and hydrogen technologies, which could play a huge role in the energy transition, go under the microscope. The Energy Gang is brought to you by Bloom Energy. Bloom’s onsite energy platform provides unparalleled control

COP26 is under way in Glasgow. It has been billed as the “last best hope for the world to get its act together” on climate change, but what is the real significance of the talks? Host Ed Crooks is joined by new regular co-host of the Energy Gang Melissa Lott, Director of Research at the Centre on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, to discuss the key issues and outcomes of the conference. Also joining for this episode is Emily Chasan, Director of Communications at Generate Capital, and former Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg journalist. What needs to happen at COP26 for it to be counted as a success? The UN Environment Program noted in its new Emissions Gap 2021 report last week: “As a group, G20 members are not on track to achieve either their original or new 2030 pledges. Ten G20 members are on track to achieve their previous NDCs, while seven are off track.” In this episode, the gang will explore the pledges made at previous conferences, as well as the new ones, and discuss whether they can lead

Some news for this podcast: Ed Crooks, VP of the Americas for Wood Mackenzie, will be taking over the show as our new host.Co-hosts Katherine Hamilton and Stephen Lacey will be moving on. Wood Mackenzie will be producing the podcast from now on, bringing on a range of new voices to join the gang.We discuss the transition in the first half of the episode. Later in the show, Katherine, Stephen and Ed explore the range of expectations for global climate talks in Glasgow. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The U.S. Department of Energy is crucial for funding, researching, and testing emerging energy tech.Now, in the Biden era, the agency is orienting itself toward deployment. How difficult is that transition?Our former co-host Jigar Shah joins Stephen, Katherine, and Ed to discuss his experience running the Energy Department’s loan programs office.In March, Jigar left his position at Generate Capital (and this podcast) to head into government service and run the loan programs office. Jigar has $40 billion in authority to back a wide range of climate technologies -- and he’s been working on the first round of investments with those dollars.In the second half of the show: a surprising twist in the global clean-energy transition. How much trouble will energy price inflation cause around the world?The Energy Gang is brought to you by Bloom Energy. Bloom’s onsite energy platform provides unparalleled control for those looking to secure clean, reliable 24/7 power that scales to meet critical business needs. It e

EIA and IEA are out with projections for emissions and fossil fuel consumption. And they don’t look good. On our current policy trajectory, there is no peak in sight, according to EIA By 2050, we will likely see a 50% increase in energy consumption. And even though renewables will be the fastest-growing new source of energy, hydrocarbon liquid fuels will meet the majority of demand.That means emissions could rise through 2050, absent massive changes to policy.In July, the International Energy Agency issued a similar analysis showing that carbon emissions will hit record levels in the coming years. And that spending packages around the world — even at historic levels — are still not enough. How do we make sense of this sobering analysis?Plus, Wood Mackenzie is out with a new analysis of global energy storage trends, showing that storage deployments are set to triple this year. Most of that growth is coming from America and China, which account for 70% of installations. What are the applications,

Suddenly everyone is talking about green hydrogen. From South Africa to the United Arab Emirates. From China to Utah. Governments and developers are eyeing hydrogen as a decarbonization tool. But the rush is also raising lots of questions: Where will hydrogen be most useful? How do you create a supply chain to support it? And how can we ensure it has climate integrity?For answers, we turned to two experts who are obsessing over the future of hydrogen: Janice Lin and Stephen Lamm.Janice Lin is the founder and CEO of Strategen. And she’s president of the green hydrogen coalition. Stephen Lamm is the director of sustainability at Bloom Energy, a company deploying zero-carbon solutions like green hydrogen.With so much renewed attention on the resource, we brought Janice and Stephen together for a discussion about where green hydrogen tech, markets, and applications are headed. This episode was produced in collaboration with Bloom Energy. Bloom’s onsite energy platform provides unparalleled control

Ride sharing has swept transportation systems over the last decade -- bringing convenience, but also congestion, inequities, and political fights.Now a new category of transportation networking is emerging: TransitTech.It makes up a class of companies that are using tech to help maximize public transit systems. So what does TransitTech look like post-pandemic?Tiffany Chu joins Katherine and Stephen this week to discuss the path forward for transit. Tiffany is the co-founder and CEO of Remix, which was recently acquired by Via for $100 million.We’ll also dig into a new study from Carnegie Mellon University that shows Uber and Lyft are increasing external societal and environmental costs by up to 35% compared to personal car driving. We’ll wrap up with a discussion about how transportation will play into upcoming legislation on climate and infrastructure. The Energy Gang is brought to you by Bloom Energy. Bloom’s onsite energy platform provides unparalleled control for those looking to secure clean, r

All around us, hidden inside our buildings, are a series of choices and tradeoffs -- choices with direct impacts on our health, our money, and our energy use. Our buildings are wasteful and are filled with a lot of  “embodied” carbon. As a result, buildings directly and indirectly account for 40 percent of global emissions. How do we make those choices with better building science?And how do we use that science to design carbon out of our buildings?This week, Katherine and Stephen are joined by Christine Williamson, the creator of Building Science Fight Club. She is a building scientist who teaches architects how to think more intelligently about designing residential and commercial buildings to improve comfort and energy performance, while minimizing system failures.She also has an unconventional take on the green building space — arguing that many of the “feel good” approaches are not necessarily the most functional. Christy has spent her career inside homes and commercial buildings usin

Carbon capture has long been criticized as too nascent, too expensive, and too distracting. Is that changing?This month, the Swiss company Climeworks officially launched a direct-air capture plant in Iceland, called Orca. The company has already signed deals with SwissRe, Bill Gates, Stripe, and Shopify to sell them credits from the plant. But the tech is still pretty expensive and relatively small scale. Climeworks wants to build megaton-scale plants by the end of the decade. Lots of other plants are in the works. So what does this commercial launch signal for the carbon-capture industry? Plus, new research shows just how drastically we need to slash fossil fuels to limit dangerous warming. And, California tries to fix the busted recycling system with a “truth in advertising” law aimed at plastics companies.The Energy Gang is a Wood Mackenzie podcast.The Energy Gang is brought to you by Sungrow. As a leading provider of PV inverter solutions across the world, Sungrow has delivered more th

The electric grid is a central pillar of a zero-carbon economy. But in an era of unrelenting weather extremes, it’s also one of the most fragile.This week: what does power after carbon look like?Katherine and Stephen are joined by Dr. Peter Fox-Penner, author of a new book called, “Power After Carbon.”Peter is the founder of the Boston University Institute of Sustainable Energy. And he’s a partner and chief strategy officer at the VC firm Energy Impact Partners. At the turn of the last decade, Peter wrote a book called “Smart Power” that looked at the new pressures that utilities were facing around climate policy, emerging distributed energy, and digitization. We’ll look at what’s changed the most over the last decade.Plus, we’ll talk about why Entergy’s resistance to distributed energy in Louisiana created vulnerabilities after Hurricane Ida.The Energy Gang is a Wood Mackenzie podcast.The Energy Gang is brought to you by Sungrow. As a leading provider of PV inverter solutions across the world, Sungrow h

The world’s most scrutinized and peer-reviewed document is out: the IPCC report on climate change. Thousands of scientists have spent decades pouring over every measurement and research report known. The findings are clearer than ever: It is “virtually certain” that the increases in extreme temperatures and droughts are caused by human activity. The economic and human toll from climate change is here. So how is this report different from previous IPCC reports?Plus, is the push for hydrogen a real pathway, or a clever way to lock in more emissions? We’ll look at the debate over “blue” hydrogen emissions.And, how far have the politics of climate really shifted in Washington? Will a change in tone mean a boost in action?Katherine Hamilton, Ed Crooks, and Stephen Lacey are this week’s co-hosts. The Energy Gang is a Wood Mackenzie podcast.The Energy Gang is brought to you by Sungrow. As a leading provider of PV inverter solutions across the world, Sungrow has delivered more than 10 gigawatts of inve

This episode originally aired on The Interchange.Back in 2016, Mateo Jaramillo left Tesla, where he was leading the stationary energy storage business, and started looking for a new challenge to tackle. He took on long-duration energy storage -- not long duration like 8 hours or 12 hours, but days or weeks or more. In 2017 he came on the show to talk about it. He formed a company, now Form Energy, that has been toiling on this problem in stealth mode. Apart from saying they were building a "metal air" battery, his team held the technology close to the vest.That is, until last week. The company announced a $200M Series D financing led by ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, and in the process finally made public the technology, which is an iron air chemistry. Full disclosure: Shayle led Energy Impact Partners’ investment in Form.Shayle and Mateo discuss the technology itself and the counterintuitive economics that Mateo believes will make it work. They also examine how i

We started the Covid pandemic at negative oil prices. Today, benchmark prices are above $70. And top oil companies are reporting billions of dollars in profits.And now there is more scrutiny than ever on how they’re going to spend that money.Activist shareholders are starting to get climate champions on oil major board seats -- most notably, climate tech investor and former wind executive Andy Karsner on Exxon Mobil’s board.A dutch court is now forcing Shell to reduce the emissions from its products by 45%, after a successful lawsuit from environmental groups. Oil executives now have their lawyers on speed dial.And big asset managers, like BlackRock, which lend to many of the world’s energy giants, are scrutinizing their climate plans. So what does it all amount to as oil markets rebound?Ed Crooks, the vice chair of Americas at Wood Mackenzie, joins us this week to discuss.Plus, we’ll talk about a new report card on America’s infrastructure. It’s a slight improvement, but the grade is still pretty awful.

We're at a new phase of the clean energy transition. Extreme heat, drought and floods are increasing in frequency. Public attention on clean energy is stronger than ever. The Biden Administration is putting zero-carbon energy at the core of its policies.And there's another powerful force: making sure the energy transition is as racially and economically just as possible.Anton Cohen is a partner at CohnReznick LLP, and national director of the firm’s Renewable Energy Industry Practice. He's been advising companies across a wide range of industries: tech, manufacturing, public tax credits, and energy. Today, he focuses exclusively on renewables: “All we do is renewables. Live, eat, sleep, breathe renewables.”The large investors and energy users that Anton advises are feeling the urgency.“I think it's the corporates who are pushing hard. People know what direction we're heading in. It's just a matter of how quickly we get there with the energy transition,” says Anton.Amidst all of this change in the corpora