The Energy Gang

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

After 30 years of R&D and commercial proof, hundreds of billions in institutional dollars are pouring into now-conventional tech like wind, solar and batteries.  But there’s a whole class of technologies that are ready to scale. And investors who are increasingly ready to back them.As we heard in our previous show, there was a record $17 billion in venture capital going into climate tech in 2020. With all this money dropping into the space, where can it have the highest impact? What are the areas where we have commercial viability, but still need significant breakthroughs?Our guest co-host this week is Nneka Uzoh Kibuule, a senior vice president at Aligned Climate Capital. She joins Stephen and Katherine to talk about the sectors where she sees the most promise.She'll also talk about the launch of GreenTech Noir, an organization that helps black professionals grow their career connections across clean energy, smart cities, transportation, infrastructure, environmental justice, and more.The

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, venture capital poured into climate technologies at record levels. It was a happy surprise amidst a collapsing economy and years of investment stagnation. Venture investments in climate tech topped $17 billion in 2020 across more than 1,000 deals. Five years ago, it had fallen to $5.2 billion — a 30 percent decrease from a previous peak in 2011.Our guest co-host this week is Emily Kirsch, the founder and CEO of Powerhouse. She’s also the host of Watt It Takes, the entrepreneurship series about founders tackling climate change.Suddenly, it’s cool to be putting your money into the sector again. And there’s something different about today’s rise in enthusiasm. The first wave was all about the “coolness” of cleantech — thin-film solar, electric sports cars, printable batteries. It was also about proving cost curves.Kara Swisher put it bluntly in the NYT last year: the world’s first trillionaire will be a greentech entrepreneur.”Today, there’s much more technological

In March of 2020, Covid shut down economies, closed off supply chains, and sent unemployment to historic levels. No one knew what would come next for energy.Oil prices went into negative territory. Industrial electricity use plummeted. Residential demand shot up. And there were big pipelines of renewable energy projects waiting to get built.“I think we were all a little bit nervous about how COVID was going to affect all of the deal flow in the market,” says Britta von Oesen, a managing director at CohnReznick Capital.Britta is the person at the table brokering tax structures and project sales that move money into renewable energy. So did Covid destroy her ability to get deals done?“Honestly, it's gone a lot better than I would have expected,” she says. M&A activity increased. And as 2021 kicked off, the M&A deals only accelerated. Most of the top independent wind and solar developers have been scooped up by utilities, private equity firms, oil majors, or bigger corporates. And the ones that have

It’s been a very intense year for America’s power grid. Across the country, the electricity system just faced another stress-test as extreme heat taxed power plants and grid operators in the Pacific Northwest, Texas, and New York.Since 2000, outages across the U.S. have increased by 67%. Is the power system ready for tomorrow’s extreme weather -- today?Stephen and Katherine are joined by Dr. Melissa Lott, a senior research scholar and the director of research at the Center on Global Energy Policy.Plus, we’ll discuss a secret recording of an Exxon lobbyist bragging about the company’s efforts to delay climate policy. What does it tell us about the oil industry’s grip in Washington?We’ll finish with a look at a new report from Columbia University: can we use natural gas pipelines to accelerate the low-carbon transition?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 inverters to the Americas alone and

America is a place where if you can dream something — no matter how big or ambitious — you can do it. Unless you’re trying to string 700 miles of high-voltage transmission lines to bring wind power from Oklahoma to Tennessee. Our guest this week is Russell Gold, author of a new book about the saga that unfolded when wind energy pioneer Michael Skelly tried just that. The book, Superpower, is all about Skelly’s attempt to build one of the most ambitious energy infrastructure projects in recent history — and how he faced nearly every obstacle imaginable. What does Skelly’s journey tell us about America’s diminishing ability to do great things?Russell Gold is a veteran newspaper reporter who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He wrote a book in 2014 on the rise of fracking, called The Boom. He’ll join us to talk about the reasons why Skelly’s transmission plan failed.This is a rebroadcast of a 2019 episode. See Privacy Policy at https://ar

This week, we are offering the first episode of a new podcast: The Big Switch.It’s a five-part series about how to clean up the energy system -- told in a clear, understandable and fun way. The show is hosted by Dr. Melissa Lott, research director at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.Stephen Lacey is the show's executive editor.Listen to the first episode of The Big Switch right now -- and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, and any other place you get podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We can measure the energy transition in any number of ways. The hundreds of millions of solar panels and wind turbines installed. The gigatons of carbon reduced. Or the number of jobs created.But how do we measure the equity outcome?Our guest co-host, Dr. Destenie Nock, is focused on exactly this question. She is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Nock is creating new models for energy-systems planning that factor in positive social objectives, not just cost or reliability metrics.Any decarbonization strategy is a de facto justice/equity strategy, as frontline communities will see the most benefit. But how do we maximize the benefit? And how do different pathways determine the outcome for low-income citizens and people of color who are disproportionately impacted by pollution? We’ll dig in.Plus, what is happening with the infrastructure bill? All of a sudden, negotiations are at an impasse. President Biden broke off talks with Republican Senat

America gets 20 percent of its electricity from coal. That’s a 50 percent drop since the peak in 2007. But if coal is becoming so economically uncompetitive, why does it still make up so much of our grid mix?This week: Coal is no longer king. But it still has a lot of power across the land. How do we banish it for good?Katherine and Stephen welcome Joe Daniel as a guest co-host this week. Joe is a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.Joe joins us to talk about the problem of coal plant “self-scheduling,” which locks in operation of dirty power plants even when the economics don’t make sense.We’ll also look at how we unburden ourselves from the long-term agreements these coal plants are under? One solution is to buy back debt through securitization — basically like refinancing a mortgage. How will it work?Finally, we’ll discuss the numbers behind nationalizing the coal industry. Could we buy up the entire sector, shut it down, and then offer wages, healthcare, pensions, and job placement

What if someone told you that we have everything we need to decarbonize most of the economy? We would just need to start electrifying every new car, furnace, water heater, drier, and cookstove, and industrial process starting right now. And yeah, and put solar on every roof that can handle it.This week: a wartime plan for winning the climate fight with clean electricity. What’ll it take? How possible is it?Saul Griffith is our guest co-host. He’s the founder and chief scientist of Rewiring America. He’s also the author of the upcoming book “Electrify,” from MIT Press. If we are on a wartime footing for decarbonizing the economy, Saul could be considered a 5-star general of the “electrify everything” movement.He founded or co-founded around a dozen companies and organizations. And he has a PhD from MIT in materials science and information theory.Saul is now trying to marshal the world around his “a defensible and believable” pathway for decarbonizing America with clean electricity.The Energy Gang is

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then they transform?This week: a look at some positive trends guiding the utility sector. What are power providers that are leading the energy transition doing right?We’re joined by Julia Hamm, the president and CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance.We’re talking about SEPA’s 2021 utility transformation profile -- a survey and ranking system of over 130 electric utilities in the US.There are thousands of power companies. That means different flavors of corporate goals, management styles, and approaches to building clean energy. Julia’s going to help us understand what they are.Why is utility progress more like “change management” than traditional Silicon Valley-style disruption? Then: how utilities will benefit from Biden’s big infrastructure push.Plus, the solar census: what will job growth look like in a post-pandemic world?The Energy Gang is brought to you by Aurora Solar. Join Aurora on June 8th and 9th for the second annual virtu

The lack of progress on offshore wind in America is one of the most baffling and frustrating stories in energy. The technology and resource availability are tremendous. Europe has de-risked the technology and proven it can be deployed at scale, and at low cost, with minimal disruption. U.S. states are setting big targets. And at a national-scale, people want it.And yet, we have not been able to get any meaningful amounts of offshore wind capacity in the water. That may be about to change. In late March, the Biden team said it plans to accelerate offshore wind development -- with a goal of getting 30 gigawatts of projects finished by 2030, and 110 gigawatts by 2050.By comparison, we have 30 megawatts in the water now. And Europe currently has 25 gigawatts operational.So what does the government need to do to finally make this industry a reality?Energy futurist Ramez Naam is our guest co-host this week. We’ll also talk about Biden’s first 100 days in office. He marked the occasion with a speech t

In 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry called the Paris climate treaty a “tremendous victory.” In the years since, $3.8 trillion has flowed into fossil fuels globally.Now Kerry and other White House officials are focusing on banks and insurers that are still offering a lifeline to new fossil fuel projects. Can they slow the flow of cash?This week: why finance is the main pressure point for climate.Today, all the major banks are collectively supporting hundreds of billions of dollars worth of renewables projects every year. But few are giving up on fossil fuels. One environmental campaigner put it this way: “the banks are gorging on doughnuts and then eating an apple afterwards.”A new analysis from DeSmog finds that 77% of board directors at the top-7 US banks have ties to “climate-conflicted” groups.Earlier this year, New York University released a study showing that only 7 percent of board members in the top 100 US companies -- which includes many banks -- had any climate expertise at all.This week

In 2005, it looked like heat-trapping gases from power plants were only going up.That year, the EIA put out a projection: CO2 emissions from power plants would steadily rise every year, thanks to the incumbency of coal and gas.Today, they’re half of what was projected. A new report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab calls it “halfway to zero” -- meaning we are already halfway to a zero-carbon grid.This week: why the path to net-zero may surprise us once again.Then: America’s climate image on the world stage is in tatters. What will it take for the Biden team to stitch it back together before COP negotiations this fall?Finally: a ton of specific policy ideas that can help us expand solar to the people who need it most.BlocPower CEO Donnel Baird joins Katherine and Stephen as our guest co-host this week.Looking to grow your career in solar tech? Aurora Solar is the leader in solar design and sales software. Aurora is hiring across multiple roles including customer success, marketing, sales, operations, and mor

Every few seconds, a new residential HVAC system or water heater is installed around America. Most of them are designed to burn oil and gas -- locking in 15-20 more years of carbon pollution.So how do we electrify 100% of that new equipment rapidly?  This week: a wide-ranging conversation about how to unlock the residential market. Katherine and Stephen are joined by Nate Adams, the co-founder of HVAC 2.0. He’s called “the house whisperer” for a reason. They discuss the benefit of home electrification, the opportunity, and the market constraints.Later in the show, a new trend in real estate: Redfin released a survey of prospective homebuyers, asking them about how they’d factor climate risk into their decisions. Half of them said that intensifying natural disasters influenced their decision to relocate. What are the consequences for the market?Resources:Grist: The Barriers to Home ElectrificationWorkshop: Nate Adams’ Electrify Everything CourseRedfin Survey: Climate Change Influencing American Home

California is the proving ground for every major change that President Biden wants to accelerate nationally: 100% carbon-free electricity, fossil fuel phaseouts, climate-resilient grid hardening. The state wants to make 100% of retail electricity sales carbon-free by 2045. To that, it’ll need to match its best year ever for renewable energy installations -- for 25 years more years in a row. It’ll amount to $4.5 billion in yearly spending.California is moving fast. Is there such a thing as too fast? This week, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Sammy Roth joins us to talk about California’s fast, sometimes-messy, and still-evolving energy transition. Plus, tensions over public lands. It’s going to take a lot of investment, difficult choices, and grit to hit California’s zero-carbon goals. It’s also going to take a lot of land.That’s putting the Biden team in a dilemma: how to balance a historic build-out of wind and solar farms with protection of public lands? Plus, we look at the details of Bi

The systems that support growing, shipping and processing food make up one-third of heat trapping gases.How can Agtech help us tackle this tangled and underserved sector? We’ll look at investment activity, technological solutions, and policy levers.Then, we revisit long-duration storage. A net-zero grid will require new ways to store and discharge energy over long periods. How’s it shaping up?Plus, is carbon pricing back on the table here in the US?This week, Katherine and Stephen are joined by guest co-host Amy Duffuor, a principal at Prime Impact Fund. Resources:Ag Funder: How to Unleash Agtech in the Fight Against Climate ChangeGreentech Media: California Could Need 55 GW of Long-Duration StorageAxios: Oil Industry Endorses a Carbon PriceLooking to grow your career in solar tech? Aurora Solar is the leader in solar design and sales software. Aurora is hiring across multiple roles including customer success, marketing, sales, operations, and more. See open roles and apply to join Aurora, voted one of t

This week, the nuts and bolts of climate policy: infrastructure.With a $2 trillion covid relief package under his belt, Biden looks to harness another $3 trillion on building clean energy, hardening the electric grid, installing electric car chargers, and updating roads and bridges.We’ll game out what’s needed and what’s possible.Then: is this the moment for the black climate agenda? And if so, what are the priorities?Finally, how will pressure campaigns over new fossil fuel infrastructure play out in the next four years? And what lessons have we learned from previous fights over the last decade?The gang this week: Katherine Hamilton and Stephen Lacey are joined by climate strategist Tamara Toles O’Laughlin.Resources:New York Times: Biden’s Biden’s Recovery Plan Bets Big on Clean EnergyE&E News: How the Infrastructure Bill Might Tackle Climate ChangeRedfin Study: Redlined Communities Face Greater Flood RiskCNN: A New Pipeline Battle Fires Up in MinnesotaThis podcast is brought to you by Sungrow, a leading