Energy Gang

The world is experiencing a sudden, dramatic drop in all kinds of air pollution. The skies are dramatically different. People can hear birds they didn’t even know were there, and see landscapes that have been shrouded for decades.

It’s saved thousands of lives in averted asthma and heart attacks. When this is all over, will people clamor for cleaner air? We discuss the potential long-term impacts on this week’s episode.

Then: the 2020 climate summit is postponed. Could that be a good thing? What are the political benefits and diplomatic drawbacks?

Finally, we’ll assess curtailments of solar and wind energy as electricity consumption drops around the world.

Recommended reading:

• Clean Air Memes from India: You Can See Los Angeles from Mumbai Now
• Reuters: Biggest fall in carbon emissions since World War Two
• WSJ: Coronavirus Lockdowns Clear the Air But the Effect Could be Fleeting
• Twitter: Katharine Hayhoe’s Most Recent Cool Explainer
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Will the coronavirus have a lasting impact on carbon emissions?
• Forbes: Why Offering “Home-Office” Balance Leads to the Most Productive Employees
• Bloomberg: What It Means to Have a Year Without Climate Diplomacy
• E&ENews: Pandemic Delays Global Climate Summit
• Climate Action Tracker: How the Pledges of Each Nation Stack Up
• GTM: California Curtailment Surge as Coronavirus Cuts Demand
• ITWeb: Eskom’s COVID-19 power curtailment bid stuns wind sector
• GTM: 2017 Primer–Too Much of a Good Thing? An Illustrated Guide to Solar Curtailment on California’s Grid

This podcast is brought to you by CPower. CPower is helping organizations chart a path to energy’s future. Visit thecpowerway.com/future to learn how CPower can guide your decisions on distributed generation, demand response and your energy spend.

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This week: The coronavirus shockwave brings staggering losses of lives, jobs, and money.

So many applied for unemployment last week – 5 times more than ever before – that it was hard for graphic artists to draw a Y-axis that would fit them in historical comparisons. We’re now at 10 million unemployment claims. 

With so much turmoil and uncertainty, we are going to dig back into some of the big themes of the week. 

First, we’ll have a recap of stimulus activity. The day after the unprecedented unemployment numbers, the federal government approved a boost to the economy twice as large as any before in the history of the United States. What’s in it? What’s coming next?

Then, essential workers in energy: how grid operators are making sure that all-important juice keeps flowing to your home or essential workplace.

And finally, how the oil price shock may – or may not – impact renewables investment from fossil fuel majors.

Mentioned on the show:

• Gail Tverberg: Our Infinite World
• DSIRE: The database of renewables
• Energy Storage News: Editor’s Blog

Recommended reading:

• VOX: How the Covid-19 Recession Could Become a Depression
• WSJ: After 3 Coronavirus Packages, Congress is Already Prepping a Fourth
• The Hill: McCarthy Says Fourth Stimulus Might Not Be Necessary
• Bloomberg: Winners and Losers in Congress’s $2 Trillion Rescue Plan
• American Petroleum Institute: Open Letter to Congress and White House
• Inside Climate News: Trump’s Move to Suspend Env. Enforcement is a Lifeline to Oil
• E&ENews: Inside New York’s Grid Lockdown
• DailyEnergyInsider: PJM Adapts to New Normal During Covid-19 Crisis
• Bloomberg: US To Let Nuclear Plants Defer Repairs, Schedule Longer Shifts
• OilPrice.com: Can Big Oil Still Fund Its Renewable Energy Push?

This podcast is brought to you by CPower. CPower is helping organizations chart a path to the energy future. Visit thecpowerway.com/future to learn how CPower can guide your decisions on distributed generation, demand response and your energy spend.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a special crossover episode between The Energy Gang and Climate 2020.

Coronavirus brought the 2020 election to a screeching halt. Climate was once a top issue in the Democratic primary, but it’s been overtaken by a virus and a looming economic apocalypse. 

Primaries are delayed. Traditional campaigning has stopped. Biden is hiding out, preparing for the general election. Bernie Sanders is hanging on. And the way we think about all kinds of issues has totally flipped.

So how will climate, cleantech and the environment fit into this new political world?

The climate community is struggling with how to message. What are the appropriate ways to keep the focus on climate change, while we face public health and economic crises? 

What about the intersection of extreme weather and coronavirus? Many state officials fear the next season’s floods, hurricanes and fires – events that can require evacuation while people are supposed to stay homebound. How will climate change compound the problem?

The Gang includes Stephen Lacey, Katherine Hamilton and Jigar Shah.

Jeff Nesbit, the executive director of Climate Nexus and co-host of the podcast Climate 2020, joins the gang for this special joint episode on politics. Jeff is also an author, former journalist, a senior public affairs official at the FDA, and Dan Quayle’s director of comms.

Mentioned on the show: 

• Twitter: Rachel Bitecofer’s Feed
• Twitter: Leak Stokes’ Feed
• Priorities USA: Political Ad 

Recommended:

• Scientific American: U.N. Shifts from Climate Change to Coronavirus
• The New Yorker: The Coronavirus and the Climate Movement by Bill McKibben
• Inside Climate News: In the Face of a Pandemic, Climate Activists Reevaluate Their Tactics

This podcast is brought to you by CPower. CPower is helping organizations chart a path to the energy future. Visit thecpowerway.com/future to learn how CPower can guide your decisions on distributed generation, demand response and your energy spend.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is an original, branded podcast produced in partnership with Enel X and GTM Creative Strategies.

Electric vehicle chargers now outnumber gas stations in some countries. They’re getting easier to find. They’re easier to install in homes. And they’re getting way smarter.

So how can we harness all these chargers for the benefit of the grid and consumers?

In this special podcast episode, produced in partnership with Enel X, we’re exploring the vast potential of electric vehicle chargers. We’ll talk with Giovanni Bertolino, the head of e-mobility for North America at Enel-X about a concept called managed charging. It’s also known as intelligent charging.

Giovanni’s team deploys networks of chargers that can adapt to pricing and grid needs — providing demand response services, and potentially, real-time services to manage the frequency of the grid. 

We speak with Giovanni about the rise of managed charging. We started with the underlying market conditions: the grid is getting saturated with wind and solar. So how can chargers paired with demand response help support more renewables?

Large energy users partner with Enel X to manage risk on the energy markets, maximize payments through demand response, and finance upgrades to facilities to improve demand response earnings. They also increasingly work with Enel X to use chargers to manage the grid.

Find out more about how Enel X can help you capitalize on your biggest energy opportunities.

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This week: how coronavirus could accelerate or decelerate the energy transition.

We’re facing an oil shock amid a pandemic, supply chains are still in disarray, economic gears are grinding to a near halt, and countries are scrambling to put stimulus packages in place. How will this shape the energy system?

We’re going to break the conversation into three parts: the impact on fossil fuels and renewables; long-term prospects for decarbonization; and a blueprint for a low-carbon stimulus.

Where will the money go when this is all over? Could clean energy have the advantage over fossil energy from investors and governments?

Recommended reading:

• GTM: Could the Oil Price Collapse Drive More $$ Into Renewables
• GTM: For Wind and Solar Sectors, Biggest Coronavirus Risk May Be a Damaged Economy
• Business Insider: Coronavirus Stunts Clean Energy Growth
• WSJ: Oil Markets Point to Lasting Glut of Crude
• WSJ: Oil Drop Takes Down Hedge Fund
• OilPrice.com: Oil Price Crash Continues Despite $1.5 Trillion Fed Intervention
• OilPrice.com: Morgan Stanley Expects Net Zero Demand Growth in China
• E&ENews: The Oil Crash and Climate: What to Know
• E&ENews: Green Energy's $10T Revolution Faces Oil Crash Test
• E&ENews: Senate GOP Eyes Energy Aid in Response to Market Fallout

This podcast is brought to you by CPower. CPower is helping organizations chart a path to energy’s future. Visit thecpowerway.com/future to learn how CPower can guide your decisions on distributed generation, demand response and your energy spend.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Robyn Beavers, the co-founder and CEO of Blueprint Power. 

Blueprint works with real estate companies to turn their buildings into clean energy power plants. Blueprint developed software that helps building owners optimize their use of co-generation, fuel cells, solar or batteries.

Robin has a long history in the worlds of tech, real estate and energy. She was an early employee at Google, and went on to found the company’s environmental strategy group. She later built the innovation team at NRG Energy. She later went into the world of real estate, where she oversaw venture investments at Lennar. 

Today, she’s bringing all that experience together in the hopes of making buildings more dynamic actors on the grid. 

This conversation was recorded at the Powerhouse headquarters in Oakland, California. 

To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. You can listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.

This podcast is brought to you by CPower. CPower is helping organizations chart a path to energy’s future. Visit thecpowerway.com/future to learn how CPower can guide your decisions on distributed generation, demand response and energy spend.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What to do with all this climate money moving around? 

The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, says he is going to channel $10 billion of his own dollars into climate solutions. Is this the biggest climate philanthropy ever? And where should he be devoting those dollars? We’ll help him spend it.

Then, the mushy middle. Our own Jigar Shah’s Generate Capital has raised another billion dollars to fund climate tech that is less attractive to some investors – fuel cells, microgrids and unconventional solar projects. We’ll talk about the underserved opportunities in finance. 

And a new pot of money from ARPA-E to scale up existing technologies. It’s paltry compared to the money people like Gates and Bezos are throwing into the space. What role is the government playing to scale climate tech?  

Recommended reading:

• EENews: He Wants to Own It. Will $10B Buy the Climate Movement?
• The Atlantic: $10 Billion? In This climate?
• GTM: Generate Capital’s $1B Raise Draws Global Infrastructure Funds to Cleantech
• Green Car Congress: ARPA-E Offers Up to $50 Million for Scaleups That Have a Path

This podcast is brought to you by CPower. CPower is helping organizations chart a path to energy's future. Visit thecpowerway.com/future to learn how CPower can guide your decisions on distributed generation, demand response and your energy spend.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Just weeks after taking over as CEO of BP, Bernard Looney unveiled a series of climate targets. This isn’t the first time BP has tried to make a push into clean energy and decarbonization -- is this time different?

In this week’s episode, we’ll look at the pressures that BP is facing. What does it take for a publicly-owned company to reevaluate its core product? And how do you reduce the carbon intensity of a hydrocarbon business? We’ll dig through the details.

Then, natural gas is suddenly in the hot seat. For gas-only utilities, one pathway is clear. They have to push renewable methane. But what are the limitations? And how will the battle over natural gas connections play out?

Finally, we’ll talk about another reversal, this time in Virginia. The state legislature is right in the middle of setting some pretty strong goals for offshore wind and storage, and they’ve got a governor who wants to sign it. What caused the politics to turn around so suddenly?  

Recommended reading:

• Vox: The False Promise of Renewable Natural Gas
• GTM: Virginia Lawmakers Race to Define Clean Energy Goals, Offshore Wind Plans
• WSJ: BP Wants to Become Carbon Neutral by 2050, But Doesn’t Say How

=This podcast is brought to you by Energetic Insurance. Energetic’s EneRate Credit Cover policy is an easy button for commercial solar — similar to a FICO score in residential solar. This enables savvy developers and investors to quickly finance commercial solar projects and turn around portfolio refinancings more rapidly. Find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high-density, high-voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids and mission-critical markets. Find out more.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: The cutting-edge business of bringing power to the last billion people on Earth without it. 

We’ll follow the money, the markets, the business models and ask whether distributed renewables are providing a real alternative to slow grid connections. 

Investments in off-grid power in Africa and Asia have skyrocketed in the last five years. Thirty times more money went into the sector in 2018 compared with 2013. More than $500 million dollars was invested in electrification in 2018, for the first time, an analysis by Wood Mackenzie found.

The money is finally bringing lights, cell phone charging and electric stoves to millions of people who had to rely on kerosene and wood. But is the money getting funneled to the right projects? Can they scale to meet a high-energy society? And what are the bottlenecks in international finance preventing these solutions from expanding faster?

Ben Attia joins us for a dive into the state of the market. Ben has spent years immersed in the world of solar home systems and off grid renewables in the Middle East and Africa. He leads emerging coverage of off-grid power markets for Wood MacKenzie. 

  Resources:

• Wood MacKenzie: Strategic Investments in Energy Access (by Ben)
• GTM: Report: Investment in Off-Grid Energy Access Totals $1.7B Through 2018
• MIT–Rockefeller Commission Report:
• Financial Times: Mobisol, A Cautionary Tale for Impact Investors
• Kahawatungu: M-Kopa Unveils Solar Refrigerators for Off-Grid Customers
• Forbes Tata Power Aims to Boost Electricity for Rural India
• Bloomberg Tata, Rockefeller Foundation Plan 10,000 India Microgrids
• South Africa Business Day: Digital tech in solar will be big help to emerging countries

This podcast is brought to you by Energetic Insurance. Energetic’s EneRate Credit Cover policy is an easy button for commercial solar — similar to a FICO score in residential solar. This enables savvy developers and investors to quickly finance commercial solar projects and turn around portfolio refinancings more rapidly. Find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high-density, high-voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids and mission-critical markets. Find out more. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Dr. Christine Ho, the co-founder and CEO of Imprint Energy.

Imprint Energy is the company created to commercialize Christine’s invention: a tiny, zinc-based solid-state battery that can be screen printed. It’s being integrated into sensors and other tiny devices across the internet-of-things.

Christine’s father was an entrepreneur. She saw the highs and lows of that life. She followed his path -- and has faced her own similar tumult. Today, Imprint is licensing its technology to multiple manufacturers, and it’s printed hundreds of thousands of batteries.

This conversation was recorded at the Powerhouse headquarters in Oakland, California. 

To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. Listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.

Subscribe to GTM’s newsletter to learn more about the companies we profile on this series.

This podcast is brought to you by Energetic Insurance. Energetic’s EneRate Credit Cover policy is an easy button for commercial solar — similar to a FICO score in residential solar. This enables savvy developers and investors to quickly finance commercial solar projects and turn around portfolio refinancings more rapidly. Find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high-density, high-voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids and mission-critical markets. Find out more.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: The largest utility in one of the West’s reddest states will go carbon-free by 2050. 

The power company that has poured tens of millions of dollars into electing friendly regulators and fighting renewable energy says it’s all in for zero carbon electricity — even if the exact pathway isn’t yet clear. 

Wasn’t APS investing heavily in keeping the Four Corners coal plant open longer? What happened? And how will this impact the way the utility starts planning its resource mix today? 

Then, Congressional Republicans say they’re getting serious about climate. They’ve got a new messaging bill. We’ll talk about what’s in it — or what’s not in it — and ask why they’re tackling the issue now?

Plus, plug-in hybrids versus electric cars. Honda’s CEO says he thinks plug-in hybrids will dominate for a long time. What will the electric mobility transition look like? Will we jump straight to EVs, or will hybrids be a viable interim step for some automakers? 

Resources:

• Greentech Media: Arizona Public Service Carbon Free Power 2050
• AZ Central: APS CEO says Company Won’t Spend on Political Campaigns 
• Politico: House Republicans Caught Between Trump and Young Voters on CC
• Axios: Elements of the GOP Plan
• Inside EVs: What’s Better, A Plug-in Hybrid or a Fully Electric
• ExtremeTech: Did Honda’s CEO Say BEVs Make No Sense? Not Exactly

This podcast is brought to you by Energetic Insurance. Energetic’s EneRate Credit Cover policy is an easy button for commercial solar — similar to a FICO score in residential solar. This enables savvy developers and investors to quickly finance commercial solar projects and turn around portfolio refinancings more rapidly. Find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high-density, high-voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids and mission-critical markets. Find out more.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: Microsoft is setting a new standard for corporate climate targets.

The technology company promised to remove all of the carbon that it’s ever put in the atmosphere -- going back to when it was founded in an Albuquerque garage in 1975. 

That includes $1 billion in carbon removal technologies and methods. Can it pull off such an ambitious plan? And will it force other corporates to follow?

Then, a landmark climate case. Twenty-one young people who sued the federal government for the right to live in a stable climate prevailed and prevailed and prevailed…until they lost. A judge agreed with their case, but said the courts weren’t the place to remedy climate change. What does it mean for future litigation?

Plus, we have a new member of the gang we’re going to meet. It’s Ingrid Lobet, our senior editor. Make sure to follow her on Twitter. 

Resources:

• MIT Technology Review: Microsoft Will Invest $1B in Carbon Reduction and Removal Tech
• Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Raises Stakes in Corporate Climate Pledge Race
• Vox: 21 Kids Sued the Government Over Climate Change
• AP: U.S. Courts Dismisses Suit by Youth Over Climate Change

This podcast is brought to you by Energetic Insurance. Energetic’s EneRate Credit Cover policy is an easy button for commercial solar — similar to a FICO score in residential solar. This enables savvy developers and investors to quickly finance commercial solar projects and turn around portfolio refinancings more rapidly. Find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high-density, high-voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids and mission-critical markets. Find out more. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, is suddenly putting sustainability and climate risk at the center of its investment strategy. 

“Investors are increasingly...recognizing that climate risk is investment risk. These questions are driving a profound reassessment of risk and asset values. And because capital markets pull future risk forward, we will see changes in capital allocation more quickly than we see changes to the climate itself,” wrote BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in his yearly investment letter.

BlackRock manages over $7 trillion in assets. This new strategy could have a wide impact on the world of finance -- and put climate risk at the top of investor considerations.

Plus, activists are targeting banks like Chase and Citibank by hitting them on the consumer finance side. We check in on the divestment movement as it gains momentum.

Then, a look at some lesser-known, but formidable greenhouse gases: refrigerants. How much a problem are they?

Finally, California looks beyond lithium-ion batteries. The state is looking to fund the next ideas in energy storage. What are those technologies and how will they be deployed?

Resources:

• New York Times: BlackRock C.E.O. Larry Fink: Climate Crisis Will Reshape Finance
• Listen to the Climate 2020 podcast interview with Bill McKibben
• Bill McKibben in NYT: Want to Do Something About Climate? Follow the Money
• E&E News: Senators Float HFC Phase-Down Bill
• GreenBiz: Why Supermarkets are Key to a Cooler Climate
• Utility Dive: California Is Looking for Better Storage

This podcast is brought to you by Energetic Insurance. Energetic’s EneRate Credit Cover policy is an easy button for commercial solar – similar to a FICO score in residential solar. This enables savvy developers and investors to quickly finance commercial solar projects and turn around portfolio refinancings faster. Find out more.

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high-density, high-voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids and mission-critical markets. Find out more. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, a look at the bushfires in Australia — their impact to the country, to the grid, and to politics of climate.

Then, a big change could be coming to a foundational federal policy in America. Are the proposed changes to PURPA a thoughtful response to market conditions and cheap renewables, or a political play?

Finally, we learn to code. Joe Biden is the latest democrat to push the idea that laid-off miners should learn to code. Why did it spark so much derision?

Recommended reading:

• The Atlantic: Australia Will Lose to Climate Change
• GTM: FERC Proposal Brings New Threat to Already-Suffering PURPA Solar Markets
• Gizmodo: Biden Tells Miners to Learn to Code

This podcast is brought to you by KORE Power. KORE Power is a leading manufacturer of high density, high voltage energy storage solutions for utility, industrial, microgrids, and mission-critical markets. Find out more. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We have some bonus listening as we close out the year!

We present one of our most popular episodes of The Interchange: The Deep Decarbonization Draft.

It's like fantasy sports for energy nerds. The premise is simple: Shayle and Stephen choose their teams of decarbonization technologies and methods, and then pit them against each other to determine who’s best at saving the planet.

Go subscribe to The Interchange anywhere you get your podcasts. It's the perfect compliment to The Energy Gang.

Happy New Year!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We’re closing out the decade this week with a retrospective. 

We have been doing this show since 2013. So we are going to share some of our top story lines in energy and cleantech of the last 10 years — many of which played out while we were doing this show.

We’ll start with some personal retrospectives. What was consuming us back in 2009? How did that story shake out?

Then we’ll choose the most important stories that defined the teens. Katherine will choose the top policy trend, Jigar will choose the top business trend, and Stephen will choose the top tech trend.

Finally, we’ll look ahead to 2030 and beyond. What needs to happen in policy, business, technology to “win” the decade?=

If you’re looking for more listening over the holidays, check out our year-end episode of The Interchange. 

Support for the Interchange comes from Schneider Electric, the leader of the digital transformation in energy management and automation. 

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: Emily Kirsch sits down with Dr. Etosha Cave, the co-founder and chief science officer of Opus 12.

Opus 12 is a team of engineers, electrochemists and materials scientists working on a technology that converts carbon dioxide into useable products. They are developing a metal catalyst that can turn CO2 into synthetic gas for fuels and ethylene for plastics.

If the tech works at commercial scale, it would be a vital solution for slashing CO2 from industrial sources. The company has brought in about $20 million in funding. 

In this interview, Etosha talks about the inspiration for the technology, which came from her love of space and desire to go to Mars.

She talks about being a founder who’s also a black woman, and how that’s influenced her relationships with other people in energy.

And she talks about where Opus 12’s tech development stands. 

To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. Listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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This is a branded podcast made in collaboration between CohnReznick Capital and GTM Creative Strategies. 

Sheslie Royster is the person that big companies turn to when making an acquisition, investing in real estate, or finding a creative way to use tax credits. She’s a tax expert, focused mostly in wind and solar.

Those deals include a lot of numbers and math, of course. But Sheslie says the math isn’t as important as it seems. It’s the interpretation of the math that matters.

“I'd say a minimal amount is math. I'd say in the deals that we have where we're discussing tax issues, the numbers play a part but it's a smaller part. It's more the theory behind what's going on behind the numbers. What does this mean? What was the intent of the law? What is the intent of the deal?”

Sheslie is a tax partner at CohnReznick. She works on some very complicated projects that require a deep level of trust and intimacy.

“It's a personal relationship. People are telling you things about themselves that sometimes their spouses don't even know. Intimate details that people just don't tell when you meet them at a cocktail party,” she says.

So how does Sheslie get people to tell her things their spouses don’t know? 

In this episode, we’ll uncover the the secrets of one of the best tax experts in the business. 

This episode was produced by GTM Creative Strategies in collaboration with CohnReznick. 

CohnReznick serves a wide range of industries, from tech to government to entertainment. It’s a leader in cutting-edge fields like renewable energy and cannabis. To learn more about how people like Sheslie can help you get the most out of your deals, visit CohnReznick. 

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Truck buyers are historically some of the most brand-loyal auto consumers But recent surveys suggest that loyalty is loosening.

Into the picture steps Elon Musk, who dropped the Tesla Cybertruck last month. This space-age truck concept is truly putting the shift in consumer preferences to the test. It’s also tearing a lot of opinionated people apart.

In this episode: what is the Cybertruck and where might it fit into the emerging electric truck market? And can it sway truck buyers who don't care about Tesla?

Then, there’s a major tax bill in Congress right now that would be a boon to renewables — what are its chances?

Finally, what would we do with a million dollars? We answer a listener question about how to invest with impact.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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This week: our pre-thanksgiving intellectual feast. It’s a four-course meal as usual.

For the hors d’oeuvres, we’re serving up something new: a roundup of the new entrants into the presidential race, and how they stack up on environmental issues.

For the side dishes, we’ll reheat some leftovers. We’ll look at the climategate debacle 10 years later.

And for the main course. What people or companies will we choose as the top turkeys of the year?

We’ll end with a little aperitif — our free electrons. 

Read along with us:

• POLITICO: The Left Smells a Rat in Bloomberg, Patrick Bids
• Greenwire: As Mass. Governor, Deval Patrick Promoted RGGI, Clean Power
• BBC Documentary: Climategate 10 Years Later
• Columbia Journalism Review: Michael Mann on Coverage Since ‘Climategate’
• Our top Turkeys: Andrew Wheeler's plan to dismantle EPA; Saudi Aramco's lagging IPO; and Elon Musk's lies about solar.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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As we reckon with the dark side of Silicon Valley’s tech giants, there’s more scrutiny into how these companies are assisting climate denial and obfuscation.

We’ll look at a few different stories:

Climate and clean energy are getting disadvantaged by Facebook and Twitter’s different policies on political ads: how do we define issue ads and political speech?

Google, Facebook and others are getting called out for their support of groups that spread extreme climate denial: How much criticism do they deserve?

And Amazon, Microsoft and Google are building the digital backbone of industries that are wrecking the planet. How should we think about their role and culpability?

In the second half of the show, we’ll discuss America’s withdraws from the Paris climate treaty. With U.S. global leadership in shambles, who’s going to fill the gap? And how could elections change things?

Finally, how California’s wildfire crisis is stoking the state’s distributed generation market. We’ll look at the business impacts.

Recommended resources:

• Heated: Exxon Climate Ads Aren’t Political, According to Twitter
• Vox: Watch AOC Ask Mark Zuckerberg if She Can Run Fake Green New Deal Ads
• Guardian: Google Made Large Contributions to Climate Deniers
• Guardian: Facebook Video Spreads Climate Denial to 5 Million Users
• GTM: Power Shutoff Disruption ‘Resets’ California’s Residential Market
• Jigar Shah/Timothy Hade Op-Ed: It’s Time to Evolve California’s Electrical Grid

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: how a would-be priest made it his mission to spread the gospel of battery storage.

In this episode, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Mateo Jaramillo, the CEO and co-founder of Form Energy.

Form is working on a new kind of long-duration battery. And Mateo has one of the longer-duration careers in the storage industry. 

In the early 2000s, he deployed the first behind-the-meter systems in New York for demand response — seeing the grid services potential well before anyone else.

Mateo went on to start the stationary energy storage unit at Tesla, launching and building the powerwall business. He also helped launch the supercharger business.

Today, he’s working on a new electrochemical battery that could provide storage services for days, not just hours. The idea is to unlock baseload renewables.

The chemistry was spun out of work from MIT researchers. It’s being scaled by a group of engineers and entrepreneurs with deep technical experience — and like Mateo, the bumps and bruises that come from scaling an early market.

In this interview, Mateo talks about what it took to power through the early days of battery storage, when everything sale and installation was a battle. And he’ll talk about what it will take to create Form’s new storage tech to unlock even more renewable energy.

To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. 

Listen to all of the episodes of Watt It Takes here.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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We recorded this episode on Halloween morning. We woke up and felt like celebrating the theme of the holiday.

If you’re listening after Halloween, don’t fret. There’s still plenty of newsworthy stuff in here.

First up, we’re choosing the story from 2019 that is most worthy of its own horror movie. As a bonus, we are also choosing the genre of horror.

Then, we pick the zombie story or trend of the year that just won’t die.

And finally, the company or person that deserves a treat.

We’ll end with some bone-chilling Free Electrons.

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Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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This week: it’s the oil industry versus the world. 

We’re examining two legal battles for oil majors playing out in states. One involves electric cars and one involves responsibility for climate change.

We’ll start first with a story from POLITICO’s Gavin Bade. Advocacy groups backed by oil companies are increasingly lobbying against utilities that are trying to support electric vehicles. Are we seeing a coming political clash between the oil industry and utility industry?

We’re joined by Gavin, who’s been tracking these emerging challenges.

Then, we are devoting our second half of the show to the legal challenges against fossil fuel companies. 

Exxon is on trial in New York and numerous other states and cities are bringing suit against oil majors. It’s got everyone paying attention to this very complicated yet riveting issue: as the science and legal arguments evolve, will big fossil fuel companies be held accountable for a warming planet?

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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The world’s fifth-largest economy looked more like a developing country last week, as PG&E purposefully cut power to millions of people in Northern California for days.

We knew this was coming. The growing safety and financial risk of wildfires in the state mean mass power outages will become more common. But in this case, PG&E was slammed for the way it handled things.

We’ll dig into the scope, the fallout, and the solutions of California’s power shutoffs due to wildfire threats.

Then: Dyson made a big business out of selling $400 hair dryers and $500 vacuum cleaners, but it couldn’t make a high-end electric car work. We’ll talk about why Dyson wrote off its EV plans.

Finally, the Trump administration lifts a tariff exemption for bifacial solar panels. So why are these two-sided solar panels becoming so popular now?

Additional resources:

• New York Times: Inside PG&E’s Control Room
• Bloomberg: What Happens When a Vacuum Company Tries to Make an Electric Car
• GTM Squared: Has Bifacial Solar Finally Moved From Theoretical to Practical?

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a branded podcast made in collaboration between the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and GTM Creative Strategies. 

As grids get saturated with wind and solar electricity, there’s pressure to find new ways to store that energy across daily, monthly or seasonal variations.

Could the answer be a billion-year-old microbe?

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and SoCalGas are currently testing a new bioreactor that could turn renewable electrons into renewable methane -- allowing excess generation to be “stored” in existing natural gas pipelines.

The system relies on an ancient microorganism that ferments hydrogen and carbon dioxide and turns it into methane. By feeding the bugs hydrogen from renewable resources and CO2 from industrial sources, companies like SoCalGas could harness a new supply of renewable natural gas.

NREL has been testing the process in the lab for years. And it finally built a larger-scale version of the bioreactor. 

We sent producer Catherine Jaffee to NREL’s lab in Golden, Colorado to check it out. We’ll learn how it works in the first part of the episode.

In the second half of the episode, we talk with NREL’s Kevin Harrison and SoCalGas’ Ron Kent about how the system is performing so far.

Learn more about all the world-changing research on clean energy happening at NREL.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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This week on Watt It Takes: how a computer nerd who loved assembling electronics became obsessed with designing a solar-storage system to light up Africa.

In this episode, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Xavier Helgesen, the co-founder and chief technology officer at ZOLA Electric.

Zola is a provider of solar and storage systems in Africa. Since its founding in 2012, the company has served over a million people with clean power in five countries.

Over the years, Zola has evolved from a small, scrappy startup that offered very basic energy packages into a hardware company that installs sleek, scalable power systems that function better than the grid. 

“[Our goal] was not to be worse than the grid, but available anywhere — but to just be better than the grid. For solar and batteries to fundamentally be cheaper and more reliable than the grid. And if we succeed in that in the developing world, then the market is almost limitless,” says Helgesen.

In this interview, Helgesen talks about how he first got interested in energy access, the complexities of setting up a company as an outsider in Tanzania, and how Zola shifted into designing its own hybrid system.

This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse’s headquarters. To learn more about future speakers and attending a live event, go to Powerhouse.fund and click on the events tab. 

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a branded podcast made in collaboration between CohnReznick Capital and GTM Creative Strategies. 

Britta Von Oesen knows risk. 

As an intern in Lehman Brothers’ global energy unit in 2008, she watched the collapse of the investment bank in real time. 

Later, she watched European markets grind to a halt after feed-in-tariffs were reversed.

And in the U.S., she’s monitored the ever-changing tax policies and regulations that impact wind, solar and storage.

Today, Britta is a managing director at CohnReznick Capital. Her job is to help figure out how to get wind and solar deals done in the face of policy and financial risk. 

In this special episode, produced in collaboration with CohnReznick Capital, we sit down with Britta Von Oesen to unpack some of those policy uncertainties and what they mean for renewables.

Go to CohnReznickCapital.com to learn more about how the company builds relationships, closes deals, and helps clean energy companies excel.

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The Bonneville Power Administration, the government-owned “power marketing agency” that serves the Pacific Northwest, is facing a strong current of problems. 

As cheap renewables make hydro less competitive in the region, BPA is now bleeding money. There’s now concern that its utility customers will stop buying hydro after contracts expire.

Meanwhile, the cost of rehabilitating salmon populations is mounting. As the power provider grapples with $15 billion in debt, some are calling for a reformation of BPA. How can the government prepare the hulking agency for the competitive clean energy future?

We’ll talk to a Jeremy P. Jacobs, a reporter for E&E’s Greenwire, who’s been digging into the story. You can read parts one, part two and part three of his ongoing series.

Then, climate strikes swept the globe last Friday, raising unprecedented media coverage. How is this different from previous mobilizations around climate? We’ll put this moment in the context of recent history.

Finally, offshore wind is getting dirt cheap in Europe. According to Carbon Brief, recent offshore wind prices are set to compete with existing gas seven years ahead of schedule. We’ll venture out to the leading edge of offshore wind development.

Read along with us:

• E&E News: Jeremy Jacobs’ reporting on Bonneville Power Administration
• New York Times: Climate Protesters and World Leaders on Same Planet, Different Worlds
• GTM: UK’s Offshore Wind Auction So Successful It Might Have Made Itself Redundant
• Carbon Brief: Record-Low Price for UK Offshore Wind Cheaper Than Existing Gas Plants by 2023

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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This week: We’ve gone from drought to flood.

People who care about climate change have spent the last three presidential election cycles cajoling, prodding and begging television news outlets to cover the issue. But the more pressure mounted, the more coverage lagged. 

Across all three debates between Clinton and Trump in 2016, environmental issues got just under 5 and a half minutes of air time. And in all of 2016, the major networks talked about climate for just 50 minutes combined.

And then suddenly in September, we got CNN’s town hall, a seven-hour extravaganza that actually allowed candidates some time to tease out the nuances of their plans.

Sure, the moderators asked some weird questions about cheeseburgers, plastic straws and electric cars. But for the most part, the conversation was substantive and helpful.

In this episode, we’re digging into a few questions: Did the town hall advance the narrative? Did it change the campaign and polling? And which candidate performed the best?

We’re joined by Dr. Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California Santa Barbara, who watched and analyzed all seven hours closely.

Read Leah’s top twitter threads on the candidates:

• Elizabeth Warren
• Bernie Sanders
• Joe Biden
• Andrew Yang
• Kamala Harris
• Jay Inslee
• You can also read her analysis in the Washington Post comparing the candidates. 

Follow the gang on twitter: Katherine, Jigar, Stephen and The Energy Gang.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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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.

Then, two top presidential candidates are calling for a ban on fracking and promising to phase out nuclear power. What would be the consequences if a democrat actually put those promises into action?

Finally: we’re digging into a piece from Jonathan Franzen in the New Yorker that got a lot of angry criticism. Should we just give up and stop pretending we can do anything about climate change?

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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This week on Watt It Takes: How an energy researcher obsessed with electric vehicles stumbled upon a vast trove of transportation data and built a company that is reshaping infrastructure planning for mobility.

Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Laura Schewel, the founder and CEO of Streetlight Data. 

Laura spent her career studying storage, electric vehicles, and transportation systems at the Rocky Mountain Institute, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and then as a research fellow at UC Berkeley. 

While at UC Berkeley, she got interested in finding a way to give electric vehicle owners more information about how they were driving their cars. She ended up uncovering a data gold mine in the process. 

Laura built a company that now processes over 100 billion data points and provides transportation and urban planners with a granular view of how roads, bike lanes and sidewalks are being used.

In this episode, Laura Schewel talks about how she ultimately pursued the idea, and what she encountered in the wild world of entrepreneurship.

This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse’s headquarters in Oakland, California. Buy tickets for upcoming events.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With flight shame growing in popularity, extreme weather intensifying, and the Amazon burning, there’s more demand than ever for carbon offsets to assuage our guilt and make us feel like we’re doing something.

But those credits many not be doing what you think they are — or anything at all.

This week, we’re discussing the complicated and frustrating world of carbon offsets. There’s a reason why even the United Nations is now calling out their limitations. 

This conversation is particularly important as California considers joining the Tropical Forest Standard as part of its cap-and-trade program.

Then, we’ll talk about new climate plans from Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang. What’s in them? And who will become the climate candidate?

Finally, we dig into a bill from Ohio that bails out big utilities and guts clean energy. The politics of this thing are ugly — and they are only getting uglier.

Read along with us:

• ProPublica: An Even More Inconvenient Truth
• Bloomberg: Greta Thunberg and ‘Flight Shame’ Are Fueling a Carbon Offset Boom
• New York Times: Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal
• Vox: Ohio Just Passed the Worst Energy Bill of the 21st Century

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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In nearly every corner of the country, energy storage projects are finding their way onto the grid — they’re getting bigger, cheaper, more diverse, and even a little bit weirder. 

Most of all, they’re just becoming normal.

This week, we’re talking about the new normal for power operations. It includes a lot of batteries. And maybe some air tanks, water pumps and cranes too.

GTM Staff Writer Julian Spector joins us as a guest co-host to round up the most topical projects and tell us where the storage market is headed.

Then we’ll look at a novel approach to long-duration storage: a gravity-based system from Energy Vault that just got a major injection of Japanese venture dollars. How skeptical should we be?

And finally, we’ll look at all the other alternatives to lithium-ion that are vying for traction in the market. Will pumped hydro see a revival? Can flow batteries finally prove themselves?

Read Julian Spector’s reporting here. And sign up for the GTM newsletter here. 

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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Solar and wind sent European utilities into financial disarray, and U.S. utilities are facing a similar fate. Are global oil companies next?

A new report from one of the world’s biggest banks, BNP Paribas, says that solar and wind paired with electric cars provide up to 7 times more useful energy for mobility than gasoline dollar for dollar. And that economic reality could hit oil companies sooner than they think.

“The oil industry has never before in its history faced the kind of threat that renewable electricity in tandem with EVs poses to its business model,” concludes the report.

This week, we’ll dig into the findings. How does it square with current projections for EV growth and oil demand? 

Then, a regulatory surprise from the Trump Administration is delaying an 800-megawatt offshore wind project. It could also hurt other projects planned for the East Coast. Is this a careful step, or a cynical political move from a hostile White House?

Finally, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg is on her way to the U.S. — and she’s come under fire from the conservative media. We’ll look at the strange reaction to her rise and influence.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: How a former Apple engineer applied design principles from the iPod and the iPad to smart thermostats — jolting an industry badly in need of change.

Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Matt Rogers, the co-founder and former chief product officer of Nest.

Nest is best known for its elegant learning thermostat, the first major breakout hit in the smart home space. Google later acquired the company for $3.2 billion. 

In this interview, Rogers talks about his Apple influence, how he and co-founder Tony Fadell initially got obsessed with the connected home, and how Nest fit into the Google structure. 

Before Nest launched, “the connected home wasn’t really a thing. It was a bunch of hackers stringing things together, there were no products to speak of, really,” says Rogers. “And I was like ‘this is a huge opportunity, we can go and make great products like we did at Apple.’”

This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse’s headquarters in Oakland, California. Buy tickets for upcoming events.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1,500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Note: after this episode, we will be on hiatus for a few weeks while Stephen Lacey goes on paternity leave. We’ll be back soon!

On July 8, Donald Trump stood in the East Room of the White House and delivered a speech on his “environmental leadership.” What could he possibly talk about?

Onlookers called the speech “Orwellian.” The Trump Administration has tried to pull America out of a global climate agreement, sent officials to try to sell coal at the latest UN climate summit, forced climate scientists out of the government, and rolled back 83 environmental rules.

So why is Trump talking about the environment now? What does it tell us about how voters feel about the issue going into the election? We’ll look at the possible political reasons for the timing of the speech.

Then, we’ll look at New York’s big climate law. How does the state plan to cut emissions 85 percent by 2050? And how will ambitious policy in California and New York influence other states?

Finally, we tackle the seasonal debate over air conditioning. As the world gets hotter, AC use is exploding around the world. How do we cool the world without baking the climate?

Recommended reading:

• New York Times: Trump Saw Opportunity in Speech on Environment. Critics Saw a ‘“1984” Moment.’
• Vox: New York Just Passed the Most Ambitious Climate Target in the Country
• New York Times: Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning?
• Bloomberg: Air Conditioning Is the World's Next Big Threat

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we present a special episode produced on behalf of CohnReznick.

There’s a bonanza sweeping across North America: cannabis.

As more states legalize marijuana, the industry is attracting high-profile investors and bringing in $6.5 billion in yearly sales. 

But it also faces two major challenges: limited access to banking and high energy costs.

Because cannabis is still illegal at the federal level, traditional banks are unwilling to do business with the thousands of companies serving the market. 

At the same time, the industry now eats up $6 billion in electricity costs. Growers are paying tens of thousands of dollars per month to power cultivation sites, and some utilities are worried about strain on the grid in certain locations.

Trying to slash that electricity use is very hard for cash-only companies that can’t get access to traditional financing.

“The capital you would most typically have to deploy if you wanted to site solar at a cultivation facility will end up being very expensive because you don’t have access to traditional bank financing,” explains Mark Hooley, a managing partner at CohnReznick.

In this episode, we talk with Mark about the intersection of cannabis and renewable energy. What will it take to green up America’s newest cash crop?

Learn more about CohnReznick’s cannabis practice. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: we examine the Trump alternative to the Clean Power Plan, look at the gap between red and blue states on climate change, and review the presidential debates.

Up first: how Trump's EPA is replacing Obama's major climate rule.

Then, the red-blue climate divide. States are putting ambitious new climate plans in place. But they’re almost all in states dominated by democrats -- and the new EPA power plant rule only makes that gap bigger. What are the long-term economic consequences for the red states failing to change?

Finally, we got 15 minutes of climate talk in the first two Democratic presidential debates. Does this yet again prove why we need a climate-only debate?

Recommended reading:

• Yale Climate Connections: The Trump EPA Strategy to Undo the Clean Power Plan
• New York Times: Blue States Roll Out Aggressive Climate Strategies. Red States Keep to the Sidelines
• The Guardian: A Climate-Themed Debate? The Democrats Owe It to Voters

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Sungrow. With the world’s most powerful 250-kilowatt, 1500-volt string inverter, Sungrow is providing disruptive technology for utility-scale projects.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: How a Ukrainian immigrant quietly toiled away on a new battery chemistry and created a billion-dollar unicorn.

Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Gene Berdichevsky, the CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies.

Sila is developing a new lithium-ion battery chemistry that uses silicon in place of graphite — leading to an improvement in battery density by 20 percent. This spring, Daimler led a $170 million round in Sila, valuing the startup at $1 billion.

Berdichevsky was the seventh employee at Tesla, where he developed the Roadster’s battery.

For the last eight years, Berdichevsky’s team at Sila has been working on a drop-in replacement for today’s lithium-ion batteries.

This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse’s headquarters. Buy tickets for upcoming events.

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s been a decade since the fracking boom reshaped U.S. energy markets — so when will we ever use our drilling prowess to create a similar geothermal boom?

That’s the hope. The Department of Energy just released a massive new report revisiting America’s geothermal potential in conventional hydrothermal, enhanced geothermal, direct use and heat pumps. 

And the potential is enormous — but it’s just sitting there, largely untapped. We’re going to open up DOE’s report and see which borehole it takes us down.

Then, the Biden and Warren campaigns both unveiled their energy and climate plans. Have they risen to the political and environmental stakes?

Finally, are states squandering billions in settlement dollars from the VW diesel scandal?

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you find your audio content, or integrate our RSS feed into the app of your choice.

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It may be a couple election cycles late, but we’re finally getting a wave of climate plans from presidential candidates. The issue is now front and center in the Democratic primaries.

We’ve spent the last week collecting the plans from leading candidates, surveying the stances of the rest of the field, and monitoring the reactions. We’ll sort through them in this week’s Energy Gang episode. 

In the first half of the show, we’ll compare and contrast the unique plans from Elizabeth Warren, Jay Inslee, Beto O’Rourke, Michael Bennet and John Delaney. What is unique about each candidate’s proposal?

Then, we’ll tackle the rest of the field in the second half of the episode. Most of them are either using the Green New Deal as a fallback, or using it as a foil. We will take an account of how that short-but-influential congressional resolution — and the activism behind it — is having an impact on the presidential campaign.

Recommended reading:

• Buzzfeed: Democrats Want To Make 2020 The Climate Change Election
• Beto O’Rourke’s climate plan
• Jay Inslee’s “Evergreen Economy” plan
• Elizabeth Warren’s plan to make the military climate-ready
• Michael Bennet’s climate plan
• John Delaney’s climate plan

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you find your audio content, or integrate our RSS feed into the app of your choice.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A new report from the International Monetary Fund shows that the world spent $5.2 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. That’s half a trillion dollars more than in 2015.

But it also shows that fossil fuel subsidy spending is down by half since 2012. What gives? How much are we actually spending to make fossil fuels cheaper?

We’ll clarify the different ways economists are measuring that spending.

Then, U.S. tax subsidies for solar and wind are set to ramp downward as part of a deal struck in 2015. But some are calling for an extension of those credits once again. 

Wait, didn’t the industry say it would be just fine without them? We’ll look at arguments for and against another extension.

Finally, PG&E is warning California customers about planned blackouts during this year’s fire seasons. Does this open up a new opportunity for commercial microgrids and residential battery backup?

Recommended reading:

• Atlantic: The Hidden Subsidy of Fossil Fuels
• GTM: US Solar Industry Braces for ITC Stepdown While Making the Case for Another Extension
• Bloomberg: Democrats Try to Extend Wind, Solar Aid They Agreed to Let Die
• SF Chronicle: Fire Danger Could Force SF Blackout, PG&E Says

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you find your audio content, or integrate our RSS feed into the app of your choice.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It took four decades for America to install a million solar systems. And it took just three years to install the second million.

From here on out, the U.S. market will likely see a million systems every couple of years, according to the latest data from Wood Mackenzie.

To mark this new era of scale, we’re going to look back at the most important trends that got us to the first couple of million systems — and the most important trends that will keep many more millions coming.

Then, Tesla has a new way to package and sell solar online. Will it work?

Finally, what’s the best way to frame climate change and the clean energy transition? Presidential candidates are talking about the issues, and press outlets are trying to reframe coverage. What's working and what needs to change?

Recommended reading:

• GTM: US Surpasses 2 Million Solar Installations as Industry Looks to ‘Dominate’ the 2020s
• GTM: Tesla Embraces New Solar Strategy But Analysts Remain Skeptical
• New York Times: These Days, It’s Not About the Polar Bears
• Columbia Journalism Review: The Climate Crisis Is a Story for Every Beat

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to GTM podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you find your audio content, or integrate our RSS feed into the app of your choice.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For well over a decade, researchers have been modeling the cost of state renewable energy mandates.

The results break down in predictable ways: conservative and progressive groups often come to very different conclusions based about costs and benefits.

An authoritative 2015 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that compliance costs for state renewables targets only make up 2 percent of retail rates in most U.S. states.

After a lull, the debate over the cost of renewable energy targets is re-emerging. A new working paper from economists at the University of Chicago concludes that mandates are the most expensive way to reduce carbon pollution — and that they are much bigger drivers of rate increases than previously thought.

Many researchers are pushing back on the economists’ modeling of electricity rates. But it’s worth revisiting this debate, since renewables and carbon-free energy targets are used as placeholders for more ambitious climate policy.

In this week’s podcast, we’re discussing the findings of this study, the criticism, and how it fits into current trends U.S. in energy policy.

Then, Rivian continues to bring in money for electric trucks. What do Amazon and Ford see in the company? Are trucks the next big target for electrification?

Finally, a brief look at 5G networks. They could revolutionize energy services, but they’re also fraught with geopolitical and cybersecurity risk. Will the benefits outweigh the risk?

Recommended reading:

• Twitter threads from Jesse Jenkins, Alex Gilbert, Jacob Mays, and Sam Ori.
• University of Chicago working paper
• New York Times: Ford to Invest $500 Million in Rivian, a Tesla Rival
• New Yorker: The Terrifying Potential of the 5G Network

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to The Interchange podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you find your audio content. Or integrate our RSS feed into the app of your choice.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Watt It Takes: How a product manager at Google saw promise in geothermal heat pumps — and applied the lessons of solar to an underserved market.

In this episode, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Kathy Hannun, the co-founder of Dandelion, a home geothermal company that uses a proprietary drilling technique, simple product design, and financing to cut the cost of ground-source heating and cooling.

For seven years, Kathy was on the rapid evaluation team at Alphabet X — formerly Google X — evaluating technology moonshots. That’s where she stumbled upon the opportunity in geothermal.

We’re going to hear from Kathy about what she learned trying to tackle a tough tech like home geothermal. We’ll also hear about what she learned from her time at Google, how she built her team, and why raising money as an expecting mother presented some unique challenges. 

This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse’s headquarters. Buy tickets for upcoming events.

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

We're also sponsored by Wunder Capital. Wunder Capital is the leading commercial solar financing company in the United States. Click here to find out how Wunder Capital can help you finance your next commercial solar project.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

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This week, we present a special episode produced in collaboration with CohnReznick Capital.

How do you broker billions of dollars worth of renewable energy deals — and do it again and again?

It takes grit, sure. But it also requires empathy.

And that, says Conor McKenna, is the real art of the deal.

McKenna is a senior managing director at CohnReznick Capital Markets. He’s helped close 8 gigawatts of wind, solar and biomass projects over his career.

We all know “The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump’s 1987 book that offers hard-nosed business advice. The book includes lessons like fight back, play the game hard, and deliver the goods. 

This advice has shaped our perception of real estate and Wall Street culture. But McKenna says one important lesson is missing: how to form good relationships so that everyone benefits from a deal.

“Every time we’ve seen someone focus on getting that last dollar out of an individual transaction, we’ve found that they’ve had a much harder time in repeating business and growing and scaling at the same rate as this industry.”

This isn’t a soft tactic. When you’re trying to pull together hundreds or thousands of megawatts of projects — and repeat the process over many times — you have to actually care about the people on the other side of the table.

“Those that have left money on the table and and allowed for their partners to feel successful as well, have had a lot more repeat business.”

In this episode, we look at how empathy can translate into billions of dollars in cash and push renewables further into the mainstream. Find out more about CohnReznick Capital's portfolio.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The tech giants are all going long on renewables, but Amazon seems to be going long on oil and gas.

A new story details Amazon’s budding romance with the fossil fuel industry, while also lagging behind its peers in buying clean energy for its operations.

Other tech companies are using their analytics for helping extract more fossil fuels — but is the extent of Amazon’s pursuit unique?

Then, a new study shows that three-quarters of all coal in the US is more expensive than new renewables. But there’s an ongoing push in states from coal groups to force plants to stay open. We’ll have the latest in the feeble attempt to save coal.

Finally, the supreme court rejects a challenge to state nuclear subsidies. Is it a green light for more states to save their nuke fleets?

Recommended reading:

• Gizmodo: Amazon Is Aggressively Pursuing Big Oil as It Stalls Out on Clean Energy
• Vox: Amazon Says It’s a Leader on Fighting Climate Change. 5,000 Employees Disagree
• Indy Star: Out-of-State Coal Interests Are Funding a Battle to Keep Coal Plants From Closing
• Houston Chronicle: Supreme Court Denies Challenge to NY Nuclear Subsidy

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, the Green New Deal ripples through Washington.

A few leading Republicans are responding to the progressive climate plan with some ideas of their own: the New Manhattan Project and the Green Real Deal. 

They’ve gotten a mostly cold response from the left. But have we finally broken the ice for a legitimate cross-party policy discussion on climate? We’ll look at the GOP responses.

Then, Trump’s latest verbal convulsion. Speaking at a fundraiser, the president said wind noise causes cancer and kills property values. We’ll take this opportunity to review what the literature says about the impact of wind.

Finally, we’ll go to Virginia, where there’s been a ton of legislative activity on solar, efficiency, grid infrastructure and climate — some of which was blocked by the state’s mega-utility Dominion Energy. We’ll examine the politics.

Recommended reading:

• Bloomberg: GOP Tiptoes Toward Climate Plans as Ocasio-Cortez Turns Up Heat
• Matt Gaetz: 'Green Real Deal' Proposal
• Lamar Alexander: The New Manhattan Project
• The Conversation: Wind Turbine Syndrome, a Classic ‘Communicated’ Disease
• Virginia Mercury: How the General Assembly Failed Virginia Again on Clean Energy

Support for this podcast comes from PG&E. Did you know that 20 percent of EV drivers in the U.S. are in PG&E’s service area in Northern California? PG&E is helping to electrify corporate fleet vehicles. Get in touch with PG&E’s EV specialists to find out how you can take your transportation fleet electric.

Subscribe to The Energy Gang podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you find your audio content.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This past week, we recorded a live show at the MIT Energy Conference. 

The theme of the show: what the grid may look like by 2040.

As a topical show, we usually don’t know what we’re going to be discussing until a day or two in advance. But the theme of the MIT conference was "tough tech and the 2040 grid" — so we decided to take it head on. 

To start, we’ll adjust our brains to the 2040 timeframe with some fantastical scenarios.

Then, we create our own plans. We will each outline a possible future for the 2040 time frame — Katherine will look at policy and politics, Jigar will look at the business environment, and Stephen looks at technology make-up. 

Finally, a news circuit. We’ll provide some quick commentary on top stories of the day.

And we’ll end with our Free Electrons. 

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