David Roberts
VoltsEpisodes
Episodes of Volts
Mark All
Search Episodes...
US public education infrastructure faces significant challenges due to years of deferred maintenance and the growing impacts of climate change. Luckily, the Inflation Reduction Act offers substantial, easily accessible financial assistance to s
In this episode: more heat pumps! Jane Melia, co-founder and CEO of Harvest, discusses the advantages of teaming a high-end eat pump with a large thermal battery, to coordinate the timing of electricity consumption. Shifting the heat pump load
New York City was on the cusp of (finally) implementing a congestion pricing program when Governor Kathy Hochul announced earlier this month that it would be “indefinitely delayed.” In this episode, NY State Sen. Liz Krueger and Evergreen Actio
In this episode, CEO Kyle Clark of BETA Technologies walks us through the details of how to design, build, and operate electric planes — first for relatively short light-cargo flights, but eventually, he says, for all of aviation. I loved this
In this episode, recorded at a live event, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee discusses his multiple decades of climate advocacy, his political successes, and the upcoming threat to one of his crowning achievements. This is a public episode.
In his book The Price Is Wrong, Brett Christophers argues that, contrary to recent economic triumphalism among renewables advocates, wind and solar are not profitable enough to attract the private capital necessary to scale as fast as they need
In this episode, I have a lively conversation with Alp Kucukelbir, co-author of a recent “Artificial Intelligence for Climate Change Mitigation Roadmap,” about the strengths and limits of AI in relation to climate, where it all might be headed,
More than half a billion people on the African continent lack access to electricity, and the number is only growing. In this episode, Tombo Banda of CrossBoundary’s Mini-Grid Innovation Lab discusses the longstanding barriers to electricity acc
Steel production generates almost 10 percent of global carbon emissions and has long been considered “hard to abate.” Enter Boston Metal, a startup that aims to make carbon-free steel using only (sing it with me!) clean electricity. In this epi
In this episode, Rob Gramlich of Grid Strategies comes back on the pod to discuss the suddenly sizzling transmission world, where both President Biden and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have recently announced significant updates to t
Which political races should climate advocates focus on to get the most bang for their buck? (Hint: not the presidency.) In this episode, executive director Caroline Spears of Climate Cabinet explains how her organization uses data science to i
In this episode, I talk with CEO Paul Lambert of startup Quilt, which came out of stealth this week with heat pumps that are not ugly. They perform well too, and are easy to buy and install, but mostly they’re not ugly. This is a public episode
In this episode, California electricity guru Lorenzo Kristov shares his vision of a just, democratic, “bottom-up” grid based in distributed local energy. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acce
Climate awareness is growing in the real world, but it remains rare in popular entertainment, as illustrated by some new research on climate in film. In this episode, Anna Jane Joyner discusses the efforts of her nonprofit, Good Energy, to help
In this episode, Grace Van Horn and Jonas Monast of the Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy do a deep analysis on the EPA’s recently finalized carbon pollution standards for power plants. This is a public episode. If you’d like to d
In this episode, longtime clean-energy analyst Michael Liebreich assesses five causes for pessimism about the net-zero transition, alongside five causes for optimism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscriber
In this episode, Joselyn Lai of Bedrock Energy describes hardware and software improvements that enable geothermal heat pumps to be installed more quickly and less expensively, even in large commercial and industrial buildings in tight urban sp
What’s the best way to handle rising US electricity demand? Contrary to what some large utilities and regulators think, it’s not building new fossil gas plants. In this episode, Eric Gimon and Michelle Solomon, coauthors of a new report from po
The Inflation Reduction Act made it much easier for companies to sell clean energy tax credits that they cannot make use of themselves. In this episode, CEO Alfred Johnson of Crux Climate explains how this seemingly wonky tweak has created a ma
Is China on track to reduce its carbon emissions? If so, why is it building so much coal power? In this episode, researcher Lauri Myllyvirta brings data to bear on China’s recent decarbonization efforts and helps demystify the country’s larger
In this episode, I speak with Maxine Bédat, a former fashion startup CEO and founder of the nonprofit New Standards Institute. We talk about the source of the fashion industry's emissions, what can be done to reduce them, the need for regulatio
In this episode, I speak with Heather House, a manager in RMI’s carbon-free transportation program, and Rushad Nanavatty, the head of Third Derivative, an early-stage climate tech accelerator co-founded by RMI, to better understand the role of
The Inflation Reduction Act included a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, $27 billion to be disseminated primarily in vulnerable and under-resourced communities for clean energy and climate mitigation projects. In this episode, EPA’s Jahi Wise disc
In this episode, Duncan Campbell of Scale Microgrid Solutions makes the case that distributed energy resources (DERs) — solar panels, EVs, home batteries, etc. — are, thanks to rising electricity demand and constraints on grid expansion, poised
This week, the Biden administration announced billions of dollars in grants for industrial emissions-reduction projects. In this episode, Rebecca Dell of the ClimateWorks Foundation and Evan Gillespie of Industrious Labs describe the types of p
Join Podchaser to...
- Rate podcasts and episodes
- Follow podcasts and creators
- Create podcast and episode lists
- & much more
Unlock more with Podchaser Pro
- Audience Insights
- Contact Information
- Demographics
- Charts
- Sponsor History
- and More!
- Account
- Register
- Log In
- Find Friends
- Resources
- Help Center
- Blog
- API
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More
- © 2024 Podchaser, Inc.
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service
- Contact Us