Renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann joins us to discuss his new book, Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis, and to answer some of the hottest questions in climate science discussions today: * Are we doomed? * Is the world facing polar ice breakdown if we reach the same CO2 concentrations that existed in the geological past when the planet was free of ice? * Is there evidence of...

It’s been a difficult year for the offshore wind sector, with numerous projects and power purchase agreements getting canceled. Contracts and incentives simply haven’t kept pace with rising costs, forcing developers to shelve money-losing projects. So is the offshore wind sector hitting a wall, or merely some temporary speed bumps on the path to a bright future? We're think it's the latter, as do industry and government insiders. In this episode, we take stock of the offshore wind...

Twenty-six years ago, on a wee island with just 65 residents off the west coast of Scotland, the seeds of a fascinating energy transition project were planted. That began a long process which ultimately made it possible for the island’s inhabitants to become the world’s first community to launch an off-grid electric system powered by wind, water and solar. In the Autumn of 2023, Chris traveled to that island—the Isle of Eigg—to see it for himself, and interview some of the key people who...

Should our response to global warming focus on technologies that reduce emissions, or on embracing simpler lifestyles? Why do some believe that deploying more renewables and accelerating the energy transition is essential, while others advocate for ‘degrowth’ instead, and claim that switching to renewables is counterproductive? Today’s conversation explores a recent paper by lifecycle assessment researcher Marco Raugei of Oxford Brookes University, in which he describes an ongoing debate...

Are EV sales about to hit an inflection point and rapidly take majority market shares for new vehicles? And if they are, does that portend a peak in global oil demand before the end of this decade? The transportation team at BloombergNEF certainly thinks so. In this data-packed, two-hour conversation, team lead Colin McKerracher walks us through their latest report, Electric Vehicle Outlook 2023, published in September. We explore the outlook for EVs, plug-in hybrids, and hydrogen...

If we genuinely need nuclear power—be it older conventional designs or new, unproven small modular designs—to make the energy transition a success, then that case has not been demonstrated. Instead, nuclear advocates have primarily used political argument to support continued investment in it. Because if we just went by the industry’s actual track record, and properly internalized its risks and high costs, we’d never build another nuclear power plant again. Nuclear power never had a proper...

Can ancient architectural and building techniques help us create comfortable spaces without consuming energy in today's world? Our guest in this episode thinks so. Dr. Sandra Piesik is an award-winning architect, author, and scientist with extensive experience in what is now called “vernacular architecture.” Among many other things, she specializes in agitating for legislation supporting sustainability and nature-based solutions to the climate challenge. She has published two books...

For the Energy Transition Show’s eighth anniversary, we welcome back energy researcher Jonathan Koomey, a veteran guest who shares invaluable insights with us in our annual reviews. We kick off the episode by analyzing the impact of the global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the energy transition. Then we revisit four big energy transition themes: * Command Capitalism: Exploring the growing trend of government intervention in energy markets. * Climate Change...

As we have discussed in previous episodes of the show (like Episodes #73, #177, and #198), state regulators and legislators can be ‘captured’ by the industries they are supposed to regulate and wind up serving those industries instead of the public interest. Usually, regulatory capture is a form of corruption: The system isn’t supposed to work that way, but certain interests can manage to corrupt it. In Texas, however, that kind of capture isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. In this episode,...

A tsunami of distributed energy resources (DERs) is starting to arrive on the grid. Customers are adopting millions of EVs, rooftop solar systems, battery backup units, and other devices that can dynamically respond to grid conditions. But most utilities are not engaging with this wave proactively. Instead, they’re being reactive, slow, and even resistant to allowing these devices to connect to the grid or participate in transactions. As we rebuild and transform the grid in the course of...

Whose job is it to lead the energy transition? In previous episodes, we’ve talked about how markets can guide the transition, especially after targeted reforms. We’ve considered the role of regulators, and the problems of regulatory capture and corruption. We’ve asked how local community leaders and elected officials can lead the energy transition from the bottom up, and conversely, how local activists can hinder and undermine the energy transition. We’ve also looked at the role of...

Why does so much media coverage of climate change emphasize the worst-case scenarios and the slow speed of the energy transition? Why don't more stories highlight how the energy transition is working and accelerating, reducing expected increases in carbon emissions and rendering the worst-case warming scenarios increasingly unlikely? These are important questions, because reporting about the climate and the energy transition can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the media constantly...

On March 30th, in what some have dubbed its ‘Green Day,” the UK government released a package of plans to advance its action on climate and the energy transition. A centerpiece of the package detailed how the government’s plans will achieve the emissions reductions required in its sixth carbon budget. In this episode, Dr. Simon Evans, Deputy Editor and Senior Policy Editor of Carbon Brief, rejoins us to review the highlights of the new policy package. Comprising over 3,000 pages across...

This is part two of our interview with Mohua Mukherjee, a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Previously, she was a development economist and project manager with the World Bank, working in over 40 countries. In this second part, we dive into India’s use of oil and natural gas, and why it has continued to purchase these fuels from Russia, even as the West has implemented trade restrictions. We go on to explore India’s unique approach to transitioning mobility...

To mark the milestone of our 200th episode, we’re taking a look back at how the energy transition has progressed since we launched this podcast in 2015. We revisit the “war on coal”, the concept of the “energy transition,” advances in wind and solar power, changing perspectives about the future of natural gas, “baseload” power’s fading role, the astonishingly rapid uptake of EVs, evolving views on nuclear power, and more! We also take a moment to reflect on the Energy Transition Show over...

This is part one of our interview with Mohua Mukherjee, a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Previously, she was a development economist and project manager with the World Bank, working in over 40 countries. In this episode, we discuss the overall energy mix in India, and explore the dynamics of the coal power sector. We then take a deep dive into the solar power sector, including India’s innovative financing strategy leveraging a World Bank loan. Finally,...

Why have coal-mining communities continued to white-knuckle their interests in coal long after it was clear the industry was well into decline and would never come back? How were politicians able to misdirect blame toward a “War on Coal” narrative rather than economic factors? In this episode, Jamie Van Nostrand, a longtime lawyer who has worked both for utility regulators and utility companies, sheds light on these questions. In addition to his current role as a regulator, Jamie has...

The time may have arrived for Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) to fully realize their potential. In a VPP, groups of distributed energy resources (DERs) like EVs, batteries, and heat pumps can be managed to consume power when it is inexpensive, avoid consuming power when it is expensive, and even provide power back to the grid when supplies are limited. While VPPs have been around for many years, operating commercially in places like Australia, the US power grid has not seen wide-scale...

Most energy transition reporting narrowly focuses on technology stories. When journalists do occasionally write about energy transition policy and politics, they tend to limit the framing to a particular type of energy technology, such as drilling for oil or putting up a new wind farm. What if this technological tunnel vision is causing us to overlook the most important aspects of the energy transition? If the most transformative and enduring aspects of transition end up being policy and...

Is the Arctic permafrost in a warming feedback loop that will unleash a methane bomb, pushing the planet past a tipping point and into inevitable climate doom? Not precisely. But the warming permafrost does release greenhouse gases, and they do matter. Understanding the Arctic permafrost's role in the global climate cycle is important. And there absolutely is alarming evidence of climate change in the Arctic, to which we must pay attention. In this episode, permafrost researcher Dr....

Energy transition skeptics continue to argue that certain critical minerals and materials, such as "rare earth" metals, place a fundamental limitation on scaling up wind, solar, storage and EVs. But is that true? Or, are these material availability doubts being expressed as a bad-faith tactic to undermine the momentum toward energy transition success? Until now, we didn't have enough information to make a conclusion about the material demands of the transition in the context of resource...

As the European Union and the United States work toward stronger climate policies, their two divergent approaches are creating tension. The EU has opted for a mix of rewards and penalties to incentivize green industries while also taxing carbon emissions from domestic industries - a “carrots and sticks” approach. On the other hand, the US is only offering rewards because Congress can't assemble a sufficient majority to agree on taxing carbon emissions from its industries; in other words, a...

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 introduced two tax credits to encourage the development of a domestic clean hydrogen industry in the United States. These tax credits can potentially be worth billions of dollars and are based on a sliding scale, depending on how ‘clean’ the hydrogen production is. The less greenhouse gas emitted during production, the larger the tax credit. However, measuring and accounting for the greenhouse gas emissions from a hydrogen production facility can be...

Since 2007 the US transitioned from an oil production has-been that was more than four decades past its previous peak, to the world's top oil and gas producer, and the top exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The shale boom delivered many benefits to the US and the world, including over a decade of reprieve from the impending threat of peak oil. But now shale producers face numerous challenges — such as running out of decent prospects where they can drill new wells. The implications...

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank are increasingly under pressure to invest more in renewable energy projects in emerging markets. The lack of financing for such projects is a problem at the small, distributed scale as we discussed in Episode #189, and it’s also a problem for utility-scale projects as we discuss in this episode. In this conversation, Brad Handler, a Program Manager and Researcher at the Sustainable Finance Lab of the Payne Institute at the Colorado...