This week, we have a drop-in episode from our new podcast at Latitude Media: Political Climate. Since the Inflation Reduction Act became law in August 2022, we’ve asked ourselves a big question: could the government and the private sector actually get this sprawling set of climate programs up and running? So far, many would answer “yes.” The IRA ha…

AI is suddenly in use everywhere – and it’s headed for the power sector. New research from Latitude Intelligence and Indigo Advisory Group shows a coming wave of AI integration, inside and outside of utilities. Distributed energy companies are increasingly integrating AI into their products, and many power companies are building teams to take advan…

John O’Donnell co-founded and ran two solar thermal companies. He watched as the technology shifted from being the most promising utility-scale solar technology, to getting out-competed by photovoltaics everywhere. But he stayed passionate about heat. Today, he’s CEO of Rondo Energy, which makes a “heat battery” for industrial applications using br…

Mark Gurman has been covering Apple since 2009. His reporting career is full of scoops about new products or strategic decisions from inside the company. His latest scoop in February: Apple is finally shutting down its efforts to build an autonomous electric car. Apple first started exploring an electric car in 2014. At that point, cars had already…

The US green hydrogen industry is at a critical juncture. After months of input and debate, the government put out draft rules for tax credits at the end of last year – setting strict requirements for matching new, local renewables to hydrogen production. It was hailed by many as a really important step for ensuring that green hydrogen actually liv…

There are many forces that could hold back AI in the power system: computing infrastructure, power availability, regulation, and corporate inertia. The biggest one? Good data. Utilities and grid operators are awash in data. But getting access to it – or making sense of it – is very difficult. For a better understanding of how to change that, we tur…

Early in her career, Amanda Li worked on many deals in solar and storage as part of a billion-dollar sustainable infrastructure fund. And she discovered a problem that often hinders deployment: the underwriting process is cumbersome and slow. “All of it was in spreadsheets, word documents, emails. When you look at a solar deal, there's a lot of doc…

When Brian Janous took charge of Microsoft’s clean energy strategy in 2011, the company’s data center demand was modest. He was measuring new demand in the tens of megawatts. Over the years, that grew to hundreds of megawatts of new demand as hyperscale computing expanded. And then everything changed in the spring of 2023, with the public launch of…

In the early 2000s, Steve Cotton ran a company serving the fast-growing data center industry with backup battery systems. And when those systems reached the end of their lives, the company monetized kilotons of lead-acid batteries by sending them to recycling facilities – industrial plants that break down and burn the components. “It's very dangero…

Can a couple trillion dollars feel small? Global investments in the energy transition – from the buildout of factories and power projects to project finance and government debt – hit nearly $1.8 trillion last year. That’s almost as big as the GDP of South Korea. It’s nearly 20% more than the year before, and nearly eight times more than a decade ag…

If we want any chance of affordably and reliably building a grid powered 100% by zero-carbon resources, we need to triple the capacity of virtual power plants. That’s the conclusion of a report released last fall by the Department of Energy, which examined the different business models and integration approaches for tying solar, batteries, thermost…

The storage market is full of surprises. Last year, global storage installations were a third higher than expected, driven mostly by Chinese policy to attach batteries to renewables. Meanwhile, a ramp-up in manufacturing is causing oversupply – and a potential shakeout for smaller battery makers. By 2030, the world could see 1.8 terawatt-hours of s…

As President Biden’s green industrial policies reignite the US manufacturing base, AI computing workloads soar, and machines across the economy turn electric, the power grid is facing an historic increase in demand. After almost two decades of flat electricity consumption, suddenly America’s grid planners are doubling their forecasts for demand – r…

Artificial intelligence is quickly accelerating drug discovery, healthcare services, product design, and manufacturing efficiency. Now it's here for materials development – and it could be one of the most influential uses of AI in energy. A decade ago, Greg Mulholland started playing around with machine learning as a way to accelerate product devel…

Turbulent. Equilibrating. Those are the words that investors Gabriel Kra and Carly Anderson use to describe the last year for venture capital in climate tech. We now have a full picture of the year for climate tech venture investing in 2023. Fresh data from Sightline Climate shows a decline in deal counts, round sizes, and a dropoff in repeat inves…

When the numbers for 2023 are finalized, there could be another 320 to 413 gigawatts of solar installed around the world – bringing global capacity to nearly 1.5 terawatts. Solar is now on track to surpass coal and fossil gas capacity in the next few years, bringing generation to 10% of global electricity supply. There's universal recognition that …

The competing trends in the energy transition from 2023 were stark: a looming peak in demand for oil, gas, and coal; a global agreement to transition away from fossil fuels; and an increasingly realistic pathway to triple renewables development. But we also experienced the hottest global temperatures in 125,000 years, record US oil & gas production…

In less than a decade, America has become the world’s biggest exporter of liquified natural gas. In the mid-2000s, the US was building terminals to import more fossil gas. But that all changed after the fracking boom unlocked vast reserves of hydrocarbons. The US became a net exporter in 2017. Then, Russia’s war on Ukraine forced a scramble for new…

The nuclear industry is grappling with several issues: high interest rates, rising commodity prices, limited supply chains, fuel availability, and a regulatory environment that has been slow to adapt to new technologies. In the west, nuclear knowhow has faded over the decades. Even with a surge in policy support and public interest, development is …

It took 12 years to triple global renewables – and now we need to do it in eight years. As the latest UN climate summit begins, there’s a proposal on the table to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. Countries may agree to it in theory, but can the market meet it in practice? This week, we’ll look at why this tripling is necessary, how it coul…

Weather forecasts for the grid depend on supercomputers to calculate the flow of heat, water, and radiation in the atmosphere, and then spit out predictions about what could happen next. These supercomputers are powerful. But they are also expensive and slow, relative to how quickly the weather changes. A new class of AI-based weather forecasts cou…

This is a partner podcast episode, brought to you by Intersect Power. The U.S. grid is in trouble. It's old; it's really hard to build new transmission lines; and that is limiting the amount of wind and solar we can add to the system. Sheldon Kimber, Founder and CEO of the clean energy developer Intersect Power, says the grid is “broken.” But he ha…

Microsoft was an early mover in integrating OpenAI’s LLM into its Azure cloud services. And now every part of Microsoft’s technology stack — from cloud infrastructure to data analytics to consumer apps — will be “reimagined” for the AI era, said Nadella. As a result, every industry will inevitably be impacted by AI. Utilities will also find themsel…

Wind, solar and batteries have seen steady, fairly predictable cost drops over the last two decades. But a combination of pressures – supply chain turmoil, grid constraints, interest rates, labor costs – has raised costs for products and projects. And they’re challenging the commercial viability of emerging sectors like offshore wind and hydrogen. …

The industrial sector is set to overtake power generation and transportation as the biggest source of planet warming emissions in the US by 2035, according to The Rhodium Group. The sector’s impact is even greater on the global scale. Industry around the world accounts for more carbon dioxide emissions than all forms of transportation combined – la…

There are a lot of quarterly ups and downs in venture dollars deployed across climatetech. But the trend is generally up. Since 2021, more than 200 new climate investment funds have been created with $121 billion under management, according to CTVC. Earlier this month, Canary Media Editorial Director Eric Wesoff explored the evolved state of climat…

California is at a crossroads. The state has already installed nearly 1.8 million rooftop solar systems, 5 gigawatts of batteries, and 1.6 million electric cars. But it is also facing some serious challenges. The list is long: controversial policy changes, extreme weather threats, and backlogs – lots and lots of backlogs. It is facing serious backl…

Just as the auto industry resolves supply chain problems from the Covid pandemic, a new disruptive force has emerged: labor disputes. Nearly 20,000 American auto workers are on strike as they ask for higher pay. At the heart of their concerns: will the shift to electric cars make them worse off? We’ll look at a strike that is raising big questions …

Renewables and electric vehicles are on a tear, and they’ll soon likely attract $2 trillion in yearly investment. But global emissions have not peaked. So what are the new frontiers of technology that will make renewables and storage more valuable – and draw down emissions at the speed needed? This week, we’re going to reflect on that question comi…

In the last few months, three major projects in Europe and America have been delayed or canceled, thanks to rapidly rising costs. Those projects make up more than 10% of current offshore wind capacity in the EU and US, according to Bloomberg. Another 9.7 gigawatts are at risk in America, as developers look to renegotiate contracts. The complexity o…

As the carbon dioxide removal industry grows, engineered solutions like direct-air capture are getting more attention. According to the IPCC, novel methods for carbon dioxide removal are necessary to meet the Paris climate targets. But another UN body, the UNFCCC, recently sparked controversy by concluding in draft language that “engineering-based …

This is a partner podcast episode, brought to you by South32. Pat Risner spent 25 years as an engineer, general manager, and executive at one of the largest mining companies in the world, BHP. Today, he's the president of the Hermosa Project, a mining development in Arizona run by the global mining firm, South32. That mine is the only advanced proj…

A year after it was passed, the Inflation Reduction Act is already reshaping the energy and automotive industries in the U.S. New factories for a wide array of clean energy components are being planned. Old factories are being reopened, retooled, or expanded. According to a Canary Media analysis, that is amounting to over $70 billion in new investm…

In August, the US government is set to issue standards for hydrogen tax credits. Over the last year, a debate has been raging over how strict those standards should be for matching renewables with hydrogen production. With rules set to be released in the coming weeks, ad campaigns have popped up from industry trying to persuade the feds to adopt lo…

For years, rooftop solar was overlooked as a reliability solution in New England. But in a very sudden reversal, the region's grid operator says it’s critical to keeping the lights on across the region. New England doesn't have its own fossil resources, so the region is dependent on oil and natural gas imported from other regions of the country. Ov…

For decades, we have wildly underestimated the growth of renewables. Now that cost curves and deployments have exceeded all expectations, what’s next for the clean energy industry? This week, we feature a conversation between journalist David Roberts and futurist Ramez Naam about what's ahead for tech trends – from renewables and batteries, to grid…

Mateo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of the long-duration storage company Form Energy. Mateo has spent the last two decades building battery storage companies, with home base being California. But he just moved from Silicon Valley to the Rust Belt, where Form is scaling production of its iron-air batteries at an old steel mill in West Virginia…

Putin’s assault on Ukraine triggered an energy crisis that sent Europe’s economies into a tailspin and put the European energy transition to the test. But how did the European Union, a leader in climate action, become so dependent on Russian oil and gas to begin with? This week, we're posting the first episode in a new five-part series for The Big …

Last week, we started the show with a simple question: what do we want from the artificial intelligence systems advancing so quickly? Inevitably, when we start grappling with that question, we have to talk about ethics and data quality. This week, we feature two conversations about the ethics and implementation of AI across the energy economy. We'l…

We are at the start of a commercial arms race in artificial intelligence that has thrilled some, and alarmed others. For many, it's both. There's no shortage of heady proclamations about where the technology is headed. Google CEO Sundar Pachai calls AI “more profound than fire or electricity.” We are in the middle of a period of exuberance in AI, w…

As we evaluate the Biden team's approach to building back domestic manufacturing and climate-positive infrastructure, we keep coming back to the question: what makes the current push different from the Obama era one? You can’t answer the question without exploring the factors behind the demise of some companies of the cleantech 1.0 era – in particu…

Republicans dominate every part of government in Texas. It's been that way for two decades. It also happens to be a state with the most wind and utility-scale solar development in the country. Over their 20 years of dominance, Republicans in the state have mostly supported renewables, often in a very warm way. But lately, they've turned against the…

We are at an inflection point for electric vehicles. The mass adoption phase is underway in many countries, including America. The US government is putting billions of dollars behind EV charging and battery production. And nearly every automaker is releasing or developing an EV model. But the race to electrify cars and trucks is about so much more …

This week, we’re running a bonus episode from our friends at Environmental Defense Fund and their podcast Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers. Transportation is the largest single source of carbon emissions in the U.S. People who can electrify vehicle fleets are in demand — especially in school districts, where diesel emissions are causi…

In the nine months since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law, $28 billion in new manufacturing investments have been unveiled. Credit Suisse expects the IRA to support $1.7 trillion in new US manufacturing in a decade. Shalini Ramanathan of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners is watching the space, excited about that industrial growth. Sh…

Are you a utility or climate tech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20. Our show this week was recorded live at the Nuclear Energy Assembly in Washington, DC. It comes in three parts. Fir…

Are you a utility or climate tech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20. We’re hard at work on a new season of The Big Switch podcast, which will go deep on the impact of the European ener…

Over the last two years, we’ve created the foundation for a green industrial awakening in America — thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Collectively, they will leverage hundreds of billions of dollars to support domestic producers. The green industrial framework is not ne…

The landscape for peaker power plants in New York is changing. Over the next two years, dozens of aging oil- and gas-fired plants will be phased out around New York City, thanks to stronger air quality rules and the state’s climate law. Under the rules, some of National Grid's peaking generation will shut down permanently, and some will steadily ra…

Around the US, cities are passing laws to phase fossil gas out of buildings. But the culinary industry is pushing back, saying that gas bans hurt chefs and restaurant owners. This week, the California Restaurant Association successfully won a lawsuit challenging Berkeley's pioneering gas ban. Chris Galarza is on a mission to show chefs that industr…