The Green New Deal plan is out, and we’re suddenly having a national conversation about climate change again. It’s also injecting some early drama into the presidential primaries. This week, we’re digging into the plan. We’ll tell you what’s in it, assess the reactions, and look at whether it will amount to anything. Also: is the democratic-soc ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: How David Crane worked his way up in the power business to become CEO of NRG Energy — only to get tossed out of the job for his bold stance on climate. In this episode, Emily Kirsch talks with Crane about taking risks in the conservative power industry. We’re going to hear from Crane about why being a CEO is so lonel ...…

This week: a battle Royale for energy dominance. We're cross-posting an episode from our other Greentech Media podcast, The Interchange. The competitors: utilities, oil & gas majors, mobility providers and big tech. We’re pitting them against each other inside of a voice-activated, electrified cage to see who will emerge as the energy company o ...…

What will the U.S. grid mix look like in 2050? It depends on which models you follow. The future according to the Energy Information Administration's latest report: wind will stop growing, coal will stop declining, demand for electricity will keep going up, and emission reductions will moderate. A lot of people are unhappy about it. It's no sec ...…

What is energy efficiency? That sounds like a pretty simple question. But it’s not. Defining efficiency used to be pretty straightforward: weatherize, upgrade equipment and lighting, use a bit of social science to cut consumption. But now efficiency is becoming just as much about shaping demand in real-time to support distributed energy. And th ...…

We are about to witness one of the most contentious and consequential bankruptcies in the history of energy. PG&E, California’s biggest utility, is reeling from wildfire costs — and it is now headed to the courts, where it will likely be dismantled. Will it crush California’s goals to clean up the electric grid? Or will lawmakers step in with a ...…

The political insanity in Washington can feel disconnected from reality. But two years into the Trump presidency, Americans all over the country are feeling it in the form of higher pollution. In this week's episode, we're starting off with a look at how the government shutdown and Trump's regulatory rollback are impacting energy-related agenci ...…

This week, it’s our year-ender episode. And you know what that means: we’re going round the horn with our assessment of 2018. First, we’ll discuss the top trends of the year. Then, a roundup of the best energy journalism of 2018. And finally, some predictions for 2019 — with a twist. Here some links to our top journalism choices: “The Coal Bail ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: Wunder Capital CEO Bryan Birsic on why he wants to solve the commercial solar financing challenge, when so many others couldn't. "That is what a startup is to me. It's 50 or 100 people who can move a multi-billion-dollar industry in a way that an incumbent with thousands of people and multitudes of resources cannot," ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: Wunder Capital CEO Bryan Birsic on why he wants to solve the commercial solar financing challenge, when so many others couldn't. "That is what a startup is to me. It's 50 or 100 people who can move a multi-billion-dollar industry in a way that an incumbent with thousands of people and multitudes of resources cannot," ...…

Back in 2008, there was a lot of excitement about geothermal. Many major banks were backing large-scale geothermal projects around the world; a wide range of startups were promising to unlock new resources; and wind and solar hadn’t shown their explosive growth yet. But then the financial crisis hit. In the decade since, growth in geothermal ha ...…

California has seen a million and a half acres of forest burned this year. As the state recovers from the devastating Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire, residents are looking for someone to blame. Now attention turns to utilities. Both Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric are under investigation and facing class-action lawsuits for po ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: How Sunrun CEO Lynn Jurich convinced homeowners and banks to invest millions into third-party rooftop solar during the great recession. “Everybody said it won’t work. We took it as a challenge,” says Jurich. “And so we just went for it.” Sunrun was a pioneer in residential solar services. Unlike some of its fallen br ...…

This week: we make sense of America’s midterm elections. Will Democrats do anything on energy in the House? Why did so many ballot initiatives fail? What does the score tell us about the value of running as a climate hawk? First, we’ll look at what happened in states with major ballot questions on carbon pricing, market design and renewables. T ...…

Ten years ago this week, stock markets around the world cratered as fears grew that the global economy was headed into a deep, dark recession. Alan Greenspan called it “a once-in-a-century credit tsunami.” Today, we are still feeling the economic and geopolitical consequences of the financial crisis. Energy markets were also transformed as a re ...…

This week: the White House abandons a plan to save coal plants. Did Trump read the IPCC’s latest report and have a change of heart? Turns out, the legally-flimsy effort caved under its own weight. We’ll explain. Then, failing Brexit talks weigh heavily on energy companies in the UK. If a deal can’t be struck with the EU, what will happen to ene ...…

For two years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been working on a new analysis about global emissions pathways. The report was released this week — and the conclusion is pretty dire. Or is it actually more hopeful than it appears? This week, we’ll discuss the IPCC’s findings, debate the tone, and dissect media coverage of the r ...…

This week, we're live in New York City. Our theme: are we making progress? We're joined by special guest Eric Roston, the sustainability editor at Bloomberg. A big thanks to the Urban Future Lab, ACRE and Solar One for organizing the show as part of Clean Energy Connections.

For all our East Coast fans of The Energy Gang: make sure to get your tickets for our live show on October 4 in New York City! Find them here. This week on Watt It Takes: Why one man spent 15 years of his life obsessed with flying a solar airplane around the world. We’re going to hear from Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss-balloonist-turned-futurist wh ...…

Before you do anything else, buy tickets to our live show on October 4 in New York City. It sells out fast, so get your tickets now! One year after Hurricanes Harvey and Maria crushed Texas and Puerto Rico, Florence became one of the ten costliest hurricanes in U.S. history. North Carolina is still reeling from severe flooding. And like Houston ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: How a Texas entrepreneur with fossil fuel roots came to see solar and storage as the future of energy. We feature a conversation with John Berger, the CEO of the residential solar-and-storage firm Sunnova, about his mission to convince traditional energy investors to put their money into solar. Sunnova has pulled in ...…

This week: California passes a bill to source 100% clean electricity by 2045. What does that actually mean? And more importantly, how will the target be met? Then, writing in the New York Times this weekend, journalist Bethany McLean warned about fracking’s financial bubble. Is this a dire warning or a re-hash of old arguments? We’ll end with a ...…

This week, we're using an entire episode to discuss an ambitious piece of reporting on climate change. Earlier this month, the New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to a specific period of time in modern history: 1979 and 1989. It was a time when we first reckoned with the impact of climate change — a period of great awakening in scie ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: How Ryan Popple’s experience in the military, Tesla and venture capital helped him lead electric bus maker Proterra. “It’s good for the ‘keep calm and carry on mentality’ when people tend to bring me a box of broken parts. So if you’re the founder or CEO of an organization, you shouldn’t be surprised when most of wha ...…

There are now one trillion watts of wind and solar installed around the world, according to new figures from BNEF. It took a few decades to get here, but it’ll only take five years to do it again — and nearly 50 percent cheaper. Now that we’ve reached the terawatt scale, the true acceleration begins. This week on the podcast, we'll contextualiz ...…

The Gang is on summer vacation this week. We'll be back soon with our regular analysis and debate on the stories in energy. Meanwhile, we'd like to introduce you to Political Climate, GTM's newest podcast hosted by Senior Editor Julia Pyper. The show features healthy debates from Republicans and Democrats over the politics of energy and climate ...…

This week on Watt It Takes: We’ll hear from Susan Kennedy, the CEO of Advanced Microgrid Solutions, about her transition from politics to behind-the-meter energy storage. Kennedy was an important player in California environmental politics. She influenced some of the biggest pieces of legislation that launched the state’s solar industry and cap ...…

This week, David Roberts, a staff writer at Vox, joins the gang to talk about a wide range of topics in the news. How would a good carbon tax work? Are we fooling ourselves thinking Republicans will ever support one? In the absence of a carbon price, is 100% renewable energy good politics? Is it good policy? Should we bail out nuclear? Can rene ...…

Dozens of companies across solar, batteries and biofuels have imploded over the years. But it's hard to match the spectacular implosion of Better Place five years ago. Better Place rose to fame in 2007, pulling in nearly $1 billion of venture capital by promising to put millions of cheap electric cars and battery switching stations on roads aro ...…

Like fantasy sports? Listen to our deep decarbonization draft. The Energy Gang is break this week for the July 4 holiday. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, we're offering up a re-run from The Interchange. In this episode, Shayle and Stephen choose their rosters of nine technologies to decarbonize the global economy. The goal: find the b ...…

A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science gives us a clearer picture of the climate impact of natural gas. According to researchers, methane leakage across oil and gas operations in the U.S. are 60 percent higher than government estimates. Put another way: the methane leakage from oil and gas has the same warming effect over a 20-year ti ...…

Leila Madrone was constantly looking for creative ways to use robots. In the mid 2000's, she co-founded a music group called Ensemble Robot, which featured robots that played music. "I had this great passion to use robotics to have meaning in the world," said Madrone. Later, Madrone worked for NASA's intelligent robotics group. Then she caught ...…

Elon Musk announced Monday that Tesla is laying off 9 percent of salaried employees at the company. This is not the first round of sweeping layoffs at Tesla — the most recent came after the SolarCity acquisition. But this appears to be the biggest so far. We'll discuss Elon's new quest for profitability. Then, we'll cover the never-ending saga ...…

What’s the optimal way to spend money raised by a carbon tax? How should climate play in Florida’s big toss-up Congressional race? What’s the best energy platform for gubernatorial candidates? This week: your questions answered. We got a bunch of queries from listeners about politics — so that’s the direction we’re headed. We'll discuss what th ...…

There’s a new phrase bouncing around energy circles: Electrify Everything. This week, we talk to Nate Adams, a home performance expert whose personal mission is to rip gas meters out of homes and move us closer toward full electrification. As he’s learned from experience, it’s not easy. The electrification of homes may be getting easier in Cali ...…

Billy Parish dropped out of college to pursue a career in climate activism. Today, he's the CEO of America's biggest rooftop solar loan company, Mosaic. In this edition of Watt It Takes, Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch interviews Parish about his transition from activist to executive. They'll talk about the many iterations of Mosaic, difficulties i ...…

We all fall victim to myths. But when they're deeply tied to our belief systems, they can be nearly impossible to break. On this week's show, we're busting some of the most common myths in clean energy: No, storage doesn't necessarily increase emissions. It depends on how it's used. No, solar isn't just for rich Democrats. In California, Republ ...…

This podcast episode sponsored by West Monroe Partners, and brought to you by creative strategies. How do we think about change in the electric utility industry caused by distributed resources? Is it like telecom? Internet-based retail? Sam Uyeno, senior manager in West Monroe Partners’ energy and utilities practice, says that it may be more li ...…

Are we entering a new era of grid planning? In recent years, we've assumed that sweeping reforms are the best way to get distributed energy built. But in pockets of the country, a more localized approach to deploying these assets is taking hold – and it could be the sign of a much bigger shift to come. On this week's Energy Gang, we'll look at ...…

SunPower couldn’t convince the Trump Administration to abandon tariffs on imported solar panels. So now it plans to buy one of the companies pushing tariffs in the first place. Yesterday, SunPower unveiled plans to acquire SolarWorld’s U.S. operations. Two months ago, CEO Tom Werner said SunPower was going to divest from America. But now he’s b ...…

Statoil is the largest operator of oil and gas rigs around the world. Consequently, the company's biggest low-carbon investments are offshore: floating wind farms and distributed carbon capture and storage. This week, we're talking to Stephen Bull, the VP in charge of Statoil's low-carbon business, about where he sees the most potential. We'll ...…

After a multi-year decline, global carbon emissions are on the upswing. The International Energy Agency now says that emissions grew in 2017 -- caused by an increase oil, natural gas and coal demand. Nearly three-quarters of new energy demand across the globe was served by fossil fuels. At the same time, America saw another yearly drop in carbo ...…

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for two of Silicon Valley’s top car companies. After a pedestrian was killed by one of Uber’s autonomous cars in Arizona, the company’s AV operations were suspended. Other driverless car companies are now weighing the consequences to the technology, and regulators are asking if we need to slow down real-world tes ...…

In the early 2000s, investors weren't very interested in SunEdison's business plan to finance solar with power purchase agreements. "No one wanted to hear about physical infrastructure," said Jigar Shah, who drafted the business plan and co-founded the company. It took until 2006 to raise venture capital. But soon after, PPA customers started r ...…

There are three forces coming together in the transportation sector: vehicle autonomy, vehicle sharing, and vehicle electrification. On their own, app-based sharing and electric vehicles are powerful agents of change. Together with automation, "they're revolutionary," argues Dr. Dan Sperling, author of a new book on the subject. "It will change ...…

Amazon's analytical approach to understanding the customer allowed it to move beyond books and dominate the retail space. Entire industries are getting upended and transformed as a result. This story about disruption is a familiar one. We’ve seen how it plays time and time again – and it’s not pretty for the incumbents who fail to catch up with ...…

Last June, comedian John Oliver devoted a long segment to the struggling coal industry on his HBO show Last Week Tonight. He turned his attention to Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, one of the most bombastic advocates of coal. And then Murray sued Oliver for defamation. That defamation lawsuit was thrown out by a judge last week. But th ...…

If storage is the Swiss Army Knife of the electric grid, then U.S. energy regulators are breaking out their tool belts. Last week brought a historic ruling at FERC. Commissioners told regional grid operators to create rules valuing the grid services of energy storage. Will it screw natural gas peakers – or maybe cut, saw, file, prune, hook, or ...…

Since the White House slapped penalties on solar panels made outside America, a handful of companies say they’re likely to ramp up production in the U.S. In recent weeks, two Asian producers -- Jinko Solar and United Renewable Energy -- said they're planning to set up new module assembly plants. Other domestic producers are making plans to hire ...…