Podcast Episodes

Climate philanthropy in a time of Trump

This week I talk with Dan Stein, whose organization Giving Green seeks to align climate philanthropy with the principles of effective altruism. But what does "effective" mean in the face of fossil fu…

Published on 12 hours ago

What does clean energy activism look like?

Movement veterans Bill McKibben and Jamie Henn have been thinking about where climate activism goes from here. They argue for a new focus on celebrating and accelerating the miraculous global boom in…

Published on 1 week ago

Trump's latest attempt to save coal

In this episode, I'm joined by Frank Rambo of the Horizon Climate Initiative to discuss "uneconomic dispatch" — the costly and polluting practice of running coal plants even when cheaper, cleaner opt…

Published on 2 weeks ago

What the FEOC?

In this episode, I'm joined by Jake Higdon and Isabel Munilla, who helped develop the original "foreign entity of concern" (FEOC) standards for the Inflation Reduction Act, which sought to encourage …

Published on 3 weeks ago

A fireside chat with Jigar Shah

In this episode, recorded live back in May, I'm joined by the one and only Jigar Shah to discuss Washington state climate policy and post-IRA policy in general. Jigar argues that to build political d…

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago

US transit costs and how to tame them

I'm joined by Alon Levy of NYU's Transit Costs Project, whose work documents how expensive it is to build transit in the US relative to the rest of the world. We discuss how countries like Spain and …

Published on 4 weeks ago

Ann Arbor's experiment with a new kind of utility

Ann Arbor voted to create a parallel, municipal electric utility that offers only distributed renewables, and Missy Stults is the woman making it real. We explore the nuts and bolts: buying existing …

Published on 1 month ago

What's going on with electric boats?

In this episode, Arc CEO Mitch Lee explains why the jump from gas-powered boats to electric boats is even bigger, in terms of quality and user experience, than the jump from gas-powered cars to EVs. …

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think

I chat with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones, authors of a new Ember report, who find that solar-plus-storage costs have declined so much that it can now provide baseload-level power in sunny citie…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

Trump's big bill: How bad is it and what comes next?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.volts.wtf

In this "What the F is Happening" episode, I'm joined by Jane Flegal and Jesse Jenkins to perform a wake for the Inflation R…

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago