[Episode #21] – The Role of Development Banks in Energy Transition
Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) like the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank are publicly committed to ending energy poverty and enabling energy access to the...
View Article[Episode #22] – Can Economics Guide the Energy Transition?
Is conventional, free-market economic theory really up to the task of energy transition and combating climate change? Can we let the so-called invisible hand of the market guide us through the...
View Article[Episode #23] – Facts and Falsehoods in Energy Transition
Should we tweak our markets to keep nuclear plants alive, or forget about markets and pay for them another way… and do we really need them at all to keep the grid functioning? Is nuclear power really...
View Article[Episode #1] – The Real War on Coal
How the real war on coal is about economics, geology, and little skirmishes in local courts, not a national or presidential campaign; and the tragic failing of politics to address the phasing-out of...
View Article[Episode #2] – Limits on the Grid – Part 1
What the modeling work of our national renewable energy lab tells us about how far renewables can go on the grid under various scenarios, and their real technical limits. Geek rating: 7 Guest: Mackay...
View Article[Episode #3] – Limits on the Grid – Part 2
How energy markets need to change to level the playing field for renewables, how renewables should be valued, and whether wind and solar must "eat their own lunch" by virtue of having a free marginal...
View Article[Episode #4] – Energiewende
All about Germany's famed energy transition effort, the Energiewende. What it is, what it isn't (with a strong dose of mythbusting), and what the future of grid power looks like from one of the...
View Article[Episode #5] – Winning the Carbon War
One man's sweeping ride through three decades of campaigning for action on climate and deploying solar from a veteran of the "carbon wars," plus his pithy observations on what our leaders in government...
View Article[Episode #6] – Transition from Oil
The recent history of oil production and prices, the future of the oil industry, the potential for transitioning away from oil and the opportunity for EVs, and ERCI - the Energy Returned on Capital...
View Article[Episode #7] – EROI
All about EROI (Energy Return on Investment), the state of biophysical economics, the relationship between energy and ecology, and what EROI could and should tell us about the outlook for a fuel -- for...
View Article[Episode #8] – Storage on the Grid
All about storage on the grid -- in front of the meter -- with a little bit about behind-the-meter storage. How to value storage, how storage complements and replaces generation, and some geeky...
View Article[Episode #9] – Macro Outlook for 2016
A full-spectrum romp through the macroeconomic context: Stock markets; oil and gas prices; coal's collapse; the difficult LNG export market; what commodities are telling us about the health of the...
View Article[Episode #10] – Grid Architecture of the Future
What kind of grid architecture and markets will we need in order to actually operate the distributed, decentralized grid of the future? What sorts of regulatory models will be needed? And what does it...
View Article[Episode #11] – India and Coal
Everyone knows that India is the second-largest coal importing nation in the world, after China, and that it is the fastest-growing source of global CO2 emissions thanks to its rapid adoption of coal....
View Article[Episode #12] – Energy Access for the Developing World
What’s the best way to bring energy to those in the developing world who lack it? Why do forecasts by agencies like IEA always seem to overstate the cost of solutions in the developing world? Why do...
View Article[Episode #13] – The Oracle of Oil
Many have heard of peak oil, but few seem to understand what it really means, and fewer still know much of anything about the father of the idea, M. King Hubbert. In this episode we interview science...
View Article[Episode #24] – Starting Over
What if we didn’t have to work around the grid we have today, with all of its inertia and incumbents and inflexibility? If we could start over and design the grid from scratch, what would it look...
View Article[Episode #25] – The Energy-Water Nexus
Energy and water are inextricably linked: It takes energy to supply water, and it takes water to supply energy. And those processes consume vast amounts of both. Yet we have only really begun to study...
View Article[Episode #26] – Geoengineering
As the world continues to struggle with the effects of climate change, energy transition is more important than ever as a key pathway to stopping global warming. But will it be enough? Many serious...
View Article[Episode #27] – Better Grid Modeling
Although it’s clear enough that energy transition is necessary and reasonable, and although we know that transition is mainly happening on the grid at first, there is still much uncertainty about...
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