Was 2020 the year of carbon transparency? That’s what our host Shayle predicted back in 2019. Today, we’re checking in on that prediction with a rebroadcast of one of our favorite episodes. It originally aired almost a year ago in late June 2020. A handful of companies have experimented with labeling the carbon content of their products, but it's never really caught on. Now that might be changing.Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell recently called carbon “the new calorie" after the electronics maker implemented a CO2 label on all of its packaging. It’s one of many recent attempts by food and consumer goods producers to make the lifecycle emissions of their products clearer to consumers. Is it the start of a trend?In this episode, we’ll examine the new generation of climate labels. We’ve seen attempts at carbon labeling before. What makes these newer ones different? And will they stick?Plus, we’ll try to answer listener questions about renewable natural gas, vehicle-to-grid, environmental, social and governance standards, and COVID-19 predictions.This episode was recorded live in front of hundreds of listeners (remotely). The Interchange is brought to you by Enel X, a leader in energy storage, DER management software, and smart electric vehicle charging stations to increase project value. Learn what Enel X can do for your business. The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The excitement around green hydrogen has grown dramatically in recent years. Will it live up to the hype?This week, we turn to technologist, author and investor Ramez Naam. Ramez and Shayle examine the drivers behind cost improvement -- namely the costs of electricity and different electrolyzer technologies -- and why they are likely still a long way off the deep declines hydrogen needs to scale.They also cover the hurdles hydrogen may face along the way to scale, including fierce competition from grey hydrogen, fossil fuels, and electrification. There’s also the location question: Where are you going to make green hydrogen with renewables? The answer: Probably not where you need it, which is a problem given the cost and difficulty of transporting hydrogen.Ramez breaks down the policy strategies in Europe, North American, Japan and Australia.Shayle asks: Is blue hydrogen a bridge to green hydrogen, or a bridge to nowhere that will leave niche assets obsolete in a decade or two?They also assess Michael Liebreich’s grades for hydrogen end uses (Ramez gives ground transport an F).Finally, given this hydrogen landscape, where do you invest? They find clues in the early days of the solar market.The Interchange is brought to you by Enel X, a leader in energy storage, DER management software, and smart electric vehicle charging stations to increase project value. Learn what Enel X can do for your business. The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A decarbonized power sector will unlock massive opportunities across nearly every other sector, either via direct electrification or via indirect electrification via the production of low-carbon fuels, like green hydrogen.But here’s the rub. Many of the companies that are working on these solutions rely on pretty heroic assumptions around the cost, availability and cleanliness of electricity in order for the economics to work.To put it bluntly, many decarbonization business models hinge on a cell deep in their spreadsheets that has 1- to 3-cent per kilowatt-hour electricity. Is it a realistic assumption?To tackle that question, Shayle turns to his colleague at Energy Impact Partners, Andy Lubershane, the Senior Vice President of Research & Strategy.They survey the technologies that depend on this super cheap, super abundant power, such as EVs, space heating, carbon removal, green hydrogen and industrial heat.Then, they examine the talk of cheap renewables, covering the difference between cheap wholesale and more expensive delivered prices. They break down the variables that make up the difference between wholesale and delivered prices, namely transmission, distribution and capacity factors. So what are the solutions that could shrink that gap?The Interchange is brought to you by Enel X, a leader in energy storage, DER management software, and smart electric vehicle charging stations to increase project value. Learn what Enel X can do for your business. The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The pandemic has forced just about every part of society to reckon with resilience, but for cities the question is especially urgent. Will the global trend toward urbanization, which has been underway for more than 50 years, change its trajectory? Will increasing density remain the norm?The intersection of these two issues -- resilience and urbanism -- is relevant in a COVID context, but it's also increasingly important in a climate context. Shayle has talked about how the increasing prevalence and magnitude of natural disasters are going to slowly but surely foster a "culture of resilience" in society, where we're forced to deal with the likelihood that once in 100-year events are happening much more often.So what does building better resilience into cities actually mean, and how are we performing?To tackle these questions, Shayle turns to the co-hosts of Technopolis, a podcast about how technology is disrupting, remaking, and sometimes over-running our cities.Molly Turner is an urban planner and teaches urban tech at UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Jim Kapsis runs The Ad Hoc Group, a firm that helps climate tech startups navigate and grow in heavily regulated markets.Shayle, Molly and Jim discuss the changing urban migration patterns and what it means for the future of cities.The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office might be the most talked about -- and yet least understood -- part of the federal government’s efforts to support climate tech. It has already invested more than $35 billion in everything from Tesla's first big factory to the first two nuclear reactors to begin construction in the U.S. in more than 30 years. It was crucial in getting the first multi-hundred-megawatt solar projects ever developed off the ground.Today it has more than $40 billion of available loan capacity to throw at the next wave of climate technologies to scale.And now, as of a couple months ago, it has Jigar Shah as the director. Previously, Jigar was the co-founder and president of Generate Capital. He also founded SunEdison. And, of course, he is the former co-host of our sister podcast The Energy Gang. Jigar believes we have the technologies we need to put us on the right path toward decarbonization today. And further, that those technologies aren't as risky as the capital markets make them out to be.Therein lies the arbitrage opportunity Jigar has pursued his whole career. And now he's got $40 billion of federal dollars to test it in a whole new arena.In this episode, Shayle and Jigar break down the role of the Loan Programs Office and the specific financial products it offers. The backing of the federal government comes with the unique opportunities -- namely to move way faster on market opportunities than traditional debt markets can. But as Jigar explains, it comes with key limitations too.They also cover the technology sectors that Jigar sees opportunities in -- everything from green hydrogen to small modular nuclear to virtual power plants. And they highlight the stage of companies and types of projects the office might be uniquely suited to support.Plus, Jigar names the ideas he’s waiting to see (but that no one has pitched to him yet). The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are few areas harder to decarbonize than heavy industry. But the stakes are high. Altogether, industry represents over 30% of global GHG emissions, when counting both direct process emissions and industrial energy use.It’s also a huge opportunity for innovation. This week, Shayle talks with Rebecca Dell, the Director of the Industry Program at The Climateworks Foundation, about the technologies that might transform cement, steel and petrochemicals. Shayle and Reecca go industry by industry, examining the pathways to decarbonization. They cover a range of technologies, including carbon capture and storage, alternative chemistries, recycling, hydrogen and biomass, among others. And finally, Rebecca breaks down how we might create demand for low-carbon industrial materials. The problem is that shifting to decarbonized alternatives might massively increase the cost of these commodities -- probably not what the owner of a steel forge, plastics plant or cement kiln is particularly excited to invest in. But as Rebecca argues, we may be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. For more on Rebecca’s research, check out her report Build Clean: Industrial Policy for Climate and Justice.The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There’s money to be made in climate tech, broadly defined. But where exactly?As investment pours into climate tech, it’s true that a rising tide lifts all boats. But in markets -- especially fast-changing markets, like batteries, hydrogen, carbon capture, just to name a few -- those boats don't all get the same lift. Certain parts of the value chain, from upstream mining or manufacturing to downstream deployment models, are far better places to build a business than others. These profitable niches can be thought of as profit pools. And to make it more complicated, those profit pools shift over time. So it might be a great time to be in the manufacturing business. But just a few years later, it may be the worst place to be.This week, Shayle and Nat Bullard, Chief Content Officer at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, try to predict where those profit pools might show up.They examine historical examples, namely wind and solar, where profit pools have shifted from manufacturing to servicing. Along the way, they note some of the winners and losers of those shifts.Then they turn to the less-mature technologies, focusing on batteries, hydrogen, direct air capture, and carbon accounting. They discuss what lessons can (and cannot) be applied from the earlier generations of climate technologies.Within these spaces they cover entrepreneurs in this space may be wondering: When should I specialize vs. vertically integrate? Why do investors keep telling me to get out of the commodity business?Get your swim suits on. It’s time to dive into profit pools.The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The grid of the future lies 850 miles off the coast of Portugal, on an island in the Azores called Graciosa.The island has always been dependent on fossil fuels. But in 2018, that changed. That’s when a group of developers kicked off a hybrid wind-solar-battery storage power plant to slash diesel consumption.The plant consists of 1 megawatt of solar, 4.5 megawatts of wind, and a 6 megawatt/3.2 megawatt-hour energy storage system.The power plant has changed Graciosa’s energy mix. In 2020, there were 128 days when the island was entirely powered by renewable energy. And Graciosa is now saving 190,000 liters of diesel fuel per month. One of the reasons: a piece of control software installed by Wärtsilä, called GEMS. It uses machine learning to balance the renewables and storage on Graciosa’s grid with inputs from meters, heating and cooling systems, and weather forecasts. And GEMS is helping grids across the world balance high amounts of variable renewables with energy storage.In this episode, produced in collaboration with Wärtsilä, we’ll talk with Duarte Silva, the engineer who oversees the island’s power system.We’ll also talk with Luke Witmer, a data scientist who manages R&D for Wärtsilä’s energy dispatch systems. Wärtsilä creates smart, flexible power technologies to enable a cleaner grid and put the world on a path to 100% renewable energy. They’re helping clients worldwide meet their clean energy goals in an efficient and cost-effective way. Learn more about how Wärtsilä helped the island of Graciosa transform the grid with the GEMS software.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the many ways they can decarbonize the economy.From optimizing buildings to modeling new industrial processes to better managing the grid, AI and machine learning are core to many technology strategies for addressing climate change.So how, exactly, will they be implemented? And what problems can they solve?With us is Priya Donti, a PHD student at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work is focused on machine learning, grid systems and climate change. She is also the co-chair of Climate Change AI, a group of academics and practitioners looking at machine learning as a decarbonization tool.This episode was originally broadcast in February 2020.The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2017, Google became the first major company to reach 100% renewable energy through corporate renewables procurement. But it was also the first major company to acknowledge that 100% renewable is not really 100% carbon-free. So Google set out to go further, and match procurement on an hourly basis, to reach the promised land of 24/7 zero carbon energy.It's going to be hard. But Michael Terrell, Google’s Director of Energy, thinks it’s doable. In this episode, Michael talks with Shayle about how it could even become a new norm for corporate and state commitments.But first: What will it take to get there?Shayle and Michael cover the datasets, the accounting mechanisms, and the massive scale of transactions needed to make it possible. They break down about Google’s efforts to shift computing load across its fleet of data centers. They talk about the power of corporate buyers to push policymakers to clean up grids.Where current clean technologies fall short, Google is looking at new technologies to fill in the gaps. They talk about that lineup of potential solutions, such as long-duration storage, carbon capture and storage, geothermal, advanced nuclear, and lithium-ion batteries. And finally they tackle cost and scalability: Will organizations without the capital and expertise that Google enjoys be able to follow its lead?The Interchange is brought to you by Smarter Grid Solutions, a leading enterprise energy management software company. Find out how Smarter Grid Solutions’ software can give you real control over your clean energy assets.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.