Interchange Recharged

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.

In 2010, solar modules cost a little over $2 per watt. Many people questioned whether solar costs could come down another 50%.Well, here we are today with solar modules well below 50 cents per watt, far cheaper than most expectations. And it wasn’t some breakthrough revolutionary technology -- it’s been the crystalline-silicon solar panel the whole time.History has a tendency to repeat itself. Our guest, Jessika Trancik, an associate professor at MIT’s the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, published research earlier this month showing, quantitatively, that lithium-ion batteries have been repeating history and get cheaper, faster, than nearly anyone anticipated. This matters because it could happen again. The obvious next candidate is hydrogen electrolysis, where experts are saying we might be able to reach the promised land of $1 per kilogram by the end of this decade. Jessika and Shayle dug into her findings around batteries to see what broader lessons we could learn. We also talked about some other, related and fascinating research she’s done to examine what it will take to reach mass-market EV adoption.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 oil majors are slowly recognizing that in a decarbonized world their fundamental business is going to have to change. So what are they thinking? Where are they deploying resources -- and not deploying resources? Ed Crooks is the right person to ask. He’s our oil major whisperer. He Vice Chair for the Americas at Wood Mackenzie.Last time we had him on the show was in May of 2020 when the pandemic-driven collapse of oil demand sent key oil prices negative.Ed talks with our host Shayle Kann about the rebound since then and how oil and gas companies are using this new influx of cash.They discuss the longstanding differences between American and European oil majors: The Europeans are more aggressive on new energy investments; the Americans are more conservative. Does this distinction still hold, even under the rising pressure of shareholders, employees and governments on these companies to take climate action? And if they’re not going to invest directly in renewables and power, how will their business models change in a decarbonized world? Shayle and Ed talk about what it would mean to become a “carbon management company.”They also talk about the differences between 1.5- and 2.0-degrees-celsius worlds and what each would mean for oil and gas companies.Finally, they read the tea leaves on carbon pricing. Does the Biden administration’s aggressive stance on climate change the political chances of legislation in the U.S.?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Heather Rock joined PG&E as director of climate resilience in 2018 -- just two weeks before a faulty PG&E line sparked the most destructive wildfire in U.S. history. It’s hard to imagine a more complicated or politically-charged role.Back in November 2019, our host Shayle made a bet. In a Medium post called “The World around Us,” he wrote: “I think we’re on the cusp of a cultural transformation, one in which the idea of investing in resilience gains mainstream status for anyone who owns something worth protecting.”Heather is one of the people trying to bring a culture of climate resilience into the mainstream.We desperately need it. Hurricanes, wildfires, winter storms, sea level rise, floods and heat waves, among other threats, have exposed the incredible fragility of our infrastructure and underlined the dire need to bake climate resilience into every utility’s decision-making processes.So how exactly do we do it? In this episode, Heather and Shayle talk about the tools organizations need -- namely new models and data supported by our national labs and agencies like NOAA. But they also identify some of the cultural barriers to adopting these tools, plus how to overcome them. The Interchange is a production of Post Script Audio in partnership with Wood Mackenzie.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine a battery that costs less than half of today's costs, can charge a vehicle in less than ten minutes, run for ten or more years with heavy usage, lasts over a million miles, and is produced with abundant raw materials found all over the world.None of those things are true of today's lithium-ion batteries. But our guest this week, Gene Berdichevsky, predicts that will change in the next decade.Gene was the seventh employee at Tesla and is now the co-founder and CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies, one of the biggest players in the battery space.Our host Shayle Kann, a partner at the venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners, talks with Gene about new battery designs and chemistries that are hitting the market right now. By themselves, these advances are incremental. But taken together, they could usher in the kinds of batteries that would revolutionize the grid. Gene and Shayle cover the fundamental tradeoffs between key battery features, namely energy density, charging speed, cost and longevity. They also talk about more sustainable raw materials, battery recycling, the limits of new investment in this space, and why Gene believes that existing big players will continue to dominate, while the new entrants face an uphill battle. The Interchange is a production of Post Script Audio in partnership with Wood Mackenzie.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Two years ago, we made an episode called “Cleantech Venture Capital Is Back.” After a decade in the wilderness, the world of climate tech has experienced a resurgence of investment and early-stage innovation. So much has happened since then -- an election, a stimulus, low interest rates, SPACs, corporate commitments, and an explosion of advocacy around climate.So where is the climate tech investment space now?We check in with Abe Yokell, our guest from that February 2019 episode. He’s a managing partner at Congruent Ventures. He talks with our host Shayle Kann, who is a partner at Energy Impact Partners. They talk about the persistent problem of access to capital for some early stage climate tech startups, SPACs, the Mr. Burns Test, and which technologies are underhyped or overhyped.The Interchange is a production of Post Script Audio in partnership with Wood Mackenzie.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.