Interchange Recharged

This week, Shayle Kann talks with Kiran Bhatraju, the CEO of Arcadia, about who's buying clean energy.Every pathway toward economy-wide decarbonization drives straight through a dramatic transformation in the electricity sector. But so much of the discussion in that sector focuses on the supply side: how fast will wind and solar displace fossil fuels? what will happen with natural gas?But there's another important player in this game: the energy consumer. Consumers tend to be confusing when it comes to energy. It's hard to discern how much we actually care about it in the first place, what our preferences are, what decisions we'll make, what we'll pay for. Most sectors that have undergone dramatic transformation have been driven by changing customer behavior, and energy may be no different. So we need to understand the consumer, and to find ways to deliver them products and services that will accelerate the energy transition.Shayle and Kiran discuss the different groups of clean-energy customers, how they respond to options, and how a changing regulatory landscape could influence behavior.Support for The Interchange comes from Trina Solar, a global leader in PV modules and smart energy solutions. With decades of industry recognition and awards, Trina Solar is committed to delivering reliable and fully bankable solar technology to the world. Download the free TrinaPro Solution Guide Book on how to optimize utility-scale solar projects.The Interchange is brought to you by S&C Electric Company. Today, non-wires alternatives such as microgrids can provide more sustainable, resilient and economical ways to deliver reliable power. S&C helps utilities and commercial customers find the best solutions to meet their energy needs. Learn more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For all the hype around autonomous vehicles, we're still in the very early stages of a rollout. While most of the attention is being paid to the Waymos and Zooxs of the world, trying to build fully autonomous passenger vehicles on public roads, there's an entirely separate category being created: off-road.These are similarly autonomous vehicles that are mostly all-electric. But they don't ride on public roads. Instead, they're in shipping yards, distribution warehouses, mining operations, on campuses, and in farming. It's underappreciated how big that shift could be.In this episode, Shayle Kann talks with Alisyn Malek, the executive director for the Commission on the Future of Mobility. She is also the founder and CEO of Middle Third, a boutique consultancy focused on mobility strategy.We’ll hear from Alisyn about the state of the technology, different applications, regulatory hurdles, and the near-term promise for deployment.Support for The Interchange comes from Trina Solar, a global leader in PV modules and smart energy solutions. With decades of industry recognition and awards, Trina Solar is committed to delivering reliable and fully bankable solar technology to the world. Download the free TrinaPro Solution Guide Book on how to optimize utility-scale solar projects.The Interchange is brought to you by S&C Electric Company. Today, non-wires alternatives like microgrids can provide more sustainable, resilient, and economical ways to deliver reliable power. S&C helps utilities and commercial customers find the best solutions to meet their energy needs. Learn more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a sponsored episode produced by GTM Creative Strategies in collaboration with Wärtsilä. In August, California’s grid operators shut off power for millions of residents during an historic heat wave.The blackouts caused confusion and outrage in the state. People were looking for someone to blame: an agency, a utility, or a technology like renewables.We now know what happened. The cause was detailed in a lengthy, multi-agency investigation. It was a unique combination of factors, including a lack of preparation for extreme events. So will this hurt California’s decarbonization efforts?“I do not think it changes the decarbonization goals. I think, if anything, it calls for the acceleration of moving toward a system that is more resilient, that is decarbonized,” says Amisha Rai, managing director at Advanced Energy Economy.So if California’s blackouts accelerate clean-energy efforts further, how can we apply lessons from this summer? That’s what we’re covering in this episode, produced in collaboration with Wärtsilä. “Now, it is very important to figure out a practical and realistic plan. I think California is working very hard on it. Without the plan, you will end up in ad hoc situations easily,” says Jussi Heikkinen, director of growth and development for the Americas at Wärtsilä.In this episode, Jussi will outline all the optimal scenarios for decarbonizing California’s grid -- even while managing the threat of extreme events.Wärtsilä creates smart, flexible power technologies to enable a cleaner grid and put the world on a path to 100% renewable energy. Read the “Path to 100% for California” report discussed in this episode. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Need a distraction from the election? Shayle Kann and Adam James have you covered, with an energy-themed version of the game show "Would I Lie to You?"Rules:Each person selects three energy related facts or stories. Any number of the three can be lies, and at least one has to be a lie.They have to be clear lies, not slight adjustments of the truth.The other person can ask three questions. And they must get an answer.At the end of the round, the truths and lies are revealed. If the score is a tie, it moves to a penalty shootout where each person offers a fact/story and the other person has to say truth/lie. If someone misses, and the other person gets their next one right, they win.Support for The Interchange comes from Trina Solar, a global leader in PV modules and smart energy solutions. With decades of industry recognition and awards, Trina Solar is committed to delivering reliable and fully bankable solar technology to the world. Download the free TrinaPro Solution Guide Book on how to optimize utility-scale solar projects.The Interchange is brought to you by S&C Electric Company. Today, non-wires alternatives like microgrids can provide more sustainable, resilient, and economical ways to deliver reliable power. S&C helps utilities and commercial customers find the best solutions to meet their energy needs. Learn more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Net-zero carbon pledges are heating up. Japan just committed to reaching net zero, just four weeks after China did the same. In total, seven of the 10 largest economies in the world (not including America, India and Brazil) have made such commitments. And that's on top of all the subnational players, the corporates, and others.It has become increasingly clear that we're unlikely to reach net-zero at any significant scale without some pretty heavy carbon management. That means carbon capture, carbon removal, and carbon utilization.As a result, the carbon management sector has seen a frenzy of activity over the past couple years, ranging from research to investment to innovation. Just this year we've seen venture capital flow into companies protecting forests, sequestering carbon in the soil, capturing co2 directly in the air, and converting captured CO2 into a range of products from cement to jet fuel.So in this episode, we make sense of both the economics and the technology. Shayle Kann talks with Dr. Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy. Julio is an expert on all things related to carbon management.The Interchange is supported by Schneider Electric, the leader of digital transformation in energy management and automation. Schneider Electric has designed and deployed more than 300 microgrids in North America, helping customers gain energy independence and control while increasing resilience and reaching their clean energy goals.We’re also sponsored by NEXTracker. NEXTracker has more than 30 gigawatts of resilient and intelligent solar tracking systems across six continents. Optimize your solar power plant.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When we talk about climate change on this show, and what causes it, we are usually talking about gases that come from vehicles or from the electricity sector. But what about the built environment? This week: we’re talking about the embedded emissions in our buildings.There’s the natural gas that gets burned in them, and there’s all the electricity that it takes to power them. And then there’s another category – all the upfront energy that went into making the buildings in the first place. That’s called “embodied carbon” or “embedded carbon” or sometimes “upfront carbon.” In the next few crucial years when we can bend the arc of climate change, most of the emissions that come from buildings are going to come from the embodied carbon. So how we choose to build buildings really matters. Our senior editor Ingrid Lobet has a special interest in buildings and wrote recently about embodied carbon for Greentech Media. Read that article here.Just before everything shut down with the pandemic several months ago, Ingrid was at a conference on this subject organized in part by Ed Mazria. Mazria has been at the forefront of a growing faction of builders, engineers and designers intent on remaking buildings into a climate solution. She spoke with him about the biggest opportunities in decarbonizing buildings.The Interchange is supported by Schneider Electric, the leader of digital transformation in energy management and automation. Schneider Electric has designed and deployed more than 300 microgrids in North America, helping customers gain energy independence and control, while increasing resilience and reaching their clean energy goals.We’re also sponsored by NEXTracker. NEXTracker has more than 30 gigawatts of resilient and intelligent solar tracking systems across six continents. Optimize your solar power plant.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: consolidation and cooperation in the distributed energy market.Just as federal regulators in the U.S. are making batteries, solar systems, electric cars, generators and other similar resources more valuable in wholesale markets, we’re seeing a new wave of business activity.Wood Mackenzie predicts that U.S. distributed energy resource capacity will reach nearly 390 gigawatts by 2025. And a lot of companies are getting in on the action.Amazon is jumping deeper into the smart-home game. Generac, one of the top generator companies in the U.S., just made another acquisition to help it manage batteries and pumps and motors and possibly other clean energy resources.And Calibrant is a new company being formed by industrial multinational Siemens and MacQuarie Capital, part of the Australian financial services giant. Calibrant will offer businesses and industry and schools and hospitals no-money-down, on-site energy systems known as Energy-as-a-Service.   What do all these business moves mean for the future of this market?Additional resources:Amazon Blog: Alexa’s New Energy Dashboard (Coming Soon) Greentech Media: Generac Acquires Enbala, Boosting Plan to Harness Behind-the-Meter Energy ResourcesGreentech Media: Siemens and Macquarie Form Calibrant Energy to Tackle Distributed Energy MarketThe Interchange is supported by Schneider Electric, the leader of digital transformation in energy management and automation. Schneider Electric has designed and deployed more than 300 microgrids in North America, helping customers gain energy independence and control, while increasing resilience and reaching their clean energy goals.We’re also sponsored by NEXTracker. NEXTracker has more than 30 gigawatts of resilient and intelligent solar tracking systems across six continents. Optimize your solar power plant.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

California plans to ban new internal-combustion vehicles by 2035. But are electric vehicles ready to take their place?We know that there are dozens and dozens more models of electric cars on the market. Ranges are increasing. Consumers like the driving experience. And total costs are creeping downward.But America’s electric vehicle market is anemic. Dealers aren’t pushing them. Consumers aren’t demanding them. And there are still very real infrastructure challenges.So in this episode, we’re unpacking those trends in the context of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order mandating a halt to new gas-powered cars in 15 years.This is a conversation between co-host Shayle Kann and his colleague at Energy Impact Partners, Andy Lubershane. It’s a detailed look at the underlying trends that could complicate California’s plans.In this conversation, they touch on the state of the EV transition, the state of the technology and consumer habits, and the impact of lots of EVs on the grid.The Interchange is supported by Schneider Electric, the leader of digital transformation in energy management and automation. Schneider Electric has designed and deployed more than 300 microgrids in North America, helping customers gain energy independence and control, while increasing resilience and reaching their clean energy goals.We’re also sponsored by NEXTracker. NEXTracker has more than 30 gigawatts of resilient and intelligent solar tracking systems across six continents. Optimize your solar power plant.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In recent weeks, five million acres have burned across California, Oregon and Washington State -- killing dozens, displacing tens of thousands of people, and causing untold damage.In California, over three million acres have burned since the start of the year. At the height of the current wildfire outbreak, western cities had the worst air pollution in the world for days.It makes the solutions we talk about on this show -- renewables, grid resilience, microgrids, decarbonization -- that much more urgent. This week, we’re replaying a conversation that we taped last fall, just after a different round of record fires. It’s Shayle talking with Kate Gordon, the director of the office of planning and research in California. She's also a senior advisor to Governor Newsom on climate.Kate details the diverse range of climate risks that California faces -- and how it's impacting every decision the state makes.The Interchange is supported by Schneider Electric, the leader of digital transformation in energy management and automation. Schneider Electric has designed and deployed more than 300 microgrids in North America, helping customers gain energy independence and control, while increasing resilience and reaching their clean energy goals.We’re also sponsored by NEXTracker. NEXTracker has more than 30 gigawatts of resilient and intelligent solar tracking systems across six continents. Optimize your solar power plant.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The market for initial public offerings dropped way down this year. Or did it? There is a surge in activity in a different kind of IPO: a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It’s also known as a reverse merger.These are shell companies listed on exchanges with a mission to buy private companies and convert them into public ones.According to a tally from Barron’s, there have been 70 IPOs through this method in 2020, with proceeds totaling $27.7 billion.It’s creating a path for little-known, pre-revenue cleantech companies to get access to public markets. Does all this frothiness make sense? And why now?The Interchange is supported by Schneider Electric, the leader of digital transformation in energy management and automation. Schneider Electric has designed and deployed more than 300 microgrids in North America, helping customers gain energy independence and control, while increasing resilience and reaching their clean energy goals.We’re also sponsored by NEXTracker. NEXTracker has more than 30 gigawatts of resilient and intelligent solar tracking systems across six continents. Optimize your solar power plant.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.