Interchange Recharged

A boisterous CEO who brags of “out-Eloning” Elon Musk; a reverse merger that makes a little-known fuel cell trucking company as valuable as Ford; and no actual cars or trucks in production.This week, we try to make sense of Nikola Motor. Nikola Motor went public last week through a reverse merger, achieving a ~$13 billion valuation. As the markets closed on Wednesday, the company’s market cap was at $23 billion. But with a non-traditional IPO, an enigmatic CEO, and zero revenue or actual vehicles, it’s become one of the more befuddling stories in cleantech in recent memory. We’ll dig into the company’s claims and business model. Is this just another overhyped penny stock, or is there any substance to Nikola’s plan?LA Times: Electric Truck Maker Nikola Looks Like Tesla 2.0 — Except Even RiskierCNBC: Meet Nikola, the Speculative Electric Vehicle StockBarron’s: Truck-Building Tesla Competitor Nikola Draws the Attention of a Short SellerThe Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We use the term “energy transition” to define markets, technology, business models. But what about people?The transition away from fossil fuels isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have. The hardest part isn’t building the clean resources. It’s shutting down the dirty stuff at a pace the science demands.And that means disrupting entire classes of employment and communities that depend on fossil fuel extraction -- in other words, helping people find work somewhere else.The often-used phrase is the “just transition.”We have a guest who’s been researching and writing about this subject for years: Sandeep Pai. Sandeep the author of “Total Transition: the Human Side of the Renewable Energy Revolution.” He’s a former journalist and a current PhD student and public scholar at the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. We’ll talk with Sandeep about his analysis of the strategies for transitioning fossil fuel workers in economies around the world. The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Greed is good. At least, it’s good for decarbonization.This week on The Interchange podcast, we have a new edition of the fantasy decarbonization draft -- this one focused on acquiring and restructuring public companies. We’re joining the ranks of corporate raiders like Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens and Gordon Gekko by taking over public companies and bending their strategies to our will. (For benevolent reasons, of course.)Shayle and Stephen will pick their portfolio of companies. And then listeners choose who has the best investment strategy. (Vote over at @InterchangeShow on Twitter.)Here’s how it works:We each have $25 billion to spend We can acquire a maximum of eight companies each. There’s no minimum.The cost of any given company is its market cap at the time of choosing.Our acquisition targets must be publicly tradedOnce we’ve acquired a company, we can control its strategy. The goal is to accelerate decarbonization in our chosen sectorOur geographic focus is North AmericaMake sure to listen to our first and second decarbonization drafts.The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. Get your system today.We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy, an open-access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, we’re talking about the new wave of carbon offsets. Will startups and corporates be able to solve accountability problems?Right up until the global economy stopped working in March, the carbon offset market was surging. In 2019, offset sellers saw a 5-fold increase in purchases, after years of low demand in the wake of the financial crisis.Flight-shamed consumers were demanding them. The world’s top companies were buying them in record numbers.But then came the coronavirus shock. The steep drop in fuel and electricity consumption has slowed consumer demand for carbon offsets in the short-term, but there are still underlying trends that may herald the return of carbon offsets.Is this time different? Can new players improve the quality and traceability of carbon reductions?The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. We’re also brought to you by Wärtsilä Energy. Wärtsilä is leading the energy transition with “The Atlas of 100% Renewable Energy,” an open access tool based on the modeling of 145 countries and regions worldwide to illustrate the cost-optimal 100% renewable energy systems. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week: where does the COVID detour take us as we map the energy transition?We’re once again thinking through the practical and theoretical consequences of the pandemic, in the near-term and well into the future. Shayle and Stephen talk with Ramez Naam, a futurist, science-fiction author and energy expert. Ramez joined us last August to talk about some future scenarios for energy. The world is a dramatically different place today, so we’re bringing him back to recalibrate our sights.We’ll talk about a wide range of subjects, including: oil consumption, behavior changes, demand for electric cars, and whether we’re delaying the energy transition.The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. We’re also brought to you by the Wood Mackenzie power team. WoodMac is delivering actionable real-time data on how our new reality is shaping power markets. Learn more about how we can help you understand the future of energy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Electricity grids can handle a lot of wind, solar and water resources. But what will help us get from 80% renewable energy to 100% renewable energy?The missing piece may be renewable synthetic fuels.“When we really want to decarbonize the whole electricity system, absolutely synthetic fuels will play a key role,” says Matti Rautkivi, the director of Business Development and Strategy at Wärtsilä.In this episode, produced in collaboration with Wärtsilä, we’re looking specifically at how to use green hydrogen to create renewable fuels -- and burn those fuels to create the fully-renewable electricity system.There’s some uncertainty about how exactly this market will evolve. But experts like Rautkivi are confident that renewable fuels are going to become a vital solution. “When we have excess electricity available, instead of curtailing it, we are going to put it through the synthetic fuels process and convert the electricity to fuels that we can store and use it later,” says Rautkivi. “So it provides flexibility to the electricity system.”This is the third in a three-part series produced with Wärtsilä. You can listen to part one and part two. 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. Find out more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Destruction. Dislocation. Collapse. A permanent reset. Read any news about oil markets, and these are the vivid descriptions you’ll encounter.We are now deep into an historic pause for oil demand across the globe -- shutting down oil fields, causing negative pricing, overwhelming our storage abilities, and forcing up to a million job losses this year."We are looking at a major demand destruction that we don't even know will come back," said Shell’s CEO Ben van Beurden on a recent investor call.So if demand doesn’t come back, what happens? What are the direct consequences to the oil industry? And what are the opportunities for a “new energy order,” as the World Economic Forum is now calling it?This week, Stephen and Shayle talk with Ed Crooks, vice chair for the Americas at GTM’s parent company Wood Mackenzie. Ed is a former editor at the Financial Times. He’s one of the go-to people watching oil market dynamics and how they intersect with the clean energy transition.We had so many listeners write in during our live show about what’s unfolding in oil markets. So we’re going to try to tackle them.The Interchange is brought to you by Prisma Energy Solutions. Prisma Energy Solutions provides a unique financing model for battery energy storage systems that can help you reduce energy demand, participate in both energy and ancillary service markets, improve renewables integration, increase system reliability, and reduce your carbon footprint. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Famed software pioneer and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is out with a new piece, called “It’s time to build,” that is making the rounds among the thinkfluencer crowd. It’s part call-to-arms and part flogging over America’s inability to build.“Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building?” writes Andreessen.Andreesen is a partner at the VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz. He is considered one of the more important people in software. He co-founded Netscape and wrote a manifesto in 2011 called “Why software is eating the world” that has been a guiding light for many venture investors and people starting companies.Now he has a new focus on building physical things.His new article sparked a surprising number of counter-reactions in the press, from think tanks, and from YouTubers. And it got us thinking about how to apply the thesis to the low-carbon economy.Read Shayle Kann’s climate-focused response to Andreessen’s call to action, which forms the basis of our discussion.Want to join the conversation? Form your own list of climate-focused stuff we should be building, and tweet it at @InterchangeShow.The Interchange is sponsored by Viking Cold Solutions, a leader in thermal storage for refrigerated warehouses, grocery store freezers, and restaurants around the globe. Find out how thermal storage can benefit your facility.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, we bring you a joint episode of The Interchange and The Energy Gang recorded in front of a live audience from our quarantine quarters around the country. When we started making our podcasts seven years ago, it was clear that the energy transition would be a difficult one. Both shows were designed as a forum to grapple with tough issues in an accessible, candid way. The clean energy industry has faced its share of crises over the years — but nothing quite like the current pandemic and economic freeze.Supply chains are in limbo, funding opportunities for startups have vanished, and once-growing companies are at a standstill. Meanwhile, political leaders are trying to get money to struggling people and businesses, setting the stage for trillions more dollars in spending on infrastructure. How will it all pan out? We’re trying to figure it out, just like you. In this episode, we take listener questions about how to use the current crisis as an opportunity. We use some thought exercises as a way to break up the gloom, and do a mental health check-in with each other. Listeners submitted over 120 questions. We’ll be considering them on future shows. If you have any other show topic ideas, tag The Energy Gang and The Interchange on Twitter. (And please give us a rating and review on Apple podcasts!)The Interchange is sponsored by Viking Cold Solutions, a leader in thermal storage for refrigerated warehouses, grocery store freezers, and restaurants around the globe. Find out how thermal storage can benefit your facility.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.

We have a live show coming up on Wednesday, April 22. It's free! Sign up here. And submit questions here. What will be the “new normal” in the energy economy when coronavirus starts to dissipate?The longer this goes on, the more dramatically it will alter how we make things, where we make them, what kind of companies grow or fail, and who suffers and who benefitsThis week, Shayle and Stephen speak with Amy Meyers Jaffe, a senior fellow and director of the energy and climate change program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Amy focuses on oil markets, geopolitics, and the emerging clean energy sectors.Amy recently penned a piece on whether we’re going to come out of this situation with a lasting impact on carbon emissions.We hopped on a call to discuss many of the themes she’s writing about, including behavioral changes, the stimulus, and the future of oil. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.