In this episode, I chat with Catalyst host Shayle Kann about the most pressing unresolved questions in the clean energy world today. We explore whether data center gigantism will break the grid, if the smart home revolution is destined for platform enshittification, whether billionaires should start testing solar geoengineering, and more.



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Volts/Catalyst pod crossover: the biggest questions in clean energy

PJM is the largest wholesale power market and transmission planning region in the US. Currently, it is stuck between a rock and a hard place: on one side, rising demand from data centers; on the other, a choked and congested interconnection queue that can’t keep pace. The result: rising prices and political discontent. I talk with Clara Summers of the Citizens Utility Board about how PJM can solve this dilemma and get prices under control.



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What is PJM and why is everyone so mad about it? 

Meat is responsible for roughly a fifth of climate change, the lion’s share of deforestation, 70% of our antibiotic use, and quite possibly the next pandemic — and consumption is going up every single year, with no end in sight. In this episode, Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute joins me to argue that the only way out of this mess is better meat: plant-based and cultivated alternatives that can compete on price and taste, the way renewables now compete with fossil fuels.



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Can fake meat help solve climate change? 

Utilities and their regulators are often protected by a "force field of tedium," but in this episode, I pierce the veil to discuss the complex machinery of utility profit-making. I’m joined by Joe Daniel of RMI to unpack the critical distinction between "return on equity" and "cost of equity," and why the former is almost always higher than necessary. We discuss how regulators can close this gap to lower consumer costs without hindering essential grid upgrades.



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Are utilities making too much money?

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Sarah Kapnick about the core of climate science and the wild variables that have emerged in the last decade. We discuss the “accidental geoengineering” experiment of reducing shipping aerosols, the newfound ability to pinpoint methane leaks from space, and the legal implications of being able to attribute financial losses to climate change.



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So, how's the climate doing?

How does a small, mountainous island with no interconnections and a massive industrial load clean up its grid? In this episode, I speak with Yeh-Tang “Ricky” Huang about the technical and political bottlenecks holding back Taiwan’s energy transition. We explore why the country has struggled to deploy wind and solar, the realistic prospects for advanced geothermal, and the absolute necessity of demand-side flexibility in such a constrained system.



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Taiwan's energy dilemma

Why do so many influential voices spend their time policing the manners of the left while the right dismantles democracy? In this episode, Michael Hobbes — cohost of the much-celebrated “If Books Could Kill” podcast — joins me to discuss the “reactionary centrist,” a type of commentator who believes that both sides are to blame for everything and demonstrates this by spending every waking moment scolding Democrats.



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All about "reactionary centrism"

Rooftop solar costs nearly three times as much in the US as it does in Australia, largely due to the "paperwork tax" imposed by thousands of fragmented local jurisdictions. I talk with Nick Josefowitz of Permit Power and solar veteran Andrew Birch about how to slash these soft costs through automated permitting and standardized interconnection. We discuss how these bureaucratic fixes could unlock dirt-cheap energy for American families without the need for subsidies.



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How to make rooftop solar power as cheap in the US as it is in Australia

Everyone is talking about virtual power plants, but as I discuss with EnergyHub CEO Seth Frader-Thompson, not all VPPs are created equal. We get nerdy on the various stages of VPP maturity and the specific technical requirements that VPPs must meet to truly compete with conventional power plants rather than just acting as “enhanced demand response.”



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Let's dig a little deeper into virtual power plants (VPPs)

I’In this episode, I chat with Swedish tech entrepreneur Jonas Birgersson about his radical plan to apply the architecture of the internet—packet switching, buffering, and decentralized routing—to the electricity grid. We explore how his “EnergyNet” concept uses power electronics to create galvanically separated microgrids that stop cascading failures and allow neighbors to share power directly. It is a mind-bending look at how treating electrons like data could lead to unlimited energy for a low fixed fee.



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Making the electricity grid work like the internet

Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind. I've been reporting on and explaining clean-energy topics for almost 20 years, and I love talking to politicians, analysts, innovators, and activists about the latest progress in the world's most important fight. (Volts is entirely subscriber-supported. Sign up!)

www.volts.wtf [https://www.volts.wtf?utm_medium=podcast]

david roberts

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