Successful energy transition projects are not one-size-fits-all. They are attuned to the local needs of their communities, and allow community priorities to shape resilience, affordability, and equity outcomes.

In today's conversation, Nadia Ahmad, Professor of Law at Barry University in Florida, shares findings from a three-year study of clean energy transitions in Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania. Based on more than 100 stakeholder interviews, the research exposes a troubling paradox. Florida suffers from frequent hurricanes, tropical storms, and flash floods, but a utility structure dominated by investor-owned companies actively prevents the community microgrids that would build resilience.

Ahmad explains how legal, policy, and regulatory frameworks at county, municipal, state, and federal levels can support community-driven clean energy transitions. She shares important insights on designing approaches to accelerate the energy transition where you live, including the seven legal elements her team identified for successful projects and the pitfalls to avoid. For instance, Florida's challenges contrast with Germany's success, where nearly half of renewable energy capacity became citizen-owned by the 2010s.

Recent headlines may create the impression that the energy transition is slowing down, struggling against headwinds, and failing to make the requisite progress against our climate targets.

But the reality is that there is enormous progress being made against the climate change challenge, especially if you step back a bit from the daily news flow and consider the trends. There is plenty of evidence that we are in fact making a good deal of progress, and that the energy transition is accelerating, not slowing down. In fact, 2025 may be the year that global emissions peak and go into decline.

In his new book, The Case Against Climate Doom — An Economist's Guide to Climate Optimism, economist Michael Jakob reveals why the "we're too late" narrative isn't just wrong, but one that fossil fuel interests use to delay climate action. Building on his degrees in physics, economics, and international relations, Michael explores how climate change mitigation, adaptation technologies and policies are spreading across the world.

The evidence is striking: Solar costs have dropped 90% in 20 years, wind 80%, batteries 97%. Norway hit 97% EV market share without banning gas cars, simply by making electric vehicles irresistible. Climate litigation is winning unprecedented cases, with Swiss seniors successfully arguing that government inaction violates human rights. Over 5,000 climate policies now exist worldwide, up from under 100 in 2005.

In today's conversation, we explore five examples from each dimension the book covers: social progress, political change, and technological advances. From the collapse of carbon lock-in, to why even Texas became a green energy powerhouse, this interview offers clear evidence showing why the transition is continuing to accelerate, not stall.

Over the past decade, China has transformed from a heavily coal-fired country to the undisputed global leader in the energy transition. The pace keeps accelerating: In April 2025 alone, China installed more solar than Australia has in its entire history. By 2030, as little as one-seventh of China's projected spare solar manufacturing capacity could electrify everyone without power in 88 low-income countries.

Yet, this progress has not been recognized by much of the West, which still fixates on headlines about "building three coal plants a week" while missing that China is getting far ahead of US decarbonization efforts. China's vast exports of energy transition solutions are rapidly decarbonizing other emerging economies, while the nation's share of global clean energy patents jumped from 5% in 2000 to 75% today. Chinese companies now spend ten times more on electricity R&D than US companies and match the combined energy R&D spending of the US and EU together. The innovation advantage has flipped.

To understand China's oversized role in the energy transition, Muyi Yang and Sam Butler-Sloss of Ember join us to break down their report China Energy Transition Review 2025. We'll review how China is routinely beating its own transition targets by three to six years. We'll hear how Chinese firms have announced over $200 billion in overseas clean tech manufacturing investments, surpassing the scale of US investment abroad under the Marshall Plan. Solar, batteries, and EVs are growing three times faster than China's overall economy, hitting nearly 10% of GDP. Chinese solar exports to Namibia, Cambodia, and similar countries now exceed the entire centralized power generation capacity of those countries.

The result: what took decades with old energy is happening in years with solar. China's enormous commitment to the energy transition is a strategic path to economic growth and economic and political power, and it heralds the end of fossil fuel's dominance of the global energy system by 2030.

For our 10th anniversary, we reflect on our work so far, and consider what the next ten years might require. Whereas we spent the past decade focusing on techno-economic subjects, like explaining climate science and climate policy, and showing that energy transition technologies are practical and affordable, the next decade is likely to be far more political. We no longer need to justify the concept of the energy transition. Our job now is scaling up solutions and overcoming the resistance to them.

To help us explore this pivot, we welcome back Kingsmill Bond from Episode #152, along with his frequent co-author Daan Walter. Both are with energy transition think-tank Ember, where along with Sam Butler-Sloss they've published reports that clearly articulate what many observers are missing: an "electrotech revolution" reshaping geopolitics. They reveal staggering data: 70-80% of car sales in developing economies like Nepal and Ethiopia are already electric, while China's fossil fuel demand dropped 1% for the first time ever. Nearly every nation has 10-1000x more renewable potential than needed for its energy independence. Developing economies are seizing that opportunity while developed economies sabotage their own electrification by resisting change and taxing electricity at three times the rate of gas.

So join us to celebrate our 10th anniversary! And get ready for an even faster decade of the energy transition as countries choose to lead in the electrotech revolution, or get left behind.

Alaska is an energy superpower with more untapped renewable resources than most countries. Yet its largest population, in the Anchorage area, faces a real risk of blackouts beginning in 2027 due to declining gas supply from the nearby Cook Inlet gas field, which is likely to force this historical major supplier of oil and gas to import LNG to keep its residents warm and keep the lights on. A key part of getting ahead of the crisis is addressing transmission dysfunction so severe that it turns 6-cent renewable electricity into 20-cent retail power due to 'pancaking' tariffs.

In this episode, we explore Alaska's sole electricity transmission grid, which connects most of the major population centers along what is called the Railbelt. We learn about how Railbelt utilities are part of a system that's overbuilt, unoptimized, unnecessarily expensive, and slow to change. For example, four rural electric cooperatives built more than $1 billion in unnecessary gas generation between 2012-2016 while knowing gas supplies were declining. Despite sitting atop an estimated 18 gigawatts of tidal energy potential in Cook Inlet alone, the four Railbelt cooperatives lack economic dispatch coordination, wasting tens of million annually through inefficient scheduling of gas-fired generation. The Railbelt utilities could transition away from their dependence on gas and toward the vast renewable resources surrounding them, but it would take a kind of political leadership that is currently lacking in the state. We dive into how the regulatory agencies could help Alaska transition to renewables, as well as why they haven't done so thus far.

We also take a quick look at the future of Alaska's famous oil pipeline, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), and some of the expectations for nuclear power in the state.

This episode is the third and final part of our miniseries about the energy transition in Alaska.

Most people probably think of a "microgrid" as a campus or neighborhood that can "island" itself and run independently when needed, but otherwise stays connected to the main grid most of the time. But in Alaska's remote communities that aren't even accessible by road, residents depend on microgrids for their very survival in extreme conditions.

For this episode, Chris traveled to Kotzebue, Alaska, a community above the Arctic Circle that has become an international leader at integrating renewable energy by pioneering wind-diesel hybrids, innovative wind-to-heat technology, and Arctic solar systems that achieve remarkable performance. We explore how Kotzebue is using innovative approaches to energy transition solutions to lessen their dependence on diesel fuel while improving the health and welfare of their people.

This episode is part of our miniseries about the energy transition in Alaska.

In October 2024, Chris visited the world's first all-electric farm while traveling across New Zealand.

In today's episode, we speak with the farm's owner and founder, Mike Casey. In addition to operating the farm, Mike is CEO of Rewiring Aotearoa, a sister organization to Rewiring America. Rewiring Aotearoa works to advance New Zealand's energy transition by encouraging residents to deploy renewables and export excess power to the grid, and to replace their fossil-fueled machines with electric ones. Mike travels extensively across Australia, New Zealand, and major cities across the globe as an evangelist for electrification, encouraging communities to electrify and go solar. His farm serves as a real-world demonstration of these principles in action.

Because Mike's work is so inspirational and universal, we're making this episode one of our occasional lagniappe shows, available in front of the paywall for all listeners to enjoy in full. We invite you to share this episode widely! And we hope Mike's inspiring message of electrification and transition will inspire you to support the show and explore more stories like this in our members-only back catalog.

In the summer of 2025, Chris traveled to Alaska to explore the state's unique energy transition story by interviewing some of its energy experts.

Like every place, Alaska has a unique set of challenges and opportunities in the energy transition, and can offer insights drawn from its experience to the rest of the world. Alaska's extreme conditions and remoteness make it a proving ground for a wide array of energy transition solutions, as it grapples with a melting permafrost, supply chain constraints, dependence on federal support, and declining fossil fuel production in an age of climate change and climate action.

The state's greatest energy need is for heat during its long, very cold winters that typically last eight to nine months. In this conversation, Aaron Cooke, an architect and project manager at NREL's Alaska Campus in Fairbanks, joins us to discuss the lab's research on building techniques designed to retain warmth while ensuring healthy indoor environments. Their work tests designs to construct buildings that are comfortable, healthy, durable, and affordable in harsh climates, all while contending with logistical challenges, cultural needs, and climate adaptation.

This episode cuts through the noise around energy transition progress with hard data from one of the year's most important reports.

Despite claims from both "fossil gradualists" who would like to see the energy transition fail, and "net-zero puritans" who deny that the energy transition is happening at all because emissions are still rising, the transition is very much under way and gathering momentum. Countries are switching to renewables, electrifying transportation and decarbonizing heating faster than even the most seasoned energy analysts thought was possible, while the fossil fuel holdouts still white-knuckling their strategies are quickly dwindling in number.

Ember, a clean energy think tank, published a report in April titled Global Electricity Review 2025 that plainly lays out these facts. One of its lead authors, Nic Fulghum, joins us to discuss the report's findings in a conversation absolutely packed with the data you can use to win any debate with a transition denier.

Nic outlines how solar is growing faster than any energy source in human history, electrification of transport and heating are advancing quickly enough to materially slash fossil fuel demand, and power generation from fossil fuels is headed into structural decline. Global power-sector emissions may finally be close to peaking, thanks to the accelerating energy transition.

Various biofuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and wood for power plants are labeled as renewable and carbon-neutral. But are they really?

If a farmer converts food-producing land to grow corn for ethanol, does that acre actually reduce carbon emissions? When trees are cut down to fire power plants, can we have confidence they'll be replanted quickly enough to deserve the "renewable" label?

Our guest in today's conversation has spent the past six years traveling around the world to research these questions, and he finds that the answer is nearly always 'no.'

Mike Grunwald, a veteran reporter and author who was our guest on this show in Episode #1, nearly ten years ago, has published a new book sharing the results of his extensive research into the many approaches that have been tried to produce bioenergy, reduce agricultural carbon emissions, increase crop yields, and modify consumer diets. Titled We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, it includes a comprehensive study of the bioenergy solutions that have been attempted and their unintended consequences.

This is a 'must-listen' episode for policymakers, investors, and anyone interested in bioenergy's true role in climate solutions.

On April 12, the British government took control of British Steel under an emergency authorization in order to prevent its last blast furnace from shutting down. Blast furnaces produce primary steel from iron ore and account for about 93% of global primary iron production, but they also generate large amounts of CO2. Alternative, low-carbon technologies are expected to replace them as the energy transition proceeds.

But retiring a technology—especially one as critical to national security as steelmaking—and replacing it with another is a process that should be conducted carefully and deliberately…not on an emergency basis.

This kind of "mid-transition" problem is one our guests have studied in depth. Emily Grubert is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame who previously joined us in Episode #185 to discuss the mid-transition. Joshua Lappen is a historian and engineer working as a postdoctoral research associate with Emily at Notre Dame.

In this conversation, we review the facts of the British Steel takeover, including why letting the blast furnace shut down was deemed to be an unacceptable risk. We examine the options for decarbonizing steelmaking that will eventually displace blast furnace technology. And we consider what impact Trump's global tariff war may have on the transitioning of steelmaking, and what some of the geopolitical implications of that may be for the steel industry in Britain, and the world.

This episode is the final part in our miniseries about Australia's energy transition.

In late 2024, Chris traveled to Australia and recorded interviews with a wide range of experts who are intimately involved in the energy transition there. We featured some of them in the earlier episodes of this miniseries, namely, Episodes #234, #235, #246, #247, and #249.

In this episode, we take a close look at South Australia, where rooftop solar alone already powers the entire state grid at times. By 2027, South Australia plans to operate with 100% variable renewable energy, making it the first gigawatt-scale grid in the world to achieve this milestone.

The challenge? SA Power Networks, the distribution grid operator, doesn't control generation, transmission, or metering, and doesn't buy or sell electricity. This means South Australia must figure out how to maintain a stable, reliable grid consisting largely of customer-owned energy resources.

In this conversation, James Brown, Head of Network Strategy at SA Power Networks, explains how his team of engineers and stakeholders are finding innovative solutions to meet this challenge. Their approaches will offer valuable lessons for grids worldwide as they, too, transition to electricity systems almost entirely powered by variable renewables.

Three years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting Western sanctions, the country remains an oil and gas powerhouse. Despite falling from the world's second-largest to third-largest global oil producer and seeing its export rankings decline, Russia continues to delay the global energy transition as a major fossil fuel supplier and geopolitical force.

Western observers often struggle to understand Russia's future role in energy geopolitics and the intentions of President Vladimir Putin. To shed light on these questions, we welcome back Thane Gustafson, Professor of Government at Georgetown University and a leading authority on Russian political economy. He is the author of many books, notably Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change, which we covered at length in Episodes #162 and #163.

In this nearly two-hour conversation, we explore his newest book, Perfect Storm—Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future. Gustafson carefully explains how Russia's post-Soviet reopening to the West failed, how the Crimea occupation precipitated that failure, and where Western sanctions have succeeded or failed in containing Putin's ambitions. We examine Russia's oil and gas resources, infrastructure, business capacity, and the evolving relationships between Russian oligarchs and Western governments. The discussion reveals how Russia has evaded energy export sanctions, unpacks Putin's motivations, and assesses Russia's fading fortunes as global energy transition efforts accelerate.

This episode continues our miniseries on Australia’s energy transition.

In late 2024, Chris traveled to Australia and recorded interviews with a wide range of experts who are intimately involved in the energy transition there. Previous episodes in this miniseries are Episode #234, Episode #235, Episode #246, and Episode #247.

In this episode, we feature three researchers and entrepreneurs in Australia who are advancing solar technology research and development:


* Martin Green, Professor at University of New South Wales, Sydney and Director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics.
* Craig Wood, CEO of Vast Energy, a concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) company.
* Richard Payne, CEO of RayGen, a concentrated solar PV and solar thermal company.


In the next and final episode in this miniseries, we’ll take a close look at how one Australian state is solving the challenges of knitting together customer-owned systems into a reliable power grid.

Although geothermal power plants have operated commercially in various parts of the world for decades, the sector hasn't attracted the investment needed to reduce costs and enable global deployment. But with further development, new methods of harnessing geothermal energy to produce heat and electricity could deliver as much as 800 GW of geothermal power capacity worldwide by 2050. That’s equivalent to the electricity demand of the United States and India combined.

In December 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published "The Future of Geothermal Energy," a report exploring opportunities in this sector.

Our guest today is a lead author of that report. In this conversation, Heymi Bahar, Senior Renewable Energy Analyst with the IEA, discusses geothermal energy’s full technological potential and strategies for unlocking investment in this promising resource.

This episode is part of a miniseries about Australia's energy transition.

In late 2024, Chris traveled to Australia and recorded interviews with experts closely involved in its energy transition. The first of those interviews was featured in Episode #234, and the second in Episode #235. In Episode #246, we explored how the Australian government is working with the grid power sector to plan its transition to renewables while maintaining system reliability.

In this episode, we explore innovative approaches Australia is using to manage the evolution of its energy system.

To tell this part of the story, we weave together the perspectives of several guests:


* Darren Miller, CEO of ARENA, explains their investment focus on early-stage technologies.
* Gabrielle Kuiper, energy and climate change professional, shares insights on DER integration across Australia.
* Stephanie Unwin, CEO of Horizon Power, discusses the unique challenges of managing a remote utility in Western Australia.
* Professor John Boland describes how he and his wife used low-tech solutions to transform an uncomfortable old house into a comfortable urban oasis.


In the next miniseries episodes, we'll explore more innovations in solar power and take a close look at how one Australian state is solving the challenges of knitting together customer-owned systems into a reliable power grid.

This episode is part of a miniseries about Australia’s energy transition.

In late 2024, Chris traveled to Australia and recorded interviews with a wide range of experts who are closely involved in its energy transition. The first of those interviews was featured in Episode #234, and the second in Episode #235.

In this episode, we'll see how the Australian government is working with the grid power sector to plan and execute its transition to renewables—despite a political opposition committed to fossil fuels and nuclear. We'll also explore what's being done to ensure adequate capacity and maintain system reliability during this transformation.

To tell this story, we weave together the perspectives of several guests:


* Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy for the Australian Labor Party, explains Australia's decarbonization targets and the government's framework to achieve them.
* Matt Kean, Chair of Australia's Climate Change Authority, shares his team’s findings about the best pathways to meet those targets.
* Alex Wonhas of AMPYR shares insights from helping grid operator AEMO develop Integrated System Plans that describe how to evolve the system toward those targets while maintaining reliability.
* Tristan Edis of Green Energy Markets discusses the technical considerations of orchestrating new grid power resources.


In the subsequent episodes in this miniseries, we’ll be exploring how Australia is using innovation to meet the challenges of the transition. We’ll also take a closer look at how they use DER integration to support the system while helping customers gain more control over their energy bills and even save money.

In the first part, Episode #240, we reviewed the UK's unique strategies for procuring energy transition solutions. In the second part, Episode #241, we covered how the nation’s energy regulator is driving investment to support the transition.

To conclude this miniseries, we welcome back Julian Leslie, who first joined us in Episode #174. Julian is now Director of Strategic Energy Planning and Chief Engineer at Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO), a recently-created agency tasked with preparing Great Britain's electricity network for net zero operation by 2030. He also coordinates regional and national plans for Britain’s energy system—including gas and emerging heat networks—to meet decarbonization targets.

In this conversation, we review the progress of the innovative Pathfinder programs we discussed back in 2022, which invited the market to provide solutions that could help Britain integrate more wind and solar into its grid. We walk through the extensive process that NESO is undertaking to plan and coordinate the development of a fully decarbonized power grid by 2030. And we discuss in detail how Britain is working to massively expand its capacity in offshore and onshore wind, solar, transmission, and battery storage to meet that goal.

By setting clear decarbonization targets, then collaborating with industry and stakeholders to carry out plans to meet them, the UK is showing the world how to execute a successful energy transition. We hope this miniseries inspires other nations to follow their example.

What makes for effective and enduring green industrial policy? How can public and private investment mobilize to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal? Can Trump undermine climate science and the global energy transition, or will the rest of the world carry on without the US? Which policy designs can drive equitable green growth, ensuring the energy transition benefits economically disadvantaged and indigenous communities?

Today’s guest, Mariana Mazzucato, is a Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London and the Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. An author of four influential books on shaping capitalism, growth, and economic policy for the public good, she advises governments worldwide on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. She chairs several governmental and inter-governmental organizations and produces reports designed to shape economic policies, particularly in the developing world.

In these challenging times of economic upheaval, Mariana’s ideas offer valuable guidance for policymakers as they craft industrial strategies to advance the energy transition.

Heat pumps work almost like magic—delivering several times more heat energy than the electricity they require to run. Modern heat pumps are so efficient, they can even extract warmth from freezing temperatures, keeping buildings comfortable despite the cold outdoors.

With many policymakers seriously exploring ways they can accelerate heat pump adoption, we thought now is the perfect time to offer some specific and useful guidance on designing effective approaches for realizing this goal. Our guest today is Dr. Richard Lowes, a specialist in heating technology and policy with the Regulatory Assistance Project in Europe. He also co-chairs the Clean Heat Forum international policy network. Richard has advocated for heating policy since earning his doctorate in the subject from the University of Exeter a decade ago, advising the Scottish government’s heat decarbonization programme board, various UK parliamentary select committees, and serving in multiple roles within the UK government.

In this episode, we discuss why the energy transition requires us to fix leaky buildings, tradeoffs between energy efficiency upgrades and simply swapping out old boilers for heat pumps, the best policies to encourage heat pump adoption, and the measures available in Europe to support all these efforts.