The array of AI applications within climate tech is staggering -- and rapidly expanding.  There are lots of exciting point solutions, but there’s no clear example of AI directly and meaningfully reducing GHG emissions on a global scale. Yet. Last year we had Priya Donti on the show. She’s a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon and co-chair of the Climate Change AI organization. This week, she came back with her Climate Change AI co-chair Lynn Kaack, a postdoc researcher at ETH-Zurich.  Priya and L...

We can measure the energy transition in any number of ways. The hundreds of millions of solar panels and wind turbines installed. The gigatons of carbon reduced. Or the number of jobs created. But how do we measure the equity outcome? Our guest co-host, Dr. Destenie Nock, is focused on exactly this question. She is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.  Dr. Nock is creating new models for energy-systems planning that factor in positive s...

America gets 20 percent of its electricity from coal. That’s a 50 percent drop since the peak in 2007. But if coal is becoming so economically uncompetitive, why does it still make up so much of our grid mix? This week: Coal is no longer king. But it still has a lot of power across the land. How do we banish it for good? Katherine and Stephen welcome Joe Daniel as a guest co-host this week. Joe is a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Joe joins us to talk about the p...

The excitement around green hydrogen has grown dramatically in recent years. Will it live up to the hype? This week, we turn to technologist, author and investor Ramez Naam.  Ramez and Shayle examine the drivers behind cost improvement -- namely the costs of electricity and different electrolyzer technologies -- and why they are likely still a long way off the deep declines hydrogen needs to scale. They also cover the hurdles hydrogen may face along the way to scale, including fierce compe...

What if someone told you that we have everything we need to decarbonize most of the economy?  We would just need to start electrifying every new car, furnace, water heater, drier, and cookstove, and industrial process starting right now. And yeah, and put solar on every roof that can handle it. This week: a wartime plan for winning the climate fight with clean electricity. What’ll it take? How possible is it? Saul Griffith is our guest co-host. He’s the founder and chief scientist of Rewirin...

A decarbonized power sector will unlock massive opportunities across nearly every other sector, either via direct electrification or indirect electrification via the production of low-carbon fuels, like green hydrogen. But here’s the rub. Many of the companies that are working on these solutions rely on pretty heroic assumptions around the cost, availability and cleanliness of electricity in order for the economics to work. To put it bluntly, many decarbonization business models hinge on a ce...