Today's electricity grids are kept stable by the inertia of spinning masses — mostly fossil fuel generators. But what happens when those spinning masses are replaced by inverter-based resources like wind, solar, and batteries? The answer is that inverters must take over the stabilizing job, becoming "grid-forming" rather than merely “grid-following.” I chat with two experts about how grid-forming inverters work, how many are out there, and what the future holds for them.

Lithium-ion dominates the battery world, but alternative chemistries are finding their niches. I talk with Landon Mossburg, CEO of Peak Energy, about using sodium-ion batteries for large-scale grid storage. They trade some energy density for a longer life and radically lower operating costs, thanks to an innovative, passively cooled design. We also explore the geopolitical opportunity of competing in a battery market that China doesn't already completely own.

This week I talk with Dan Stein, whose organization Giving Green seeks to align climate philanthropy with the principles of effective altruism. But what does "effective" mean in the face of fossil fuel autocracy? We discuss the difficulties of measuring systems change and debate the limits of technocratic solutions.

Movement veterans Bill McKibben and Jamie Henn have been thinking about where climate activism goes from here. They argue for a new focus on celebrating and accelerating the miraculous global boom in solar power. We get into what it looks like to fight for building stuff, how to win the online information war for clean energy, and why the sun offers not just cheaper power, but a form of liberation.

In this episode, I'm joined by Frank Rambo of the Horizon Climate Initiative to discuss "uneconomic dispatch" — the costly and polluting practice of running coal plants even when cheaper, cleaner options are available. We dig into why utilities get away with this, how the Trump administration is now trying to force them to continue via bogus "reliability" claims, and why fighting this practice at the state level is a huge, bipartisan win for both the climate and consumer pocketbooks.

In this episode, I'm joined by Jake Higdon and Isabel Munilla, who helped develop the original "foreign entity of concern" (FEOC) standards for the Inflation Reduction Act, which sought to encourage domestic supply chains. We explore the security risks that prompted FEOC policy, the delicate balance required to do it right, and the absolute hash that Republicans made of it in their recent budget bill, to the point that it may kill the domestic manufacturing they claim to support.

In this episode, recorded live back in May, I'm joined by the one and only Jigar Shah to discuss Washington state climate policy and post-IRA policy in general. Jigar argues that to build political durability, the climate movement must shift its focus from shiny tech to solving everyday cost-of-living problems and that smart finance is the real key to scaling the energy transition for everyone.

I'm joined by Alon Levy of NYU's Transit Costs Project, whose work documents how expensive it is to build transit in the US relative to the rest of the world. We discuss how countries like Spain and Italy build cheaply by relying on in-house public expertise and standardized designs, while the Anglosphere is captured by a costly ideology of privatization. Levy explains how applying these lessons could make ambitious projects like high-speed rail in the Northeast not just possible but affordable.