Volts David Roberts

New York City was on the cusp of (finally) implementing a congestion pricing program when Governor Kathy Hochul announced earlier this month that it would be “indefinitely delayed.” In this episode, NY State Sen. Liz Krueger and Evergreen Action’s Justin Balik, both with deep history in New York’s congestion pricing drama, discuss Hochul’s mysterious and possibly illegal move, the apocalyptic budget implications, and what might happen next.


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In this episode, CEO Kyle Clark of BETA Technologies walks us through the details of how to design, build, and operate electric planes — first for relatively short light-cargo flights, but eventually, he says, for all of aviation. I loved this conversation so much.


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In this episode, recorded at a live event, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee discusses his multiple decades of climate advocacy, his political successes, and the upcoming threat to one of his crowning achievements.


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In his book The Price Is Wrong, Brett Christophers argues that, contrary to recent economic triumphalism among renewables advocates, wind and solar are not profitable enough to attract the private capital necessary to scale as fast as they need to scale. In this episode, he and I dig deep (extremely deep) into the details.


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In this episode, I have a lively conversation with Alp Kucukelbir, co-author of a recent “Artificial Intelligence for Climate Change Mitigation Roadmap,” about the strengths and limits of AI in relation to climate, where it all might be headed, and how concerned we should be about the energy use of data centers.


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More than half a billion people on the African continent lack access to electricity, and the number is only growing. In this episode, Tombo Banda of CrossBoundary’s Mini-Grid Innovation Lab discusses the longstanding barriers to electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa, why current business models haven’t been effective, and the mini-grid innovations that could turn the tide.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe