120 episodes

A narrative news show about the trends shifting our carbon-based economy. Each week, host Stephen Lacey digs into the business and technology stories that explain the rise of clean energy, the challenge to fossil fuels, and how the energy system is transforming in dramatic ways. Produced by Latitude Media.

The Carbon Copy Latitude Media

    • News
    • 4.8 • 185 Ratings

A narrative news show about the trends shifting our carbon-based economy. Each week, host Stephen Lacey digs into the business and technology stories that explain the rise of clean energy, the challenge to fossil fuels, and how the energy system is transforming in dramatic ways. Produced by Latitude Media.

    The achilles heel of AI in the power system: data

    The achilles heel of AI in the power system: data

    There are many forces that could hold back AI in the power system: computing infrastructure, power availability, regulation, and corporate inertia.
    The biggest one? Good data. 
    Utilities and grid operators are awash in data. But getting access to it – or making sense of it – is very difficult. 
    For a better understanding of how to change that, we turn to someone who spends a lot of his time in the so-called data cloud: Tititaan Palazzi, the head of power and utilities at Snowflake.
    “Data naturally ends up in different boxes, in different silos. And when you then want to ask questions of the data, it becomes really hard. You can't ask questions across the enterprise,” he explained.
    In 2018, Palazzi co-founded Myst AI with Pieter Verhoeven, an engineer who built critical demand response applications for the Nest Thermostat. Myst was focused on AI-driven time-series forecasting for the grid. 
    “In the energy industry, there is a lot of time-series data coming from the grid. At the same time, using AI for forecasting is quite challenging because every time you need to create a new prediction, you need to have the latest data. And so from an engineering perspective, it was quite complicated to do,” said Palazzi.
    Palazzi and Verhoeven arrived at Snowflake after Myst was acquired by the company last year. 
    This week, we feature a conversation with Snowflake's Titiaan Palazzi on busting data silos, some early wins for AI in the power sector, and what phase of the transition we're in. 
    This episode is brought to you by The Big Switch. In a new 5-episode season, we’re digging into the ways batteries are made and asking: what gets mined, traded, and consumed on the road to decarbonization? Listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows.

    • 27 min
    The urgent need to simplify clean energy finance [partner content]

    The urgent need to simplify clean energy finance [partner content]

    Early in her career, Amanda Li worked on many deals in solar and storage as part of a billion-dollar sustainable infrastructure fund. And she discovered a problem that often hinders deployment: the underwriting process is cumbersome and slow.
    “All of it was in spreadsheets, word documents, emails. When you look at a solar deal, there's a lot of documentation, a lot of counterparties to deal with, and that information needs to be processed somehow. It felt like we were spending a lot of time just trying to process the information,” explained Li.
    This problem has only grown over time as more distributed assets need financing, and policies like the Inflation Reduction Act support smaller clean energy projects at the community level. These small- to mid-sized projects often require as much diligence and paperwork as much larger deals.
    So in 2018, Amanda co-founded Banyan Infrastructure, a software platform that simplifies transactions for a wide range of sustainable infrastructure projects – replacing spreadsheets, email, and PDFs with digitized loans and workflows.
    The company has raised more than $42 million and works with green banks, Wall Street firms, and local lenders to make deals simpler. 
    “If at every single layer there aren't standards, there aren't connected processes, it's going to move really slowly,” said Li.
    In this episode, produced in partnership with Banyan Infrastructure, we explore the shifting world of sustainable finance. 
    Stephen Lacey talks with Banyan COO Amanda Li about solving financial bottlenecks, how the IRA is bringing in new players to the market, and what it will take to unlock trillions of new dollars per year for the energy transition.
    Banyan Infrastructure is simplifying and accelerating the financing of sustainable infrastructure. Read the company’s white paper on unlocking the full potential of sustainable finance, or request a demo to learn how the software works.

    • 15 min
    New demand is straining the grid. Here’s how to tackle it.

    New demand is straining the grid. Here’s how to tackle it.

    When Brian Janous took charge of Microsoft’s clean energy strategy in 2011, the company’s data center demand was modest. He was measuring new demand in the tens of megawatts.
    Over the years, that grew to hundreds of megawatts of new demand as hyperscale computing expanded. And then everything changed in the spring of 2023, with the public launch of ChatGPT 3.5, which ran on Microsoft’s data centers.
    “That was the moment that I realized we were going to need a bigger boat. This is a massive leap in a period of like six months – and the amount of time that it takes to actually build infrastructure was measured in years,” said Janous.
    Projections show data center energy demand could double in the next couple of years, driven by artificial intelligence. Janous saw the hockey stick growth coming, and he realized the disconnect between how fast AI is moving and how the core input to data centers – electricity supply – is struggling to keep pace.
    After decades of flat demand, load forecasts are doubling because of data centers, expanding ports, new manufacturing plants supported by the IRA, and electric cars. 
    Janous recently co-founded a company, Cloverleaf Infrastructure, to help utilities unlock grid capacity with grid-enhancing technologies, batteries, and other flexible resources to meet the onslaught of new demand. He also advises LineVision, a dynamic line rating company that is helping expand transmission capacity.
    This week: we talk with Janous about why we don't need energy miracles – we need to think creatively about planning, and squeezing more out of the system.
    This episode is brought to you by The Big Switch. In a new 5-episode season, we’re digging into the ways batteries are made and asking: what gets mined, traded, and consumed on the road to decarbonization? Listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows.

    • 29 min
    The right way to recycle batteries [partner content]

    The right way to recycle batteries [partner content]

    In the early 2000s, Steve Cotton ran a company serving the fast-growing data center industry with backup battery systems.
    And when those systems reached the end of their lives, the company monetized kilotons of lead-acid batteries by sending them to recycling facilities – industrial plants that break down and burn the components.
    “It's very dangerous. You've got lead dust all over the floor. You've got a bunch of people wearing hot suits, literally chucking batteries into high temperature furnaces. And it is not a healthy environment,” said Cotton.
    Two decades later, the technology has shifted – and lithium-ion batteries are now the dominant form of storage. But recycling hasn't changed a lot.
    Today, there are two types of dominant battery recycling methods. One is using high heat, similar to the process that Steve witnessed at the lead-acid facilities. The other is giving batteries a chemical bath, in a process known as hydrometallurgy. Both create a lot of waste.
    Steve saw how big the battery recycling waste problem could become. And in 2015, he invested in a company called Aqua Metals. And he became so convinced by Aqua Metals' novel approach to recycling, he became the CEO.
    “We're using electricity to drive the process and the electricity itself comes from renewable resources. And that can produce this metal supply chain with a true opportunity to have a net zero environmental impact,” said Cotton.
    The battery recycling industry is experiencing rapid growth, as companies and countries look to build secure, circular supply chains for critical minerals.
    In this episode, produced in partnership with Aqua Metals, Steve Cotton sits down with Stephen Lacey to talk about the growing battery waste problem, and the urgency to invest in recycling techniques that don't lock in new sources of waste.
    This is a partner episode, brought to you by AquaMetals. Aqua Metals is pioneering cleaner and safer battery metals recycling through innovation. The company is building the first sustainable battery recycling operation in North America in Tahoe-Reno. Watch a tour of the company’s pilot facility, and learn more by reading the company’s recyclopedia.

    • 21 min
    A view of the $1.8 trillion clean energy economy

    A view of the $1.8 trillion clean energy economy

    Can a couple trillion dollars feel small?
    Global investments in the energy transition – from the buildout of factories and power projects to project finance and government debt – hit nearly $1.8 trillion last year. 
    That’s almost as big as the GDP of South Korea. It’s nearly 20% more than the year before, and nearly eight times more than a decade ago. But even with those record levels of spending, we are astonishingly behind what’s needed to stay on a net-zero trajectory this decade. 
    This week, we’ll talk about what’s growing, what’s lagging, and what the trillion-dollar scale means at the ground level.
    Then, geoengineering is nudging closer to the mainstream of scientific and environmental discourse. Are we giving up, or just being realistic?
    Katherine Hamilton of 38 North and Shalini Ramanathan of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners join us this week to sift through these trends.
    For more of Latitude Media’s coverage of the frontiers of clean energy, sign up for our newsletter.

    • 47 min
    Virtual power plants: the ‘sandwich’ for the grid

    Virtual power plants: the ‘sandwich’ for the grid

    If we want any chance of affordably and reliably building a grid powered 100% by zero-carbon resources, we need to triple the capacity of virtual power plants. 
    That’s the conclusion of a report released last fall by the Department of Energy, which examined the different business models and integration approaches for tying solar, batteries, thermostats, electric cars, water heaters, and other distributed assets into dispatchable power plants.
    The US already has tens of gigawatts of VPP capacity, mostly in the form of “bring your own device” programs that harness thermostats or water heaters for demand response services. But there are new models emerging that harness rooftop solar, batteries, and EV charging to enable bigger, longer-lasting load shifts.
    “I like to say that the term VPP is kind of like the term sandwich. There are lots of different kinds, they're full of different ingredients, and they serve lots of different purposes,” said Jen Downing, an engagement officer at the DOE, who leads the agency’s work on the space. 
    The concept of VPPs has been around for nearly 30 years. But as the US faces a dramatic increase in peak demand by 2030 – and with distributed resource capacity set to double – the urgency for deploying them has increased.
    “We're going to need clean, firm [power]. We're going to need more transmission capacity to transport that electricity. But one way to address that increase in peak is to use distributed energy resources to either serve that peak locally or to shift that peak outside of peak hours. And so that's where VPPs come in,” said Downing.
    This week on The Carbon Copy, we spoke with DOE’s Jen Downing about the different ways that virtual power plants are getting built – and the need to build many more.
    Read our show notes and all our industry coverage at Latitudemedia.com.

    • 36 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
185 Ratings

185 Ratings

Petrogrand ,

A weapon in the fight against climate disinformation

Excellent podcast providing invaluable info in the fight against vested interests and the climate disinformation war. Thank you for introducing me to the term “fossil gas” and may we consign all “fossils” to history, where they belong!

NicolasF21 ,

biased against nuclear power

I believe this podcast always has a bias against nuclear power and portrays solar or wind as the best alternatives for fossil free energy. I don’t believe that is fair without an extensive and deep analysis that should not be done in a space of 40 minutes. Just from a perspective of capacity factor, energy density of the fuel, space requirements, nuclear is one of the best if not the best source of energy. Just because it is hard to build does not mean it should not be done. I would encourage listeners to listen to other podcasts like titans of nuclear or fire2fission or decouple, to have different perspectives, not just take the renewables cargo culture or just the nuclear for everything.

RobinP2K1 ,

Cooking with Gasp

“Cooking with gasp cooking with gasp. We’re polluting our kitchen when we’re cooking with gasp.”

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