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Rob and Jesse talk about what comes next in the shift to clean energy.
Rob and guest host Jillian Goodman talk atomic politics with Third Way’s Josh Freed.
Rob interviews Ali Zaidi at Yale.
Rob and Jesse talk with Heatmap staffers about why — and how — consumer choices matter.
Inside a special season 2 episode of Shift Key.
Inside season 2, episode 8 of Shift Key.
In just over a month, America will elect hundreds of thousands of people to state, county, and municipal offices. While those elections might lack the splashiness of the race for the White House or Congress, they could shape how and whether the United States fights climate change. So which elections matter most?
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Caroline Spears, the executive director of Climate Cabinet, a group that tries to do ‘Moneyball for climate policy,’ analyzing the races that could matter most for the country’s decarbonization. A winner of the Grist 50 award, Spears formerly worked in the solar industry and now leads the growing organization. We dive into which offices have the most sway role over adaptation and mitigation and which races deserve your attention in 2024. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Caroline Spears: One of the races that is critically important for climate this year is elected utility commissions. They’re not elected in every state, but in about 10 states across the country, voters show up to their ballot box, and they elect the electricity regulatory body for their state.
Should that be an elected position? Listen, it’s not for me to decide. Democracy has decided that electricity regulatory bodies are elected in many states, so here we are. In a bunch of other states, they’re appointed and then confirmed by the state legislature. So there’s this interesting mix of when democracy shows up in these races, in these offices. There are a few public utility commission districts up this November. I really want to highlight the ones happening in Arizona and Montana this year — we’re really watching those, we’re excited to see where those go.
In both cases, climate champions are one and four or zero and five in those states, which means — literally, we are so far from a climate majority in either of those states. And this has real world impacts. So, for example, let’s talk about Montana really quick. That solar company that I used to work for: The Montana Public Service Commission unfairly changed the avoided cost rate, the rate at which we would get compensated, when solar started entering the market. And there’s this hot mic moment where an elected Montana Public Service Commissioner says, “Well, this will kill solar in the state,” and then voted for it. So that’s the power that these public service commissions have, and they’re up for election. They’re up for election this November. So they’re really important.
In Arizona, we’re supporting all three climate champions running. The one person I really want to highlight today is Ylenia Aguilar. She served on the water commission in Arizona, so she has a great knowledge of that intersection between climate and water issues in the state, and just last month she made national news for her work trying to cool down classrooms in Arizona from heating. So she’s someone who can bring together climate, knowledge of what it takes to be on an electricity regulatory commission, and the personal impact of how it actually shows up in people’s lives. So this is the exact type of person you want running for the seat. I’m really excited about those races, but those will be tough.
Jesse Jenkins: And I’ll just add, so these commissions are often in charge of effectively approving the investments and plans of the regulated utilities in the state. In some states, those are only network utilities. So they’re the ones investing in transmission and distribution lines, deciding how to make sure those are resilient to climate damages as we’re seeing from wildfires and floods and hurricanes and everything else.
In other states, like Arizona and Montana, they also oversee utilities that control power generation, as well. So should they be investing in new natural gas plants? Or should they be investing in batteries and solar? For example. Those kinds of decisions go before the utility commission for approval or disapproval before the utilities can earn returns on the investments they make in those areas — or make investments. And as you mentioned, they also set rates both for retail customers — so, you know, what’s the net metering policy? How are we incentivizing flexible EV charging? — and then the rates for, in some cases, avoided costs for larger-scale generators that are connecting to the grid in partial competition frameworks. Lots and lots of other rules.
They’ll be the ones in charge of implementing, usually, clean electricity standards — and in some states, like Arizona, they even have the authority to establish one themselves. So really, really influential bodies.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
Inside season 2, episode 7 of Shift Key.
It’s potentially one of the most important — but least understood — provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, and it’s finally out in the world. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency spent $27 billion to set up new green banks across the country.
These new lending institutions could direct billions of dollars to supercharging decarbonization nationwide, financing new solar farms, geothermal projects, EV chargers, and more. They’ll also recycle their funding indefinitely, meaning they will likely last longer than any other provision in the law.
On this week’s show, Rob and Jesse bring you a user’s guide to these new green banks and what they might mean for decarbonization. The episode features two conversations: First, Rob speaks with Jahi Wise, the former director for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program at the Environmental Protection Agency. Second, Rob and Jesse chat with Dawn Lippert, the founder and CEO of Elemental Impact, a climate tech investment and nonprofit organization. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: We’ve talked for a long time about this “valley of death” that companies face as they reach that scale-up phase where they’re coming out of the phase where they’re trying to just prove the technology works and de-risk it and into the phase where they have to deploy at scale and need project financing for that, or they need to build factories to get to economies of scale to produce their product at a competitive cost. And that burns a lot of capital, both, direct equity investment in the company and project finance and loans to get projects built and online. Is that the real gap that you’re seeing right now?
It seems like we’ve had such a big wave of venture capital coming into this space over the last few years that there are a lot of really well capitalized companies through series A or B, but now they’re … you know, if they were stood up two, three, four years ago, now they’re coming into this new phase. Is that where you’re trying to position your fund? And maybe more broadly, the green banks that were supported by GGRF?
Dawn Lippert: Yes — I think, overall, yes. And it’s nuanced. So what we’re seeing is, we published a report earlier this year that there’s essentially this financing gap, if you can think of it that way, or the valley is at least $150 billion, where companies are going from exactly what you said of venture capital-backed and then need other kinds of financing.
And then on the other side of the gap, there’s actually a lot more financing than ever.
Jenkins: Yeah, tons. Infrastructure funds and others, right?
Lippert: Yes, absolutely. And so it’s really about building this bridge and being really smart about that. So I would say there’s a couple of things. One is that we see three main issues to crossing the bridge. One is capital. We’ve talked about that, and I’ll talk about a little bit more. The second is project expertise — companies going from technology companies to project companies. I would say that’s one of the key things that we see as being a real challenge and also a huge opportunity.
And Rob, you talked about talent coming into this space. That tidal wave really changed in 2018 when the skies turned orange over San Francisco. We just saw so much talent coming in from tech, and it just hasn’t stopped. It really kept flowing. But this project expertise of operational expertise — how you develop, how you permit and get entitlements, how you structure the financing, but also just do the actual construction of projects — we need to build so many things. That’s where we see a huge need. And we did a recent analysis with our partners at Vibrant Data Labs and found that only about less than 30% of companies in climate right now have project expertise or deep project expertise on their team to build stuff.
So that’s a place where Elemental has leaned in a ton where we were dropping CFOs and fractional CFOs and developers and residents and all kinds of folks to help fill that gap. But there’s a huge amount of work that needs to be done there.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Antenna Group helps you connect with customers, policymakers, investors, and strategic partners to influence markets and accelerate adoption. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
