Podcasts about climate now

Our Season One finale brings you a debate about the pace of the energy transition that was recorded live at NYC Climate Week three weeks ago.  How fast is the transition progressing, really?  And why might there be divergent opinions on the subject? The debate was co-moderated by James Lawler and Dina Cappiello (RMI), and features RMI's Kingsmill Bond and Bain's Aaron Denman. We look forward to your thoughts and questions, as always, and we look forward to being in touch with all of you again in 2025.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

As a Climate Now listener, we know you appreciate frank and thoughtful debate about the climate crisis. So we'd like to share an episode from a podcast that looks at how climate change is changing our energy systems.Energy vs Climate is a podcast featuring energy experts David Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon, and Ed Whittingham. They break down the hard truths and tough choices posed by the energy transition from the heart of Canada's oil country. Through their topics and their guests, David, Sara, and Ed bring new honesty around the sharp trade-offs between climate action and economic progress .The episode we're sharing with you is called, "Buzzkill: Understanding the Shift in Media Perception Towards EVs," with special guest Dr. Simon Evans, deputy editor and policy editor at Carbon Brief. Together, they tease apart EV fact from fiction. We think you'll really enjoy it.Listen to Energy vs Climate wherever you get your podcasts and check out energyvsclimate.com for their next live webinars, where you too can join in on the discussion.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Introducing Climate Now:  Today, we are excited to bring you an episode from the Climate Now podcast. Climate Now, hosted by James Lawler, and accessible wherever you listen to podcasts as well as on their website - climatenow.com - is a podcast and newsletter that explores and explains the ideas, technologies, and policies we need to address the global climate crisis. The episode we're sharing, "When insurers can no longer afford the risk," features former Director of Investment Research at Wellington Management, and current Founder of Probable Futures, Spencer Glendon. In this episode, you'll learn how home insurance policies are priced today, why that method is proving insufficient in a rapidly changing climate, and what this means for the future of the home insurance industry and homeowners. More available at climatenow.com___Energy vs Climate: How climate is changing our energy systemswww.energyvsclimate.com Twitter/X | Bluesky | YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Climate Now is back to tackle six of the biggest stories in recent climate news. James Lawler, Julio Friedmann, Dina Cappiello, and Darren Hau discuss recent developments in the U.S., from electric grid planning and finance to the Department of Energy's list of 10 national interest energy corridors. The team also digs into BHP's bid for Anglo American with one metal at the center of it all: copper. Our hosts round out this week's news by discussing the biggest year over year jump in CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory, climate action collaboration between the U.S. and China, and Climeworks' record-breaking DAC plant beginning operations. Tune in to dig deeper than the headlines with our expert team. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

This week we're joined by Dina Capiello and Julio Friedmann to talk about the latest climate news. The IEA released its global warming emissions report for 2023, and emissions continue to rise, but at a slower rate than in previous years. Meanwhile, to better track those emissions, EDF launched its long-anticipated MethaneSAT on March 4th, a satellite that will measure methane pollution worldwide.  And on March 6th the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) released its final rules to require companies to disclose their climate risk.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Today, given route lengths and cargo capacity, it is possible to electrify 65% of medium-duty and 49% of heavy-duty trucks. Commercial fleets' are responding to this promise, with announced commitments to electrification surpassing 140,000 vehicles in 2022 in the United States alone. Still, the number of electric fleet trucks currently on the road in the US is well under 1% of all medium and heavy duty trucks, and companies are facing a dearth of EV charging infrastructure to support the expansion of these commercial fleets.  The good news is, companies are emerging to fill the gaps in charging infrastructure, assuage concerns from prospective EV fleet owners, and make commercial adoption not just a possibility but an advantage. In this episode, the second installment of a three-part series on the state and future of electric fleet charging, Climate Now is joined by three industry leaders: Anthony Harrison (TeraWatt Infrastructure), Jonathan Colbert (Voltera), and Jeffrey Prosserman (Voltpost). Anthony, Jonathan, and Jeffrey join Climate Now's James Lawler and Darren Hau to discuss what factors prospective EV fleet adopters are considering, what their companies are doing to facilitate buildout of charging infrastructure, and how that buildout means growth for many industries – not just EV charging.  You can find the full transcript as well as sources mentioned in this episode here: https://climatenow.com/charging-electric-fleets-2-3These interviews were recorded in Summer 2023. Since then, Voltera has published additional playbooks, which you can find here: Playbook 1, Playbook 2, Playbook 3.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In the United States, nearly one quarter of national greenhouse gas emissions come from the 280 million vehicles that drive on the nations roads each year. And while fleet vehicles – including the ~5 million buses, garbage trucks, law enforcement vehicles and more that make up public fleets, and the ~6.5 million rental cars, taxis, delivery trucks, long-haul trucks, and more that make up commercial fleets – represent only a small fraction of those vehicles, they are an excellent target for early electric vehicle (EV) adoption, by virtue of their affordability through bulk pricing, their ability to demonstrate EV technology to a wide audience, and the outsized impact fleet electrification could have in reducing air pollution that stems from auto emissions.  But critical to the wide-spread adoption of electric fleets, is wide-spread development of charging infrastructure that will support those fleets, which have unique charging demands in comparison to the personal EV. In this first installment of a three-part series examining the state and future of electric fleet charging, Climate Now is joined by EV charging entrepreneurs Nathan King (itselectric), and Arcady Sosinov and Rob Anderson (Freewire Technologies) to explore the current EV charging landscape in the US, what makes fleet charging a challenge, and new strategies and technologies that are helping existing infrastructure meet the growing demand for EV charging. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Phoenix, Arizona has seen meteoric population growth since 2010. Now the nation's fifth largest city, its population increased by around 12% over the course of a decade. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this highly-engineered metropolis has continued to expand at the second fastest rate in the nation between 2021 and 2022. Counterintuitively, the region has experienced an escalation of extreme heat and drought risk. The summer of 2023 was the hottest globally since NASA's records began in 1880 by 2.59 degrees Fahrenheit. This significantly contributed to the deadliest heat wave for Phoenix, with 579 fatalities attributed to the elevated temperatures. Since August 2021, Phoenix has been grappling with federally declared shortages on the Colorado River, which has historically accounted for 38% of its overall water supply. To keep the river stable, the city recently agreed to a 30% reduction of this allocation over three years—enough to supply 450,000 households for year— in exchange for $60 million in water infrastructure improvements. Statistics such as these are what have catapulted Phoenix to the top of many national and global climate resilience conversations. Reported figures are also what inspired our colleagues at Climate Now to seek our collaboration to reach experts on the ground in Phoenix and get at a better understanding of how the city has been able to maintain such steady population and industrial growth, despite perceived and actual risks. This special long-form episode combines conversations with climate experts and business leaders closely involved in the state's adaptation and sustainability efforts. Through their discussions, a clearer picture of why Phoenix is a coveted destination for many and how it plans to remain as one well into the future, appears. The moderators are Duke Reiter (Ten Across founder) and James Lawler's (Climate Now founder).

Passage of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022 was a game changer in the United States' effort to address climate change. The hundreds of billions of dollars the IRA has made available for clean energy and climate mitigation projects will likely double the pace of U.S. decarbonization. While this rapid expansion in clean energy development is tied to the sheer scale of the IRA (it is the largest climate spending bill ever passed), how climate spending from this bill is taking place is also a critical.  Most of the IRA funding for climate change mitigation is in the form of generous tax credits for developing a new project, or producing clean energy. But, most developers that could receive credits for large capital projects don't have enough tax liability to use them. As a solution, for the first time ever, IRA tax credits for clean energy development were made transferable, meaning that the credits can be sold for cash to third parties. To understand what this finance rule change means, Climate Now sat down with Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, whose startup company provides a comprehensive platform for buyers and sellers in this new transferable tax credit market. Alfred explains how tax credit transfers work, why they are so important to unlocking the financing potential of the IRA, and Crux's role in cultivating the clean energy tax credit ecosystem. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Since 2019, the cost of wind and solar electricity production has been lower than that from fossil fuels, and costs are projected to continue falling well into the next decade. But for renewable energy to truly dominate the electricity market, it needs to be cheap and reliable, even when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. That means the battery market needs to grow, too.So far, short-duration lithium batteries have dominated the market of grid-scale battery storage, but a recent report from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has highlighted the importance of developing longer-duration and lower cost storage options as a key to greater integration of renewable energy into the national grid. So what types of long-duration batteries are emerging as contenders for widespread, gridscale storage? And what needs to happen to incorporate these batteries into the grid? Climate Now sat down with two leaders in the emerging grid storage market: Jeff Chapin, co-founder of Haven Energy, and Antonio Baclig, founder of Inlyte Energy, to get a read on the state and future of the quickly growing battery storage industry.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Julio Friedmann, Dina Cappiello, Darren Hau and Eric Wesoff  join James Lawler to discuss this week's climate news. Why is the Auxin solar tariff case still a thing? How did we manage to reduce global emissions while increasing GDP last year? China works to establish a vehicle-to-grid (VTG) case study.  Meanwhile, more of Biden's 2020 voters now list climate change as their top priority.  What does this mean for the 2024 election?  Nathaniel Stinnett also joins Climate Now again to explain some key climate election news.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Team Common has been off this week, so in place of our regular show, we're bringing you a special re-drop of our Earth Week series: Climate Now. Today's episode published on April 20th, and brings us to Boston's South End, where residents have already been feeling the intensifying effects of urban heat for years.  Greater Boston's daily podcast where news and culture meet.

Team Common is off today, but we've still got a great show in store for you. It's the third episode of our Climate Now series from Earth Week 2023. It published on April 19th, and takes us to Hyde Park, where community members are fighting to protect a parcel of land called Crane Ledge Woods.  Greater Boston's daily podcast where news and culture meet.

Team Common is off again today, so we're bringing you the second episode of our Climate Now series from Earth Week 2023. Today's episode originally published on April 18th and brings us to the Boston Harbor Islands, where rising sea levels and storms threaten to wash away the irreplaceable history and nature the islands hold.  Greater Boston's daily podcast where news and culture meet.

Team Common is off this week so we're re-sharing our Climate Now series from earlier in the year. Today's episode originally published on April 17th and takes us to Boston's Chinatown, where residents are taking climate resilience into their own hands.  Greater Boston's daily podcast where news and culture meet.

Team Common is taking the day to rest and recharge with friends and family, we hope you are too.  We'll be in your feeds tomorrow with a special re-drop of our Climate Now series from Earth Week this year, which highlights the very real ways climate change is already impacting our communities here in Greater Boston.  In the meantime, have a very happy holiday. We'll talk to you soon. Greater Boston's daily podcast where news and culture meet.

The voluntary carbon offset market (VCM) – in which customers can pay for third-parties to avoid emitting CO2 or remove it from the atmosphere on their behalf – has existed for over 30 years, and has been controversial for nearly as long. On the one hand, the VCM can provide a path for hard-to-decarbonize sectors or businesses to reach net-zero emissions goals, and it can help finance development of important carbon removal technologies, like direct air capture. On the other hand, the market is rife with opportunities for exploitation and the sale of ineffective carbon credits.In the first of a three-part episode exploring the current and future state of the voluntary carbon offset market, Climate Now is joined by Dr. Colin McCormick, Alex Dolginow, Derik Broekhoff and Dr. Mark Trexler – four experts in the VCM space, to examine why it is so difficult to create an effective and reliable carbon offset market, and whether there is a path forward for doing so. For a full transcript and sources, go here: https://climatenow.com/podcast/episode-1-of-3-the-voluntary-carbon-offset-market/ Editor's note: At 30:12, Derik Broekhoff mentions "carbon credit rating agencies." Here are some of these which he shared with us after the recording:Calyx Global (https://calyxglobal.com/)BeZero (https://bezerocarbon.com/)Sylvera (https://www.sylvera.com/)Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

How much CO2 is it possible to remove in the United States and at what cost? Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and researchers from more than a dozen institutions have completed a first-of-its-kind national assessment of carbon dioxide removal options, ranging from the role of cropland soils, carbon capture, CO2 transport, and more. In today's episode, Climate Now interviewed several of the report's authors to provide an overview of the negative emissions pathways—ones that physically remove CO2 from the atmosphere—that can help the United States reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, or sooner.  You can read the new report and learn more at https://livermorelab.info/Roads2RemovalFollow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In 2023, two major insurers joined a growing list of companies that will no longer offer new home insurance policies in California. In Florida, the situation is worse, with more than a dozen large home insurance companies retreating from the state. Both states have seen devastating property losses due to extreme forest fires and hurricanes - risks that are only increasing due to the changing climate.But why can't the insurance companies simply adjust premiums to reflect the changing risk that climate change is bringing, rather than leaving a market entirely? Because like many economic models, insurance risk is assessed based on historical data (in some cases, by law), which is not particularly reflective of future (or even present) risk. Dr. Spencer Glendon, Founder of Probable Futures and former Head of Research at the investment firm Wellington Management, returns to Climate Now to examine how much our historical experiences can be used to inform how we should respond to our rapidly changing world, and how the roles of quantitative data, empirical analysis, and storytelling may need to shift for us to make the most of our collective wisdom in preparing for challenges of the future.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In this week's episode of Climate News Weekly, James Lawler and Ben Hone, Climate Now's Marketing Manager sit down with Nathaniel Stinnett, Founder & Executive Director of the Environmental Voter Project, to go over last week's US elections and what they mean for climate action. Then, James is joined by Julio Friedmann and Darren Hau to discuss the past week's top climate headlines. They discuss the reality behind headlines claiming that EV adoption is slowing down, a lawsuit against California's new truck emissions law, the opening of a new direct air capture facility in California, and more.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

“Geoengineering” refers to the intentional intervention in Earth processes for the purpose of mitigating climate change. A controversial topic, geoengineering is typically divided into two categories: carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. This second category, also known as SRM, made headlines this summer when the White House released a report that “opened the door” to future research on the topic. In principle, SRM includes any technology that could be used to reflect some of the sun's energy from the Earth in order to decrease the amount of associated heating, effectively cooling the planet. And while the study of SRM has mostly been limited to the lab and to date no large-scale experiments have been conducted, more people are calling for the idea to be explored further as global warming increases. At the same time, others are saying the door needs to remain shut, as the potential for unintended political, societal and ecological side effects are just too great.To help us understand why - why is SRM being considered, and why are people concerned that it is being considered, Climate Now brought together five experts – Professors Frank Biermann (Utrecht Univ.), David Keith (Univ. Chicago), Chukwumerije Okereke (Alex Ekwueme Federal Univ. Ndufu-Alike, Nigeria), Jennie Stephens (Northeastern Univ.), and Claudia Wieners (Utrecht Univ.) – to debate the merits and risks of examining SRM as a possible climate solution.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In 2015, Pope Francis - head of the Catholic Church - published Laudato Si: On Care For Our Common Home, a “papal cyclical,” or open letter, to the world's more than 1.3 billion Catholics  about the ethical imperative of addressing climate change, and the relationship between environmental stewardship and social justice. The publication had an impact: in church-goers' confidence in the scientific evidence for climate change, in country leaders who cited it in the COP21 negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement, and in catalyzing an international movement among the Catholic community to fight climate change.But as he makes clear in the follow up “apostolic exhortation” released earlier this month, called Laudate Deum, Pope Francis knows the work accomplished so far is not enough. Climate Now was joined by Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker, Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University, to examine this urgent papal call for progress in protecting the environment and the poor, and the impact it may have in the global climate movement. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The United States' aging electricity grid is a problem. Over 70% of the major transmission networks – which transfer electricity from power generation centers to endpoint users in homes and buildings, sometimes in other states – are at least 25 years old, and much of the grid was built in the 1960s and 1970s. As the number of renewable energy projects being built to meet clean energy goals increases, the problem of how to connect them to the grid is only growing larger, as transmission infrastructure projects can take decades to approve and build, and utilities navigate the energy storage landscape. The US faces an existential question: as it looks ahead to a clean energy future, what should it do about its electricity grid? Should state and regional utility networks be rebuilt, or should they be replaced with more distributed forms of electricity production and storage—like microgrids with rooftop solar and local wind energy projects? Or does the solution lie in a combination of both?Climate Now posed these questions to two experts whose work examines the future of electricity generation and storage in the United States. Paul Denholm is a senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, specializing in the technical, economic, and environmental impacts and benefits of large scale deployment of renewable electricity generation. Bill Nussey is an author, CEO and venture capitalist whose 2022 book, “Freeing Energy,” examines the disruptive nature of distributed energy generation and its potential to produce cheaper and more reliable electricity, faster. Tune in to hear what they have to say about the future of the US electricity grid.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

When the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022, policy analysts predicted that the incentives it provided for renewable energy deployment, home electrification and EV adoption would put the U.S. on track to reach at least two thirds of its 2030 emissions reduction target. Twelve months later, we can now start to track how well the nation is progressing towards those predictions.In terms of unlocking private capital and kickstarting new clean energy projects, the IRA is profoundly exceeding expectations, already creating tens of billions of dollars in new investments in what has been dubbed a U.S. “manufacturing renaissance.” But according to Oliver Kerr, North America lead for market analytics company Aurora Energy Research, a national energy transformation requires integration as well as manufacturing. Climate Now spoke with Oliver about the impact of the IRA on renewable energy growth, as well as the policy reforms and grid infrastructure updates that are still needed to ensure that public and private investments being made in clean energy manufacturing will translate to 100% fossil free U.S. electricity in the coming decade. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

There are over 8 billion square meters of rooftops in the US that are viable for solar energy generation, and could produce as much as 40% of national energy needs. And yet, only 8% of US households have installed rooftop solar panels. With so much available space, and with the average cost of energy from solar much lower than the cost of energy from the grid, why aren't more homeowners installing solar? Climate Now sat down with Solar United Neighbors Executive Director Anya Schoolman to discuss how upfront costs and legacy business models for utilities companies have slowed the adoption of residential solar, and how Solar United Neighbors is working to help homeowners, businesses, communities and even entire cities overcome some of those barriers and go solar.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

One of the most controversial parts of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act - the most ambitious climate spending bill in history - was the large pot of federal dollars that could now subsidize the nascent Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) industry. The bill provides for the expansion of the 45Q tax credit, which now allocates up to $85 per metric ton of CO2 that is captured from a point source of emissions like power plants or factories, and then is injected deep underground for permanent storage. At this price point, the IRA provides - for the first time ever - a viable revenue stream for most CCS projects.Proponents of CCS argue that CO2 reductions will need to happen faster than the world can dismantle its dependence on fossil fuels and thus investment in carbon management technologies need to start now. Opponents say that investments in CCS divert funding from lower cost decarbonization efforts, thus slowing net carbon reductions, and that they incentivize polluting industries to continue their operations.In this episode, Climate Now has brought together four experts to examine the arguments both for and against CCS. Join us and our guests Charles F. Harvey (MIT), Kurt House (KoBold Metals), Sue Hovorka (UT Austin) and George Peridas (LLNL) for a moderated discussion about what role - if any - CCS should play in the path to global net zero.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The Nobel-prize winning discovery of how to create synthetic ammonia has been called the “most momentous technical advance in history,” and for good reason. Today about half of the food consumed worldwide comes from the increased harvest yields resulting from ammonia-based fertilizers. We could not sustain the global population without it.While ammonia production is critical to modern day global food security, and will need to increase to support a growing population, it is also extremely energy- and emissions-intensive. Ammonia produces twice as much CO2 per metric ton of product than steel, 4 times as much as cement, and accounts for ~2% of global emissions. Talus Renewables is among a growing number of companies working to change that by creating fossil-fuel free “green ammonia,” and they are the first to have deployed their product in the market. The company provides modular, small-scale ammonia production facilities that can be shipped to remote growing regions and allow farms or groups of farms to produce their own fertilizer using clean energy. Climate Now sat down with Talus Renewables co-founder, Hiro Iwanaga, to discuss how this production system reduces complex supply chain and transportation costs as well as emissions, and how it is helping improve global food security and sustainable agriculture at the same time.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The Biden Administration in the U.S. has set a goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, which among other things means that U.S. households, and the appliances and machines that run within them, will need to be powered almost entirely by carbon-free electricity. A practical implication of that goal is that about 1 billion machines in homes across the nation will need to be replaced or converted from fossil-powered to electric within the next 3 decades. It sounds like a lot - but is it?A recent report from the nonprofit Rewiring America examined how quickly high-efficiency, electric technologies – like heat pumps, EV vehicles and induction stoves – are replacing sales of their fossil-powered counterparts, and compared that to what needs to happen this year, next year, and over the next five years to ensure that American homes are on track to decarbonize. So are we on track? What needs to happen in the near-term to ensure we reach our mid-century decarbonization goals? And what are the most impactful upgrades that people can make to their homes to support the decarbonization movement? Rewiring America's Director of Research Cora Wyent and Head of Market Transformation Stephen Pantano sat down with Climate Now to break it down.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense released a report entitled, “An abrupt climate change scenario and its implications for United States national security,” which “imagined the unthinkable” – that gradual global warming could lead to relatively abrupt changes in climate patterns, significantly reducing global food production, and with it “the human carrying capacity of the Earth's environment.”  Two decades later, the scenario of abrupt climatic shifts resulting from global warming is not so unthinkable, and the U.S. military now formally regards climate change as a threat, according to Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and the Environment. In 2022, three branches of the U.S. military (Army, Navy and Air Force) released climate strategies detailing decarbonization goals for their operations. Ms. Berger is responsible for overseeing implementation and execution of the Department of the Navy's climate strategy, which includes commitments to 100% carbon pollution free electricity by 2030, a 50% reduction in building emissions by 2032, and optimizing route planning and ship speed to maximize fuel efficiency. Climate Now spoke with Meredith Berger to discuss why climate change is classified as a threat to national security, how a climate strategy aligns with the mission of the navy, and how the navy plans to reach their decarbonization goals.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Landfills emit about 2% of the world's greenhouse gases, but in terms of lowering global emissions, they represent some of the lowest hanging fruit. When organic waste – like municipal food waste, agricultural waste, and forest residue – is disposed of by burial in a landfill or incineration, the organic material within is broken down to methane or CO2, and released to the atmosphere. But if that organic waste is diverted to other forms of disposal, those emissions could be avoided.  Steve Wirtel, the Executive Vice President of Business Development at Kore Infrastructure, joined Climate Now to explain how Kore's biomass thermal conversion (slow pyrolysis) process can be used to dispose of organic waste, sequester carbon and generate energy. We explore how Kore's modular design works, how it can be adapted for various feedstock inputs and consumer products (including hydrogen), how this kind of technology is financed, and how slow pyrolysis can align with emission reduction legislation and environmental justice objectives.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Climate Now is taking a break this week - but will be back on June 20 with one more solution we can include in our portfolio of opportunities to tackle climate change. Read more below, and stay tuned.In the meantime, take a listen to our 'This Week in Climate News' segment, and catch up on some past episodes about how we can all do more to address climate change - from the policy level to grass roots movements, there is always something we can do.This Week in Climate News: One of the greatest difficulties in addressing climate change has been how invisible the crisis was. You cannot see the 40 billion metric tons of CO2 being added to the atmosphere each year, or necessarily feel that average global temperatures have risen more than 1 degree C since the late 1800's.But this week, for many parts of North America, the urgency of the climate crisis could be seen and felt – in people's eyes, noses and lungs. Record breaking forest fires have consumed more than 9 million acres in Canada in the last month, and impacted air quality as far south as North Carolina.The fires are tragic, but not a surprise, as the correlation between increasing global temperatures and forest fires could not be more direct. One clear illustration of this comes from a 2004 study of – ironically – Canadian forests.The study showed that for every degree C departure from the 20th century temperature average, about 10 thousand square kilometers (2.5 million acres) more forest burned than a typical season. The hotter, drier and longer the summers, the more fuel available for the flames.For reference, in May of 2023, Canada experienced temperatures that were 10 degrees C higher than average. Such a relationship illustrates why it is so critical to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, rather than the 2.7 degree rise that we are on track to reach with current global policies. Canada, and other high-latitude countries will likely experience temperature increases as much as four times higher than the global average, which means most summers would feel temperatures similar to this year's May weather. It also means that unless we act fast, the orange smoky haze blanketing the eastern seaboard this past week may not just be a moment to "see and feel" climate change. It might be the new color of summer.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Since humans began settling down and building civilizations 10,000 years ago, the Earth's climate has been relatively stable. But before that, the climate was more unstable - unpredictable - and humans were nomads, forced to follow the good climate for food and shelter. Today, the global average temperature is higher than it has ever been since the beginning of civilization. What does this mean for the future of human civilization? Could this mean a return to instability? Can we make civilization resilient to such dramatic changes in climate that we have never before experienced as a society?Dr. Spencer Glendon of Probable Futures joins Climate Now to speak about his work to change how we think about, talk about, and plan for the future of society.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

A 2022 study by Yale University found that two thirds of Americans (67%) rarely or never talk about climate change, and rarely or never hear people they know talking about it either. Despite the existential threat that it poses, one third of Americans (32%) only hear about global warming in the media a few times a year - or less! Are these statistics shocking? Or does it matter that people don't talk much about climate change? How important is public awareness and public discussion in the fight to address climate change? How much does public opinion shape climate policy, or drive individuals to reduce their own climate impacts? And, if climate communication IS important, how do we get more conversations started?To mark Climate Now's 100th episode, we partnered with the Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) to take an introspective look at the role of science communication: how does talking about climate change help address it? We are joined by three experts who look at communication in different ways: David Fenton, Founder of Fenton Communications, a social change communications firm, Leah Thomas, Founder of Intersectional Environmentalist - a climate justice collective known for its reach in environmental storytelling through social media, and Dr. Elke Weber, Professor in Energy and the Environment and in Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Together, we examine why communicating about climate change is hard, why we need to do it anyway, and what strategies, tools and events have the biggest impact in increasing awareness of the climate crisis and motivation to develop solutions.Interested in how this knowledge could inform workplace climate conversations? Our partners at NBS just published an article on that subject, based on these interviews. Check it out!fr8KdCNFvOtDpvKZRBzaFollow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

According to a 2022 poll from the Associated Press, although 93% of Americans acknowledge that human activity impacts climate, nearly half of Americans (47%) feel that their actions don't have an impact on climate change. And yet, we know – it is the collective momentum of tiny particles of snow that drive an avalanche.In our upcoming episode, Climate Now sits down with James Regulinski, co-founder of Carbon Collective, to discuss the role of investing - even among individual, “retail” investors - in determining the pace at which clean energy technologies can replace our global dependence on fossil fuels. We will discuss why investing in your retirement and investing in clean energy technologies can be well-aligned endeavors, why most environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment portfolios aren't having the impact they should, and why even small investments can make a big difference in accelerating the path to decarbonization.Carbon Collective Disclaimer regarding the use of MSCI data to develop ESG funds:The claims Carbon Collectively repeatedly makes are: MSCI explicitly states that their data should not be used to determine how good or ethical a company is, just as supplemental data to understand its exposure to risk from ESG-related issues. This means the use of the data as a measure of how ethical your portfolio is, is not supported by the data provider, even when it is sold as such. MSCI (and other data providers) use data that is self-reported by the companies. This data is not standardized or verified by MSCI or anyone. The result is data that is noisy/inconsistent. When used to build funds, the fund design is inconsistent with scientific reports of the actions we need to take to address the E of ESG. For example, the IPCC report states that if we want to stay below 2 deg warming (which is already disastrously high), we can not invest any new money in fossil fuel exploration or reserve development. However, funds using MSCI data routinely have oil and gas companies. This is not MSCI's "fault," but it is an artifact of using that data. When you use single-factor scores to judge a company, unrelated factors can "balance" each other out. So a high S score can balance a low E score. This can also lead to the inclusion of companies that are inconsistent with models of how we solve climate change. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Since the Industrial Revolution nearly 150 years ago, global average temperatures have increased by more than 1 degree C (1.9 degrees F), with the majority of that warming occurring since 1975. But during these recent decades of accelerated warming, temperatures in the arctic (latitudes above 66 degrees north) have have been rising even faster - nearly four times faster than the average global rate. The most readily observable impact of such intensive localized warming has been the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is significant enough to be turning heads of even stalwart climate skeptics. But a less discussed (and perhaps even more dangerous) positive feedback to the warming planet is the rate at which permafrost is melting due to the quickly elevating arctic temperatures.Dr. Susan Natali, Arctic Program Director and senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, sat down with Climate Now to teach us about permafrost: what it is, why it is disappearing, and the potentially drastic - and so far barely accounted for - impact it can have on greenhouse gas emissions. Listen to find out why tackling decreasing global greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible is likely even more urgent than we thought.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The built environment represents one of society's largest environmental impacts - contributing nearly one fifth of global GHG emissions, not to mention impacts on natural resources like air and water quality, local ecosystems, and quality of life for residents. Increasingly, policies and public opinion are concentrating on reducing those impacts - creating incentives for new construction and urban development to become more sustainable - to become more “green.”But how do you define whether a building (or a city) is green? Tommy Linstroth is the founder and CEO of Green Badger, a company that provides sustainability accounting services for new construction projects, and Hilari Varnadore is the Vice President for Cities at the U.S. Green Building Council. The two joined Climate Now to explain the globally leading metric for quantifying sustainability of the built environment:  Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Tune in to hear how buildings, stadiums and cities can become LEED certified - what the process entails, what the criteria are, and why every new construction project and city planner should want to be certified as “green” through a process like LEED.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

On March 30, 2023, in partnership with the Livermore Lab Foundation and The Maddy Institute, Climate Now hosted a one day summit in Fresno, CA, examining the intersection of climate change and agriculture. Agriculture is both a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions (contributing nearly one fifth of all global emissions) and a potential solution to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Fresno, located in the heart of California's Central Valley, also illuminates the other side of the agriculture-climate change coin: one of the nation's most valuable agricultural regions, producing over a quarter of the nation's food, is threatened by extreme droughts - and this year, extreme floods - brought on by climate change.At Climate Now's one day summit, farmers, business owners, scientists, policymakers, educators and activists gathered to discuss how to prepare for the changing climate in California and other agriculture producing regions, the challenges inherent to adaptation, and the opportunities that could come with adopting climate friendly technologies and practices.For this week's episode, join us for the key takeaways from this event.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Reducing average global temperatures. Preserving biodiversity. Decreasing the risk of droughts, floods and hurricanes. Reducing air pollution. Reducing utility bills. Creating new jobs and opportunities. Building community engagement. Fostering environmental equity and justice.There doesn't need to be just one reason to decarbonize a city. And when the specific needs, concerns and goals of communities are accounted for in decarbonization plans, the chances of local buy-in and of an equitable energy transition increase dramatically. Hear why, in the second part of Climate Now's three-part deep-look into Ithaca, New York's plans to decarbonize every building in their city. Panelists from a multi-venue live event series, held in Autumn 2022, discuss how Ithaca has approached prioritizing social justice in its plans, and why this is such an integral part of their decarbonization strategy. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

On February 15, 2023, the U.S. Senate held a hearing considering a national clean fuels program, modeled after California's state-wide Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The LCFS sets an annually decreasing standard of net carbon intensity (amount CO2 emissions per unit energy) for all the fuels being sold in the state. Companies that produce fuels or fuel equivalents below the carbon intensity threshold can sell low-carbon fuel credits. Companies that produce and sell fuels above the carbon intensity threshold must buy credits, thus creating a market force to encourage low-carbon fuel production and discourage carbon-intensive fuel production. Since the California LCFS standard was enacted more than a decade ago, transportation sector emissions in the state have declined by about 10% due to the program, outpacing the scheduled carbon intensity decreases. Other states and nations have taken note, with similar policies being adopted in the EU, Canada, Brazil, and Washington State and Oregon. Climate Now sat down with Colin Murphy, Deputy Director of the Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy at University of California, Davis, to learn the details of how and why this emission reduction policy works, what impact it has had, and how energy companies are responding.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

2022 potentially marked a turning point for the U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market, with new EV car sales increasing by 65% over 2021 sales, and now accounting for nearly 6% of all new vehicle sales. (If EVs maintained a 65% annual growth rate, they would reach 100% of new vehicle sales in about 6 years.)  But for medium and heavy duty vehicles, which produce an outsize share of U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gasses, the transition to zero-emissions vehicles is still trying to gain traction. In 2021, electric vehicles accounted for about 1% of bus sales, and about 0.1% of all truck sales.Battery electric vehicles could already replace about half of the freight trips completed each day in the U.S., so it is not technological readiness that is slowing EV adoption in the freight and large vehicle industry. Ray Minjares, Heavy-Duty Vehicles Program Director at the International Council on Clean Transportation, explains what is: the marketplace structure that dictates how freight vehicles are bought and sold. Ray sat down with Climate Now to examine how this marketplace works today, the policies and financing alternatives that could make zero-emission vehicles easier to adopt, and the climate and air quality impacts that would come with decarbonization of the trucking industry.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

More than one third of the world's 2,000 largest publicly traded companies have made some kind of net-zero commitment, and the list is growing quickly. A critical part of those corporate plans will be securing cleanly sourced electricity for their energy needs, but that requires that there is enough fossil-free electricity available on the grid for every company that prefers to use it. In 2021, renewable energy and nuclear power, combined, accounted for only about 37% of global electricity production. How can a company ensure that their electricity comes from among those fossil-free sources? And how can companies encourage the growth of clean electrical capacity, so that it will meet the growing demand of consumers?These kinds of questions are exactly what Doug Miller, Deputy Director of Market & Policy Innovation at the Clean Energy Buyers Institute (CEBI), aims to answer. CEBI is a non-profit organization that collaborates with policy makers, leading philanthropies, and energy market stakeholders to identify and expedite the implementation of clean energy market solutions. They have also worked closely with the World Resources Institute (WRI), who designed the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the most commonly used standards for companies to assess their carbon emissions impact. Doug joined Climate Now to explain what those standards are, why they are evolving, and some of the innovative tools that CEBI has identified that could be incorporated into the GHG Protocol to help both national electricity grids and the companies that use them achieve their decarbonization goals faster.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Electrification is going a long way in decarbonizing small vehicles (like passenger cars) in the global transportation sector, which produces about 16% of global emissions. But for long-haul transportation: trucking, shipping and the aviation industries, electrification is far from being technologically ready. Enter a controversial solution: biodiesel. Biodiesel is a fuel derived from organic matter like plants, algae or animal fats, which started to popularize globally just this century. However, early generation biodiesel had its drawbacks: first - they are not a perfect replacement for the fuels used in diesel engines, and can only be used as an additive to fossil diesel: decreasing, but not eliminating carbon emissions. Then there was the fact that clearing forest land to grow crops to make biodiesel could produce more emissions than just using fossil diesel.Two companies: Neste and ClearFlame, are among a growing cohort of energy producers exploring more sustainable replacements to diesel fuels.We spoke with Chris Cooper and Matt Leuck (Neste) and BJ Johnson (ClearFlame) about the use of renewable liquid fuels, like renewable diesel that is made from organic waste (like spent cooking oil), that can be used as a 100% replacement for fossil diesel in engines. Stay tuned for Climate Now's next episode, where we explore how renewable diesel is produced, how it compares in terms of environmental impact relative to fossil- and first generation bio-diesels, and how much and how fast the market for renewable diesels could grow. Key Questions:What is renewable diesel? Is it really renewable?Does renewable diesel have emissions, and how do they compare to fossil diesel?How is renewable diesel being used today, and how might it's use expand in the future?Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In November 2021, the City of Ithaca announced the approval of a plan to decarbonize all of its buildings by 2030. In this first-of-its-kind decarbonization plan, Ithaca outlined a pathway to electrify roughly 6,000 homes and buildings as a first step to enacting the city's own Green New Deal - a resolution established to locally address climate change, economic inequality, and racial injustice. The task is monumental - technically, financially and practically. First, an effective decarbonization plan had to be developed - how do you actually decarbonize 6,000 buildings? Second, the city had to figure out how to finance a ~ $500 million dollar infrastructure investment project with a city budget of ~ $90 million dollars. And finally, the city had to ensure that they had buy-in from building owners and that building retrofits were prioritized equitably and without disadvantaging any groups, particularly those who have been traditionally marginalized in the past.So how are they doing it, and can other cities learn from the path that Ithaca has forged? In a three-part live event series, Climate Now brought together experts, city planners, and local business and community leaders to explain what it has taken for Ithaca to enact its decarbonization plan, what has worked well, and what lessons can be learned. Our next episode will highlight the key takeaways from those conversations - stay tuned!Key Questions:Ithaca, NY made a plan to decarbonize 100% of its buildings as part of a strategy to reach net-zero emissions by 2030. What is actually involved in accomplishing such a goal? How can a small city with limited resources finance their own clean energy transition?What considerations are needed to ensure that such decarbonization plans are carried out equitably, and to the benefit of the entire community?How might other municipalities learn from Ithaca's model?Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million people across the U.S. marched, attended speeches and sat in teach-ins, marking the first Earth Day, and spurring on the enactment of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the founding of the EPA, all of which occurred later that year. Then and now, activism has been critical to enacting environmental and climate policy, and in shifting attitudes of the general public to the urgency of mitigating climate change, but why is activism so important, and how can it be done effectively?Climate Now sat down with Bill McKibben, author, journalist and environmental activist who has led protest movements against development of the Keystone Pipeline Project (which aimed to pipe oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to Nebraska where it could link with other pipelines heading to the refineries of Texas), and for the global divestment from fossil fuels (currently amounting to $40 trillion of lost capital for fossil fuel companies, and counting). Bill joined us to discuss why activism is so important to enacting climate policy, how the biggest movements come together, and the work that needs to be done next.Key Questions:What is the role of activism in the fight against climate change?What are the key ingredients to building a successful protest movement?What lessons have can be taken from prior activist campaigns, such as against the Keystone Pipeline and for fossil fuel divestment, that inform the next steps in the climate movement?Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

In 2021, U.S. President Biden signed an executive order with the directive to achieve 100% carbon-pollution free electricity in the United States by 2030. The goal is certainly achievable: currently wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity generation, the installed capacity of utility-scale solar and wind has increased more than 2000% in the last 15 years, and there are already 1.3 terawatts (TW) of clean energy generation + storage projects seeking to connect to the grid, roughly enough for the grid to reach 80% zero-carbon electricity. But it is one thing to plan clean energy generation facilities, and another to build and connect those facilities into the national power grid, which is done with the oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).FERC is required to regulate the interstate transmission of natural gas, oil, an electricity, which means they work to ensure that a hypothetical wind project in Iowa transmitting electricity to Chicago, Illinois follows all federal and state permitting requirements along its entire path. That gets complicated, and currently those 1.3 TW of clean energy projects are sitting in a backlog that is taking several years to process. Neil Chatterjee, Chairman of FERC in 2017 and again from 2018-2020, joined Climate Now to explain why getting new clean power connected to the grid is so difficult, how the process can be streamlined, and why that is so critical to reaching the U.S.'s climate goals. Stay tuned!Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The agricultural sector produces about a tenth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and while most of that comes from livestock (about 2/3), emissions from crop production still total about 2.2 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent. Interestingly, we only actually use about half of what we grow: this is not because of food waste (its own issue), but because more than half of any crop is residue: the stems, shells, husks and anything else left behind at the end of a crop harvest.Charm Industrial is a new company with a plan to convert those crop residues (~ half a billion tons in the US alone) from a source of greenhouse gas emissions to a sink. Crop residues are usually left on harvested fields to decompose (or are burned), partially restoring the soils, and partially returning all the CO2 they absorbed during the growing season to the atmosphere. Charm plans to harvest those residues and convert them into bio-oil and biochar. The biochar returns to the soils for restoration; the bio-oil can be buried for CO2 sequestration or replace fossil-derived fuels. Climate Now sat down with Charm CEO and Co-founder Peter Reinhardt, to discuss how their technology works, and why interest is growing in this approach to carbon removal.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

The carbon footprint of stuffFor the last two centuries, continuous economic growth (the increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces, per capita) has been recognized as the critical driver in the drastic global decrease in extreme poverty. The problem is, an ever-increasing "quantity and quality of economic goods and services" - in the current economy at least - requires ever increasing consumption of raw materials: minerals, water, energy, trees, soil. And consumption has its own price. In addition to myriad environmental and biodiversity impacts, an estimated 45% of global greenhouse emissions come from the extraction of raw materials and the production of goods: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the products we use.So is it possible to break the link between decreasing poverty and increasing consumption? Climate Now sat down with two experts on 'the circular economy' - an idea that hinges on eliminating waste from the production process, circulating products and materials instead of disposing of them at their end of life, and engaging in practices that preserve or regenerate natural resources. Dr. Ke Wang, project leader for the World Resource Institutes' Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), and Laura Wittig, Founder and CEO of Brightly, a consumer services company with a mission of scaling sustainable consumerism, joined us to explain what needs to happen to create a more circular economy - from the scale of global economies all the way down to the individual consumer.  Key Questions:How can we be more sustainable in what we produce and how we use goods and materials? Can waste be recycled or repurposed to generate a near closed-loop system? How can consumers make a difference in their daily lives?Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Last week, LLNL's National Ignition Facility successfully 'ignited' a nuclear fusion reaction equivalent to what takes place in the sun: the conversion of hydrogen to helium + energy. In a first, the experiment produced more energy than was needed to initiate the reaction. While the experiment lasted only fractions of a second, it proved what had been hypothesized since the 1960's: that lasers can be used to induce energy-generating fusion in a laboratory setting. The enormity of this achievement is that it brings the possibility of cheap, clean and safe nuclear fusion energy one step closer to reality. Joined by guest hosts Julio Friedman and Darren Hau, Climate Now sat down with Dr. Annie Kritcher, the principal designer for the successful fusion experiment, to discuss what they have accomplished, why it was so significant, and what the National Ignition Facility will be focusing on next in their work to make nuclear fusion a viable energy source.Key Questions:What was the experiment that was performed, and why was it's success so significant?What are the next set of challenges to address in developing nuclear fusion as a clean energy source?Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

Can Earth's geothermal heat warm - and cool - your home?The hottest day ever recorded on Earth was on July 10, 1913. Thermometers in California's Death Valley measured 134oF. The coldest day ever recorded on land (not on an Antarctic ice sheet) was in the tiny Siberian settlement of Oymyakon, which got as cold as -90oF on February 6, 1933. But anyone standing in either of these locations, on these days of extreme hot and cold, were a mere 30 feet away from much more reasonable temperatures - about 50-60oF. They only needed to dig down. Bedrock is not a very good conductor of heat, and as such - even when atmospheric temperatures fluctuate wildly, geothermal temperatures - the temperature of the subsurface - remains relatively constant.Climate Now sat down with Kathy Hannun, co-founder and president of Dandelion Energy to learn how geothermal heat pumps take advantage of stable subsurface temperatures to produce highly efficient and low-cost heating and cooling systems for buildings.  Stay tuned to find out how these systems work, why they are likely the most efficient way of controlling indoor climates, what obstacles are slowing the wholesale conversion of furnaces and air conditioning units to geothermal heat pumps, and how those obstacles can be addressed.Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.Contact us at contact@climatenow.comVisit our website for all of our content and sources for each episode.

10 years ago, most people's version of being energy-efficient was running a fan instead of an air conditioner. While that's still a great move, technology is making it easier than ever to help the planet—and the rise in residential solar panels in neighborhoods across the country is one such advance already making an impact. This week, James Lawler, founder of Climate Now, discusses residential solar in detail—a topic so many people are curious about but have yet to fully dive into. For show notes, visit https://brightly.eco/how-solar-energy-benefits-environment.