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Podcast

An electricity bill.
Podcast

Utility Regulation Really Sucks

Rob and Jesse riff on the state of utility regulation in America — and how to fix it.

Podcast

What Carbon Dioxide Has to Do With the Meaning of Life

Rob talks to Peter Brannen, author of the new book The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything.

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Podcast

Shift Key Classic: How to Hook Up More Power Plants

Rob and Jesse revisit the basics of the ultra-clogged electricity interconnection queue.

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Podcast

Shift Key Summer School: What’s It Like to Run a Power Grid?

Rob and Jesse quiz Mark Rothleder, chief operations officer at the California Independent System Operator.

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Power lines.

Shift Key Summer School: How Do Power Markets Work?

Jesse gives Rob a lesson in marginal generation, inframarginal rent, and electricity supply curves.

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The Capitol.

Trump’s Move to Kill the Clean Air Act’s Climate Authority Forever

Rob and Jesse talk through the proposed overturning of the EPA’s “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases with Harvard Law School’s Jody Freeman.

Podcast

Why We’re Worried About Electricity Prices

Rob and Jesse take stock of all the trends threatening to push up power bills.

An electricity meter.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

In the next few years, the United States is going to see the fastest growth in electricity demand since the 1970s. And that’s only the beginning of the challenges that our power grid will face. When you step back, virtually every trend facing the power system — such as the coming surge in liquified natural gas exports or President Trump’s repeal of wind and solar tax credits — threatens to constrain the supply of new electricity.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk about why they’re increasingly worried about a surge in electricity prices. What’s setting us up for an electricity shortfall? What does the recent auction in the country’s largest electricity market tell us about what’s coming? And what would a power shock mean for utility customers, the economy, and decarbonization?

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Podcast

Shift Key Summer School: How Sun and Wind Become Electricity

Jesse teaches Rob all about where solar and wind energy come from.

Early solar panels.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

The two fastest-growing sources of electricity generation in the world represent a radical break with the energy technologies that came before them. That’s not just because their fuels are the wind and the sun.

This is our third episode of Shift Key Summer School, a series of “lecture conversations” about the basics of energy, electricity, and the power grid. This week, we dive into the history and mechanics of wind turbines and solar panels, the two lynchpin technologies of the energy transition. What do solar panels have in common with semiconductors? Why did it take so long for them to achieve scale? And what’s an inverter and why is it so important for the grid of the future?

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