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Rob digs deep on critical minerals with Full Tilt Strategies’ Nathaniel Horadam.
Rob talks with McMaster University engineering professor Greig Mordue, then checks in with Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman on the EVs to watch out for.
Rob talks through Rhodium Groups’s latest emissions report with climate and energy director Ben King.
Rob takes Jesse through our battery of questions.
Rob talks about the removal of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro with Commodity Context’s Rory Johnston.
A blast from the past with the director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Severin Borenstein.
A lookahead with Heatmap’s own Emily Pontecorvo, Matthew Zeitlin, and Jillian Goodman.
2025 has been a rough year for climate and energy news. But enough about that. Let’s start looking at 2026!
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by some of Heatmap’s writers and editors to discuss our biggest stories and predictions for 2026 — what we’re tracking, what could surprise us, and what could happen next. We also discuss a recent op-ed in The New York Times arguing that Democrats should work more closely with the U.S. oil and gas industry. Today’s panel includes Heatmap’s founding staff writer Emily Pontecorvo, staff writer Matthew Zeitlin, and deputy editor Jillian Goodman.
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. Jesse is off this week.
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:
Robinson Meyer: I was thinking when Matt was talking about how different the current moment is from 2020 that back then, here was this idea that there was some risk, maybe, that some costs would go up a little. But inflation had been out of the picture for so long that we were in an environment where unemployment was the concern and not the price level, and so the idea that prices might go up a tiny bit in exchange for economic activity seemed like an okay trade.
And I would actually say, this is where I think there’s some potential for a comeback for more traditional types of environmental and climate activism in 2026, which is, the unemployment rate is currently 4.6%, as of a release last week, which historically, it hasn’t been above 4.6% very much in the past several decades. And when it is above 4.6% usually means unemployment’s about to spike.
And I think in a world where we switch from talking about affordability to talking about unemployment and a lack of general economic activity — especially in a world where AI is a big deal and people are very worried about job loss from AI, suddenly all the ideas about generating economic activity by doing kind of pro-social decarbonization activities are going to swing right back into the conversation.
And we know what a Donald Trump administration is like when prices are increasing by 3% a year, and that is, he’s not very popular. We don’t know what a Donald Trump administration is like when unemployment’s at 5%, or 5.5%. And if that were to happen, the floor could really drop out, and we could see a huge swing back to the type of policies that we were talking about not so long ago.
Mentioned:
Trump Uses ‘National Security’ to Freeze Offshore Wind Work
Matthew Yglesias’ op-ed: Obama Supported It. The Left in Canada and Norway Does. Why Don’t Democrats?
Emily on California cities’ new heat pump rules
The House Just Passed Permitting Reform. Now Comes the Hard Part.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Heatmap Pro brings all of our research, reporting, and insights down to the local level. The software platform tracks all local opposition to clean energy and data centers, forecasts community sentiment, and guides data-driven engagement campaigns. Book a demo today to see the premier intelligence platform for project permitting and community engagement.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
Rob and Jesse catch up with Mark Fitzgerald, CEO of the closed-loop geothermal startup Eavor.
Over the past decade, the oil and gas industry has sharpened its drilling skills, extracting fossil fuels at greater depths — and with more precision — than ever before. What if there was a way to tap those advances to generate zero-carbon energy?
The Canadian company Eavor (pronounced “ever”) says it can do so. Its closed-loop geothermal system is already producing heat at competitive prices in Europe, and it says it will soon be able to drill deep enough to fuel the electricity system, too. It just opened a first-of-its-kind demonstration facility in Germany, which is successfully heating and powering the small hamlet of Geretsreid, Bavaria.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse chat with Mark Fitzgerald, the president and CEO of Eavor, about how its new technology works, how it differs from other forms of advanced geothermal, and why Europe is a good test bed for heat-generating projects. We also chat about what Mark, who previously ran Petronas Canada, learned in his 35 years in the oil industry.
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: So at the surface, this is a very limited footprint, right? It’s a fairly small power plant, and then underground, you’ve got this kilometer-scale heat exchanger effectively that you’ve built without fracturing, but with a lot of drilling involved, right? So the key, I think, for making that work is to continually advance the economics of drilling.
What is Eavor’s strategy there for bringing down the cost of drilling these closed loops so that they become cost competitive despite the large amount of total miles drilled that you have to — or kilometers drilled that you have to put down?
Mark Fitzgerald: That’s a great point, Jesse, and I would reinforce that drilling technology, or drilling efficiency, has been something that’s been talked about and understood across the globe for a hundred-plus years. So we are not creating a new method of drilling. We are not looking for something that hasn’t been already done across any of the unconventional players in North America, any of the big drilling or service companies or operators around the globe.
What we are doing is changing the trajectory, and changing the application of that drilling methodology to create the underground radiator, as you would talk about. My background — I spent 36 years in oil and gas, a great proportion of that in the unconventional space before I had this amazing opportunity to join Eavor. And so I understand how, through sound engineering, sound geoscience, proper modeling, that cost compression will occur. One of the best examples that I point to is, we completed six laterals — so six of these horizontal wells, or these forks, at a time, connected them in Geretsreid, our first facility in Germany. The fourth and fifth laterals were done at 50% of the cost of the first two. And so already, in moving from lateral one to lateral six, we’ve seen a reduction of 50% in the cost structure.
The second is that in terms of pace of drilling, the faster you drill the lower costs you incur. The pace of drilling for us on those fifth and six laterals was three times what it was on lateral one and two.
Mentioned:
Previously on Shift Key: Why Geothermal Is So Hot Right Now
Jesse’s upshift; Rob’s downshift.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Heatmap Pro brings all of our research, reporting, and insights down to the local level. The software platform tracks all local opposition to clean energy and data centers, forecasts community sentiment, and guides data-driven engagement campaigns. Book a demo today to see the premier intelligence platform for project permitting and community engagement.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
