Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Podcast

Talking Permitting Reform, Trade, and More With Biden’s Top Climate Advisor

Rob interviews Ali Zaidi at Yale.

Robinson Meyer and Ali Zaidi.
Heatmap Illustration/Alex Besser

What’s next for the Biden administration — and for climate policy in the United States? Should Democrats negotiate with Republicans over permitting reform, even if it means making concessions to fossil fuel interests? And how should the country’s trade policy handle the problem of carbon pollution?

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob speaks with Ali Zaidi, the national climate advisor to President Joe Biden. Zaidi leads the White House Climate Policy Office, which coordinates domestic climate policy across federal agencies. Before joining the White House in 2021, Zaidi was the state of New York’s deputy secretary for energy and environment. This interview was recorded live on October 10 in New Haven, Connecticut, at the Yale Clean Energy Conference.

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 out 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:

Ali Zaidi: The conversation in Congress right now makes it seem like transmission is a Democratic policy priority when it boosts reliability and lowers rates. I thought Republicans and Democrats both agreed we need to boost reliability and lower rates. So I don’t know why that needs to be offset by any measure.

That’s thing number one. Thing number two is …

Robinson Meyer: This is the challenge of talking about things, is that if Democrats say, oh, we really value this, then suddenly it’s a Democratic priority.

Zaidi: Yeah. And then the second is, how do we accelerate the siting and permitting of things and then there is a how do we shift more power to the oil and gas industry. The conversation around leasing, happening against a backdrop where the industry itself is moving away from long-cycle investment to short-cycle investment, it’s tough. So I would hope that more of the permitting conversation were a permitting conversation.

Meyer: Well, one way this sometimes gets reflected is that you’ll hear environmentalists say, any policy that makes the oil and gas industry happy or bigger, we should not take. And that makes making a compromise …

Zaidi: And I reject that. Yeah, look, if ExxonMobil wants to pay for a pipeline that will help us deliver what was once solar and wind, as a fuel, to help us decarbonize a steel plant, they can be for it and I can be for it. If there is a — Blackstone, for example, has a Project Tallgrass that has converted a pipeline that used to pull hydrocarbons out of the ground. It’s now flipped the pipeline around, and is putting CO2 into the ground.

They can be for that. I can be for that — not speaking to the specific project, but conceptually. So I don’t think … It’s not the actor. It’s the question of whether this is directionally consistent with trying to chase down a 1.5 degree future or not.

We are behind as a world, and we need to run faster in that direction. If it’s not directionally consistent, that’s a problem.

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.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Politics

A Literal 11th-Hour Budget Amendment Would Privatize 11,000 Acres of Public Land

Republicans Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah introduced the measure late Tuesday night.

A For Sale sign.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Late last week, the House Committee on Natural Resources released the draft text of its portion of the Republicans’ budget package. While the bill included mandates to open oil and gas leasing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, increase logging by 25% over 2024’s harvest, and allow for mining activities upstream of Minnesota’s popular Boundary Waters recreation area, there was also a conspicuous absence in its 96 pages: an explicit plan to sell off public lands.

To many of the environmental groups that have been sounding the alarm about Republicans’ ambitions to privatize federal lands — which make up about 47% of the American West — the particular exclusion seemed almost too good to be true. And as it turned out in the bill’s markup on Tuesday, it was. In a late-night amendment, Republican Representatives Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah introduced a provision to sell off 11,000 acres in their states.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Climate Tech

A New Green Hydrogen Partnership? In This Economy?

Ecolectro, a maker of electrolyzers, has a new manufacturing deal with Re:Build.

Electrolyzers.
Heatmap Illustration/Ecolectro, Getty Images

By all outward appearances, the green hydrogen industry is in a state of arrested development. The hype cycle of project announcements stemming from Biden-era policies crashed after those policies took too long to implement. A number of high profile clean hydrogen projects have fallen apart since the start of the year, and deep uncertainty remains about whether the Trump administration will go to bat for the industry or further cripple it.

The picture may not be as bleak as it seems, however. On Wednesday, the green hydrogen startup Ecolectro, which has been quietly developing its technology for more than a decade, came out with a new plan to bring the tech to market. The company announced a partnership with Re:Build Manufacturing, a sort of manufacturing incubator that helps startups optimize their products for U.S. fabrication, to build their first units, design their assembly lines, and eventually begin producing at a commercial scale in a Re:Build-owned factory.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Climate

AM Briefing: The ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ of Emissions

On coal mines, Energy Star, and the EV tax credit

Coal Overlooked as Methane Emitter, IEA Says
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Storms continue to roll through North Texas today, where a home caught fire from a lightning strike earlier this weekWarm, dry days ahead may hinder hotshot crews’ attempts to contain the 1,500-acre Sawlog fire, burning about 40 miles west of Butte, MontanaSevere thunderstorms could move through Rome today on the first day of the papal conclave.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Coal mines emitted more methane than the gas sector last year: report

The International Energy Agency published its annual Global Methane Tracker report on Wednesday morning, finding that over 120 million tons of the potent greenhouse gas were emitted by oil, gas, and coal in 2024, close to the record high in 2019. In particular, the research found that coal mines were the second-largest energy sector methane emitter after oil, at 40 million tons — about equivalent to India’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Abandoned coal mines alone emitted nearly 5 million tons of methane, more than abandoned oil and gas wells at 3 million tons.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow