Ben Eidelson and Anay Shah run the Stepchange podcast, which recently put out a magisterial four-hour (!) episode on the history of the US electricity grid. I talk with them about some of the colorful characters and stories involved, the big fights and broad lessons learned, and how the history echoes in today’s political and technological struggles.

Boiling water to make steam for industrial processes consumes an enormous amount energy around the globe, yet it has proven remarkably resistant to electrification. In this episode, I talk with Addison Stark of AtmosZero about why replacing the standard fossil-gas boiler requires an entirely new approach to industrial heat pumps. We discuss the engineering behind his high-temperature system, the challenges of scaling up, and the growing imperative to get free of global LNG markets.

Most people think that coordinating the behavior of thousands of distributed energy resources requires some kind of third-party middleman, like an aggregator managing a VPP. My guest today, veteran research scientist Bruce Nordman, believes there’s a better way: dynamic, time- and location-specific retail prices, communicated directly to consumer devices, which would cut out the middleman and leave more value with customers.

Today, coordinating a whole-home retrofit — or even just getting a heat pump — involves confusing research, a parade of contractors, and wildly varying quotes. It’s a broken system that practically pushes people to just buy another gas furnace. In this episode, I’m joined by Zero Homes CEO Grant Gunnison to discuss ways to improve this system for both customers and contractors.

Historically, investing in energy infrastructure has been the exclusive province of wealthy individuals and large institutions. But that’s changing, and my guest today is part of it. I’m joined by Energea co-founder Mike Silvestrini to discuss how his platform allows retail investors to back international solar projects with buy-in as low as $100. We talk about the unique risks and rewards of building microgrids in emerging markets and why an unapologetic, yield-driven approach might be the best way to do real good in the world.

In this episode, I sit down with financier Tom Steyer to discuss his 2026 run for governor of California. We dig into his pledge to cut the state’s notoriously high electricity bills by 25 percent, how he plans to break the stranglehold of investor-owned utilities through local competition and smarter grid utilization, and the delicate politics of pushing a climate-forward agenda when voters are primarily focused on the immediate cost of living.

The think tank Ember just released its yearly Global Electricity Review. In this episode, I chat with co-authors Nicolas Fulghum & Kostantsa Rangelova about the biggest stories in the global power sector in 2025. We geek out over the record-breaking scale of solar deployment, the game-changing role of batteries in shifting midday power to the evening, and the tantalizing possibility that India will not follow China’s coal-heavy development path and that global fossil fuel generation has finally plateaued.

Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer joins me to unpack the sheer madness of the current news landscape. We discuss the energy implications of the Iran war, the vexed politics of permitting reform, Microsoft’s retreat from carbon dioxide removal, the lessons of the IRA, the lingering pastoralism of the environmental movement, and much more.