Shift Key with Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins

Just two types of machines have produced the overwhelming majority of electricity generated since 1890. This week, we look at the history of those devices, how they work — and how they have contributed to global warming.This is our second episode of Shift Key Summer School, a series of “lecture conversations” about the basics of energy, electricity, and the power grid for listeners of all backgrounds. This week, we dive into the invention and engineering of the world’s most common types of fossil- and nuclear-fueled power plants. What’s a Rankine cycle power station, and how does it use steam to produce electricity? How did the invention of the jet engine enable the rise of natural gas-generated electricity? And why can natural gas power plants achieve much higher efficiency gains than coal plants?Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor. Mentioned:Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, by Alexis Madrigal--This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …The Yale Center for Business and the Environment’s online clean energy programs equip you with tangible skills and powerful networks—and you can continue working while learning. In just five hours a week, propel your career and make a difference.Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

What is the difference between energy and power? How does the power grid work? And what’s the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour? On this week’s episode, we answer those questions and many, many more. This is the start of a new series: Shift Key Summer School. It’s a series of introductory “lecture conversations” meant to cover the basics of energy and the power grid for listeners of every experience level and background. In less than an hour, we try to get you up to speed on how to think about energy, power, horsepower, volts, amps, and what uses (approximately) 1 watt-hour, 1 kilowatt-hour, 1 megawatt-hour, and 1 gigawatt-hour.  Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.  Mentioned: Decarbonize Your Life--This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …The Yale Center for Business and the Environment’s online clean energy programs equip you with tangible skills and powerful networks—and you can continue working while learning. In just five hours a week, propel your career and make a difference.Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Food is a huge climate problem. It’s responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it concerns a much smaller share of global climate policy. And what policy does exist is often … pretty bad.On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Michael Grunwald, the author of the new book We Are Eating the Earth. It’s a book about land as much as it’s a book about food — because no matter how much energy abundance we ultimately achieve, we’re stuck with the amount of land we’ve got. Grunwald is a giant of climate journalism and a Heatmap contributor, and he has previously written books about the Florida everglades and the Obama recovery act. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.  Mentioned: Preorder We Are Eating the EarthThe real war on coal, by Michael GrunwaldThe Senate GOP’s seismic overhaul of clean energy tax credits--Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

You might not think that often about medium-duty trucks, but they’re all around you: ambulances, UPS and FedEx delivery trucks, school buses. And although they make up a relatively small share of vehicles on the road, they generate an outsized amount of carbon pollution. They’re also a surprisingly ripe target for electrification, because so many medium-duty trucks drive fewer than 150 miles a day.On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with John Henry Harris, the cofounder and CEO of Harbinger Motors. Harbinger is a Los Angeles-based startup that sells electric and hybrid chassis for medium-duty vehicles, such as delivery vans, moving trucks, and ambulances. Rob, John, and Jesse chat about why medium-duty trucking is unlike any other vehicle segment, how to design an electric truck to last 20 years, and how President Trump’s tariffs are already stalling out manufacturing firms. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.  Mentioned: Harbinger MotorsCalStart’s data on medium-duty electric trucks deployed in the U.S.Here’s the chart that John showed Rob and Jesse.It draws on data from Bloomberg in China, the ICCT, and the Calstart ZET Dashboard in the United States.Jesse’s case for EVs with gas tanks — which are called extended range electric vehiclesThor’s extended range electric vehicle RVJesse’s upshift; Rob’s downshift.

Why has it been so hard for the world to make progress on climate change over the past 30 years? Maybe it’s because we’ve been thinking about the problem wrong. Academics and economists have often framed climate change as a free-rider or collective action problem, one in which countries must agree not to emit greenhouse gases and abuse the public commons. But maybe the better way to understand climate action is as a fight that generates winners and losers, defined primarily by who owns what. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Jessica Green, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. She calls for “radical pragmatism” in climate action and an “asset revaluation”-focused view of the climate problem. Green is the author of the forthcoming book Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor. Mentioned:Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change, by Jessica Green, Jeff Colgan, and Thomas HaleTax Policy Is Climate Policy by Jessica Green Why Carbon Pricing Falls Short, by Jesse JenkinsJesse’s 2014 article on asset specificity and climate change Jesse’s downshift; Rob’s downshift. --Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Did the Supreme Court just make it easier to build things in this country — or did it give a once-in-a-lifetime gift to the fossil fuel industry? Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 against environmentalists who sought to use a key permitting law, the National Environmental Policy Act, to slow down a railroad in a remote but oil-rich part of Utah. Even the court’s liberals ruled against the green groups. But the court’s conservative majority issued a much stronger and more expansive ruling, urging lower courts to stop interpreting the law as they have for years. That decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, may signal a new era for what has been called the “Magna Carta” of environmental law.On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor and frequent writer on permitting issues. He is also Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s former chief legal counsel. Rob, Jesse, and Nick discuss what NEPA is, how it has helped (and perhaps hindered) the environment, and why it’s likely to change again in the near future. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor. Mentioned: The Supreme Court Just Started a Permitting RevolutionThe Supreme Court’s Green Double Standard, By Nick BagleyBagley’s article on the procedure fetishKey statistics about how NEPA works in the governmentJudge Skelly’s 1971 Calvert Cliffs rulingHouse Republicans’ NEPA reform proposal Jesse’s downshift; Rob’s downshift. --Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Shift Key is off this week for Memorial Day, so we’re re-running one of our favorite episodes from the past. With Republicans in the White House and Congress now halfway to effectively repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States’ signature climate law, we thought now might be a good moment to remind ourselves why emissions reductions matter in the first place.To that end, we’re resurfacing our chat from November with Kate Marvel, an associate research scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. At the time, Trump had just been reelected to the presidency, casting a pall over the annual United Nations climate conference, which was then occurring in Azerbaijan. Soon after, he fulfilled his promise to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, with its goal of restraining global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.In this episode, we talk with Kate about why every 10th of a degree matters in the fight against climate change, the difference between tipping points and destabilizing feedback loops, and how to think about climate change in a disappointing time. 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.Mentioned: The GOP Tax Bill Is a Dangerous Gamble at a Precarious MomentThe UN Environmental Program’s emissions gap reportThe IPCC’s monumental report on the risks of 1.5C of temperature riseJesse’s post-Trump op-ed: Trump Is Not the End of the Climate FightRob’s piece from 2023 on the “end of climate science”Trump’s Energy Secretary-designate Chris Wright’s speech at the American Conservation Coalition Summit--Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Republicans are preparing to tear up America’s clean energy tax credits as part of their budget reconciliation megabill. Hollowing out those policies will have sweeping implications for the country’s energy system — it could set back solar, nuclear, and geothermal development; bring less electricity supply onto the grid; and devastate the country’s fledgling electric vehicle supply chain. A new report — written by our own Jesse Jenkins — is all about the real-life consequences of killing the tax credits. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse shares the forthcoming analysis of the bill from Princeton University’s REPEAT Project. Rob and Jesse discuss what best-in-class modeling tells us the bill will mean for carbon emissions, the energy economy, the power grid, and consumer energy costs. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.You can read a complete transcript of the interview here.Mentioned:New REPEAT Project report on the GOP reconciliation billHow a House GOP Proposal Would Essentially Gut the IRA’s Biggest Tax CreditsWhy it’s a problem for the clean energy tax credits to lose transferabilityWhy mortality can fall during recessions: clean airThe natural gas turbine crisisJesse’s upshift; Rob’s downshift.--Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

The fight over the Inflation Reduction Act has arrived. After months of discussion, the Republican majority in the House is now beginning to write, review, and argue about its plans to transform the climate law’s energy tax provisions. We wanted to record a show about how to follow that battle. But then — halfway through recording that episode — the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee dropped the first draft of their proposal to gut the IRA, and we had to review it on-air. We were joined by Luke Bassett, a former senior advisor for domestic climate policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, and a former senior staff member at the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. We chatted about the major steps in the reconciliation process, what to watch next, and what to look for in the new GOP draft. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.Mentioned:The House GOP Tax Proposal Would Effectively Kill The IRAPermitting Reform Is Back — and Buried in Trump’s Tax BillThe House Ways and Means Committee’s first attempt at rewriting the IRA and its energy tax provisions(Note: At one point, Luke refers to a permitting reform proposal as coming from the Energy and Commerce Committee. It’s a product of the House Natural Resources Committee.) --​Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.