More of a comment that hopefully you can address in the mailbag episode. As a long-time follower (Grist days), I have always enjoyed your depth, and yes, your frank, brutally honest dismay in response to climate crisis topics. But as a person a few years older than you, I have been chuckling / cringing of late at your self-characterization as "an Old Guy". I know you've been around a while, but I don't think your experience reaches back to in person experience of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the nuclear arms race; to name a few topics that give those of us with first-hand memory of those existential crises a different perspective on today's challenges.
But I'm not writing to criticize or make you feel worse; but rather to cheerlead a bit by pointing out that our greatest weapon is hope. Your pivot to coverage of clean tech shows that you get this. We and our fellow humans are hopelessly flawed when it comes to reasoning and decision making with facts and data. We only change our minds based on emotion, and I'm certain that positivity is more powerful than its opposite. So, take heart, not just for your own sanity, but in order to have a larger impact on the world.
What do you think of the new 50% tariffs on Chinese solar? I'm a bit perplexed, my impression is that they're so far ahead that it won't bring back wafer or polysilicon production regardless.
Forgive me if it's been discussed before. But I'm curious about what the deal is with fusion energy. I have just a couple datapoints in my head that make me intrigued.
First, the news from 2021 that the National Ignition Facility successfully conducted a test that satisfied the Lawson criterion - that a reaction produced more energy than was put into it.
Second, that the ITER facility is in its building phase, with planned operation in the 2030s.
And third, the increasing amount of investment in the private sector, with Fusion startups promising energy production in only a few short years.
The analogy I'm making in my head is that the NIF is sort of a "Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk" moment, while real deliverable energy is the "routine commercial flight" phase. Is that an apt metaphor? What do all these datapoints mean for the Fusion Energy timeline?
I'd recommend an episode interviewing Bob Mumgaard of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. (An alternative would be someone from one of the fusion-specific VC funds.) CFS is actively building a demo reactor that they believe will be energy-generating, if not at a commercial scale or economic parity. Like all founders, he's likely to be optimistic, but I don't see any reason to believe he's any more irrationally-so than other founders who are regularly on the pod. David is an established skeptic, but it'd be a good test of his priors. I personally view the viability of fusion as one of the biggest variables in the likely trajectory of climate.
Those kinds of companies pique my interest in where we're at. In my neck of the woods, Helion Energy is already in agreement to sell fusion energy to Microsoft in 2028, which is like right around the corner, timeline wise.
Fusion is still the fabled 20 years away. The 'more output than input' energy is caveated that it took 300+ times as much energy to make the input energy in the reaction.
And it was a single standalone fuel pellet with massive lasers aimed at it - not how a reactor would actually work.
Definitely progress but very real and significant hurdles remain before it's even a mirage of a prototype reactor.
Having given a TED talk in the past, if you could teach a college course to young adults, which kind of subjects would you most like to teach and how would you approach it? Whether on philosophy, journalism/media, climate, political institutions, etc.
Without it turning into a commercial for a particular product, I'm super curious about these window air source heat pumps that are on the market (for renters or even lazyish homeowners like myself). And since I'm up in Minnesnowda, the cold climate units in particular are of interest. Gradient is a brand that seems to come up a lot, but are there others? Can a third party break down their costs, efficacy, pros/cons?
A trend that alarms me is the suppression of objective or near-objective news, the latest straw being the revelation that LA Times opinion pieces about Trump now need to be paired with a second opposing opinion. With Bezos' non-endorsement, Des Moines Register being sued, threats to sic DOJ on unfriendly reporters, this just seems unreal to me. This can't be happening. Where do you go to for news these days?
This is a personal question about regional accents. My mother-in-law grew up in a small town in western Kentucky, she left at 18 to go to college, and since then has lived in a number of places. I was raised in northern Ohio and I don't hear an accent when my mother-in-law talks. Her brother, who has lived in the small western Kentucky town his entire life, speaks with a noticeable accent. You've mentioned growing up in Tennessee, but I don't detect an accent when you speak. Do you have any theories about your lack of an accent? Do members of your family back in Tennessee have accents?
I am wondering if the major EV charging networks (e.g. ChargePoint, Tesla) are balancing their load at all across those networks to maximize grid reliability, reducing CO2, etc. If I could plug my car in and select an option for "flex my demand while charging at least X% in X hours" rather than "charge 6killowats/hr no matter what" I would.
For public charging, that seems a long way off. Great idea but until every parking spot has an outlet, they are too few to have people spread out their charging times like that.
Another fun concept that might be a middle ground, would be to have mild self driving in parking lots and have cars negotiate who charges and have them just shift around.
Come help us try to get proactive, comprehensive transmission planning in the Southeast! Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is hiring some to work on transmission and transmission planning to enable clean energy in the Southeast. We primarily work in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee (i.e. TVA). https://www.cleanenergy.org/blog/transmission-policy-manager/
Hey, if you gotta live in the Upper Midwest, we want YOU finding a climate/clean energy job in Minnesota! We update this job board about twice a week -https://www.cleanenergyresourceteams.org/job-board
Generally ok with cursing just prefer it not be excessive. Understood that that couldn't be avoided with the enshittification episode, but Dan Savage sounded like he was walking up towards my "excessive" line. Really what I want is for Volts to be as accessible to everyone as possible so if avoiding the "explicit" label accomplishes that somehow then continue to bleep. Keep up the great work!
Cursing - keep it or go the route of the movie the Great Outdoors.
When it was edited for public TV, the frequent "blow it out your a$$" was dubbed to "blow it out your elbow!" It was a great comedic disconnect from the mouth movements and just added to the hilarity.
Following up on Cory's comments on why he has not gotten on Bluesky, the recent dustup over their not banning an active anti-trans poster points to the very real possibility that Bluesky will follow Twitter's path to maximum enshittification far more quickly than anyone might have thought.
The oft repeated expectation set by Bluesky that it will become decentralized is also touched on, an important element because if it can't be, then the potential protection from government, political or billionaire intrusion of decentralization isn't real (and there's good reason to think they can't make it happen).
Curse words are everywhere these days so people need to get used to them (especially for anyone who listens to John Oliver). That said, my parents always said swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary...
Here’s a link to the recording of the Solar Rights Alliance webinar How California’s rooftop solar consumers saved the state $2.3 billion in 2024, and how California’s utilities are actively working against the benefits of distributed energy resources.
Billionaires invest billions to gain $$trillions in favorable taxes, regulations and wage control.
Been going on for some time but now the technology of social media is a cheap and effective way to fool folks for votes.
Sorry the only way out is to meet your fellow neighbors and chat about this and that. That’s it. Less social media feeds that select headlines that evoke brain chemistry that make you want more and more face to face interaction.
By providing real-time and high-fidelity data of local grid conditions, grid orchestration enables operators to accelerate renewable energy adoption and improve grid stability. David interviewed the CEO of Camus Energy a while back, one of the main players in this space.
Long time listener, first time poster. My name is Nathan Chan, and I am one of the candidates for Sierra Clubs Board of Directors election. I have been following Dave’s work from the grist days, so you can be sure that climate action is my number one issue. I am running because we need a strong and effective Sierra Club to confront the climate crisis head on. If you would like to support my campaign, you can sign up to be a Sierra Club member here https://act.sierraclub.org/donate/rc_connect__campaign_designform?id=7010Z000001wIo8QAE&formcampaignid=7010Z000001PDLUQA4&ddi=N19ZSCZZ90
Interested generally in the economics of carbon, specifically in the context of forests recovery and disincentivizing deforestation.
The forests are a carbon bank. Managing them to maximize carbon produces forests that look like what was destroyed in the colonization. Getting the forests carbon, including root systems, onto balance sheets, measured (and measurable!) in Tonnes Avoided CO2 (TAC), internalizes the externality, and supports all the standard financial transactions to both preserve existing stocks (fuel management expenditures to discourage the stand-destroying catastrophic fires that characterize our current non-regime) and to mazimize future stands.
Carbon economics, where TAC is the object of optimization, is essential to our future survival. It also portends, it appears here in the woods, something very much like a natural resource boom, except that it produces forests recovery rather than devastation.
With permitting reform dead in Congress as of last night, I write about the very strong prospects for legislation to pass in 2025, and how exactly it is likely to happen. As we all know, these reforms are crucial, especially for transmission, if we're going to actually reduce the time it takes to advance clean energy projects and transition to a clean grid. https://www.moyerstrategies.com/post/permitting-reform-is-now-dead-prospects-look-good-for-2025
VOLTS is wonderful. I'm so grateful for your work.
I've only been a subscriber for a year and don't recall any segments on the LDES/BESS sectors. Batteries are rightly an increasing focus, but the gulf between Li techs and the universe of emerging solutions that have lower cost, better safety profile and, most importantly, Duration.
Few of these techs have crossed the commercialization chasm. I believe that EOS certainly has and, perhaps, EnergyVault as well. There are scads of less mature enterprises, I have an affection for formenergy.com as an example. I confess a near romantic attraction to gravity LDES from pumped hydro on.
I'm not bothered by the cursing, and I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't be alone in finding Dave's incessant giggling a distraction. The Dan Savage interview in particular was almost unlistenable for me, not for the language, but for the host chuckling and tittering at the guest's every utterance, whether he was saying something funny or not. It really mars what was otherwise a fantastic and extremely informative and important podcast -- and would be so easily fixed with a little creative editing.
One more day! WA State Department of Commerce is hiring a Residential Solar Supervisor who will oversee the team implementing our EPA Solar for All program. This is a unique opportunity to shape this groundbreaking program that will expand solar access to thousands of low-income residents in WA. Work from anywhere in WA. Also, more positions coming soon as we continue to staff up!
I listen to all episodes that come out and want to recommend your podcast to my students who are 13-14 years old and care about the energy transition. I have posted before that I wish you could be more disciplined about your language, so that you don’t turn off a wider audience. While swearing can make you feel powerful, it is lazy and shows a lack of creativity. If I can go through my day with 8th graders and not swear, you can get through an hour-long podcast with being equally self-restrained.
David, you & Cory Doctorow are 2 of my heroes, so the fact that I got to listen to both of you discuss enshittification in the power systems space sent me into orbit. Well done sir!
Cheers, keep up the great work & please stop bleeping shit! 😅
I recently heard a webinar from the new US rep for SUNAMP.COM, a UK firm that makes residential and commercial phase-change thermal storage batteries. It seems they have at last figured out how to make a durable long-lived phase change battery. I don't understand their terminology in their preliminary specs, but I expect it will be clarified in time. One application is a buffer tank replacement for Air-To-Water heat pumps that can hold 6 hours or more of home heating capacity, to allow the heat pump to shut off at night and work in the daytime when solar power is available and the outdoor temps are higher than at night for better heat pump COP. They have different formulations that can also be used for domestic hot water and cooling. They can use both heat or electricity to charge the battery.
It's interesting to hear about what Google and others are doing to try to accomplish 24/7 matching of their electricity consumption, but shouldn't our real metric be the degree to which an action reduces emissions? For instance, it might be really impressive to figure out a way to get that carbon out of the last kWh out of your demand for a data center in CA, but shouldn't we be asking the Googles of the world instead to find the places where their dollars will do the most to decarbonize in general. As is pointed out over and over, climate change is a global phenomenon, so why not help clean up dirty grids in developing countries before spending too much money on the last little bit in relatively clean grids in certain parts of the US and Europe?
But my real question is whether or not there are trustworthy and accessible pathways for regular people in advanced economies to help clean energy projects take off in less developed parts of the world. Are there investment funds for little guys to put some dollars/euros into? If so, are they being careful not to repeat histories of colonialist misdeeds? Do they have potential to actually do real good, or just make us feel good?
Hi, does anyone know which date and title of the episode where a guy was using blocks of carbon for thermal storage, and what was his name and company name? And, also, the episode where there was CCS in Iceland? I could not find those two.
--- MAILBAG QUESTIONS ---
More of a comment that hopefully you can address in the mailbag episode. As a long-time follower (Grist days), I have always enjoyed your depth, and yes, your frank, brutally honest dismay in response to climate crisis topics. But as a person a few years older than you, I have been chuckling / cringing of late at your self-characterization as "an Old Guy". I know you've been around a while, but I don't think your experience reaches back to in person experience of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the nuclear arms race; to name a few topics that give those of us with first-hand memory of those existential crises a different perspective on today's challenges.
But I'm not writing to criticize or make you feel worse; but rather to cheerlead a bit by pointing out that our greatest weapon is hope. Your pivot to coverage of clean tech shows that you get this. We and our fellow humans are hopelessly flawed when it comes to reasoning and decision making with facts and data. We only change our minds based on emotion, and I'm certain that positivity is more powerful than its opposite. So, take heart, not just for your own sanity, but in order to have a larger impact on the world.
As a young old guy I like your comment Brian 👍
Haha, age is just a number 😁
What do you think of the new 50% tariffs on Chinese solar? I'm a bit perplexed, my impression is that they're so far ahead that it won't bring back wafer or polysilicon production regardless.
Forgive me if it's been discussed before. But I'm curious about what the deal is with fusion energy. I have just a couple datapoints in my head that make me intrigued.
First, the news from 2021 that the National Ignition Facility successfully conducted a test that satisfied the Lawson criterion - that a reaction produced more energy than was put into it.
Second, that the ITER facility is in its building phase, with planned operation in the 2030s.
And third, the increasing amount of investment in the private sector, with Fusion startups promising energy production in only a few short years.
The analogy I'm making in my head is that the NIF is sort of a "Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk" moment, while real deliverable energy is the "routine commercial flight" phase. Is that an apt metaphor? What do all these datapoints mean for the Fusion Energy timeline?
I'd recommend an episode interviewing Bob Mumgaard of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. (An alternative would be someone from one of the fusion-specific VC funds.) CFS is actively building a demo reactor that they believe will be energy-generating, if not at a commercial scale or economic parity. Like all founders, he's likely to be optimistic, but I don't see any reason to believe he's any more irrationally-so than other founders who are regularly on the pod. David is an established skeptic, but it'd be a good test of his priors. I personally view the viability of fusion as one of the biggest variables in the likely trajectory of climate.
Those kinds of companies pique my interest in where we're at. In my neck of the woods, Helion Energy is already in agreement to sell fusion energy to Microsoft in 2028, which is like right around the corner, timeline wise.
Fusion is still the fabled 20 years away. The 'more output than input' energy is caveated that it took 300+ times as much energy to make the input energy in the reaction.
And it was a single standalone fuel pellet with massive lasers aimed at it - not how a reactor would actually work.
Definitely progress but very real and significant hurdles remain before it's even a mirage of a prototype reactor.
Having given a TED talk in the past, if you could teach a college course to young adults, which kind of subjects would you most like to teach and how would you approach it? Whether on philosophy, journalism/media, climate, political institutions, etc.
Without it turning into a commercial for a particular product, I'm super curious about these window air source heat pumps that are on the market (for renters or even lazyish homeowners like myself). And since I'm up in Minnesnowda, the cold climate units in particular are of interest. Gradient is a brand that seems to come up a lot, but are there others? Can a third party break down their costs, efficacy, pros/cons?
A trend that alarms me is the suppression of objective or near-objective news, the latest straw being the revelation that LA Times opinion pieces about Trump now need to be paired with a second opposing opinion. With Bezos' non-endorsement, Des Moines Register being sued, threats to sic DOJ on unfriendly reporters, this just seems unreal to me. This can't be happening. Where do you go to for news these days?
Heather Cox Richardson
This is a personal question about regional accents. My mother-in-law grew up in a small town in western Kentucky, she left at 18 to go to college, and since then has lived in a number of places. I was raised in northern Ohio and I don't hear an accent when my mother-in-law talks. Her brother, who has lived in the small western Kentucky town his entire life, speaks with a noticeable accent. You've mentioned growing up in Tennessee, but I don't detect an accent when you speak. Do you have any theories about your lack of an accent? Do members of your family back in Tennessee have accents?
I am wondering if the major EV charging networks (e.g. ChargePoint, Tesla) are balancing their load at all across those networks to maximize grid reliability, reducing CO2, etc. If I could plug my car in and select an option for "flex my demand while charging at least X% in X hours" rather than "charge 6killowats/hr no matter what" I would.
For public charging, that seems a long way off. Great idea but until every parking spot has an outlet, they are too few to have people spread out their charging times like that.
Another fun concept that might be a middle ground, would be to have mild self driving in parking lots and have cars negotiate who charges and have them just shift around.
Of course now you need auto hook ups etc.
--- CLIMATE JOBS & OPPORTUNITIES ---
Come help us try to get proactive, comprehensive transmission planning in the Southeast! Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is hiring some to work on transmission and transmission planning to enable clean energy in the Southeast. We primarily work in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee (i.e. TVA). https://www.cleanenergy.org/blog/transmission-policy-manager/
Hey, if you gotta live in the Upper Midwest, we want YOU finding a climate/clean energy job in Minnesota! We update this job board about twice a week -https://www.cleanenergyresourceteams.org/job-board
Several postings live right now in MN! (https://www.mncee.org/work-with-us):
1) Customer Engagement Supervisor, Hybrid
2) Commercial HVAC Associate, Remote
3) Advanced Energy Codes Technical Manager, Hybrid
4) Research Engineer II, Hybrid
5) Initiative Manager - Lighting, Hybrid
With more in the hopper to be posted soon! (Questions welcome on any of these)
Need to be eligible to work in the UK.
May also consider consultants with an existing Net Zero client base in USA.
Check out this job at Go Green Experts Ltd: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4101142634
--- EVERYTHING ELSE ---
Generally ok with cursing just prefer it not be excessive. Understood that that couldn't be avoided with the enshittification episode, but Dan Savage sounded like he was walking up towards my "excessive" line. Really what I want is for Volts to be as accessible to everyone as possible so if avoiding the "explicit" label accomplishes that somehow then continue to bleep. Keep up the great work!
Cursing - keep it or go the route of the movie the Great Outdoors.
When it was edited for public TV, the frequent "blow it out your a$$" was dubbed to "blow it out your elbow!" It was a great comedic disconnect from the mouth movements and just added to the hilarity.
Following up on Cory's comments on why he has not gotten on Bluesky, the recent dustup over their not banning an active anti-trans poster points to the very real possibility that Bluesky will follow Twitter's path to maximum enshittification far more quickly than anyone might have thought.
There's a recent discussion about it on Mastodon at https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/113664405608317001 if folks are interested.
The oft repeated expectation set by Bluesky that it will become decentralized is also touched on, an important element because if it can't be, then the potential protection from government, political or billionaire intrusion of decentralization isn't real (and there's good reason to think they can't make it happen).
Curse words are everywhere these days so people need to get used to them (especially for anyone who listens to John Oliver). That said, my parents always said swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary...
Here’s a link to the recording of the Solar Rights Alliance webinar How California’s rooftop solar consumers saved the state $2.3 billion in 2024, and how California’s utilities are actively working against the benefits of distributed energy resources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHvhJDbJ8Vw&ab_channel=SolarRightsAlliance
I kinda like the bleeping! But I get that it's an annoying sound.
Maybe some pleasant chime or honk rather than the flat *BEEP*?
--- CLIMATE EVENTS & MEETUPS ---
--- SHARE WORK, ASK FOR HELP, FIND COLLABORATORS ---
You might find my Substack interesting, I discuss climate and the intersection between AI and Energy
https://benedettogrillone.substack.com/
Billionaires invest billions to gain $$trillions in favorable taxes, regulations and wage control.
Been going on for some time but now the technology of social media is a cheap and effective way to fool folks for votes.
Sorry the only way out is to meet your fellow neighbors and chat about this and that. That’s it. Less social media feeds that select headlines that evoke brain chemistry that make you want more and more face to face interaction.
I recently wrote something about grid orchestration: https://www.software.energy/p/grid-management-software-orchestration
By providing real-time and high-fidelity data of local grid conditions, grid orchestration enables operators to accelerate renewable energy adoption and improve grid stability. David interviewed the CEO of Camus Energy a while back, one of the main players in this space.
Long time listener, first time poster. My name is Nathan Chan, and I am one of the candidates for Sierra Clubs Board of Directors election. I have been following Dave’s work from the grist days, so you can be sure that climate action is my number one issue. I am running because we need a strong and effective Sierra Club to confront the climate crisis head on. If you would like to support my campaign, you can sign up to be a Sierra Club member here https://act.sierraclub.org/donate/rc_connect__campaign_designform?id=7010Z000001wIo8QAE&formcampaignid=7010Z000001PDLUQA4&ddi=N19ZSCZZ90
Interested generally in the economics of carbon, specifically in the context of forests recovery and disincentivizing deforestation.
The forests are a carbon bank. Managing them to maximize carbon produces forests that look like what was destroyed in the colonization. Getting the forests carbon, including root systems, onto balance sheets, measured (and measurable!) in Tonnes Avoided CO2 (TAC), internalizes the externality, and supports all the standard financial transactions to both preserve existing stocks (fuel management expenditures to discourage the stand-destroying catastrophic fires that characterize our current non-regime) and to mazimize future stands.
Carbon economics, where TAC is the object of optimization, is essential to our future survival. It also portends, it appears here in the woods, something very much like a natural resource boom, except that it produces forests recovery rather than devastation.
Carbon Economics is Fun! https://jasonchr.substack.com/p/carbon-economics
With permitting reform dead in Congress as of last night, I write about the very strong prospects for legislation to pass in 2025, and how exactly it is likely to happen. As we all know, these reforms are crucial, especially for transmission, if we're going to actually reduce the time it takes to advance clean energy projects and transition to a clean grid. https://www.moyerstrategies.com/post/permitting-reform-is-now-dead-prospects-look-good-for-2025
How can we learn about and advocate preserving infrastructure projects under next administration
VOLTS is wonderful. I'm so grateful for your work.
I've only been a subscriber for a year and don't recall any segments on the LDES/BESS sectors. Batteries are rightly an increasing focus, but the gulf between Li techs and the universe of emerging solutions that have lower cost, better safety profile and, most importantly, Duration.
Few of these techs have crossed the commercialization chasm. I believe that EOS certainly has and, perhaps, EnergyVault as well. There are scads of less mature enterprises, I have an affection for formenergy.com as an example. I confess a near romantic attraction to gravity LDES from pumped hydro on.
I would be grateful for coverage here.
I'm not bothered by the cursing, and I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't be alone in finding Dave's incessant giggling a distraction. The Dan Savage interview in particular was almost unlistenable for me, not for the language, but for the host chuckling and tittering at the guest's every utterance, whether he was saying something funny or not. It really mars what was otherwise a fantastic and extremely informative and important podcast -- and would be so easily fixed with a little creative editing.
One more day! WA State Department of Commerce is hiring a Residential Solar Supervisor who will oversee the team implementing our EPA Solar for All program. This is a unique opportunity to shape this groundbreaking program that will expand solar access to thousands of low-income residents in WA. Work from anywhere in WA. Also, more positions coming soon as we continue to staff up!
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/washington/jobs/4745746/residential-solar-supervisor-com-5?department%5B0%5D=Dept.%20of%20Commerce&sort=PostingDate%7CDescending&keywords=Dept.%20of%20Commerce&pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs
Regarding bleeping, I'm not bothered, however you want to do it. Just keep providing the great content. Thanks for the wonderful work.
I listen to all episodes that come out and want to recommend your podcast to my students who are 13-14 years old and care about the energy transition. I have posted before that I wish you could be more disciplined about your language, so that you don’t turn off a wider audience. While swearing can make you feel powerful, it is lazy and shows a lack of creativity. If I can go through my day with 8th graders and not swear, you can get through an hour-long podcast with being equally self-restrained.
David, you & Cory Doctorow are 2 of my heroes, so the fact that I got to listen to both of you discuss enshittification in the power systems space sent me into orbit. Well done sir!
Cheers, keep up the great work & please stop bleeping shit! 😅
I recently heard a webinar from the new US rep for SUNAMP.COM, a UK firm that makes residential and commercial phase-change thermal storage batteries. It seems they have at last figured out how to make a durable long-lived phase change battery. I don't understand their terminology in their preliminary specs, but I expect it will be clarified in time. One application is a buffer tank replacement for Air-To-Water heat pumps that can hold 6 hours or more of home heating capacity, to allow the heat pump to shut off at night and work in the daytime when solar power is available and the outdoor temps are higher than at night for better heat pump COP. They have different formulations that can also be used for domestic hot water and cooling. They can use both heat or electricity to charge the battery.
Thank you guys
It's interesting to hear about what Google and others are doing to try to accomplish 24/7 matching of their electricity consumption, but shouldn't our real metric be the degree to which an action reduces emissions? For instance, it might be really impressive to figure out a way to get that carbon out of the last kWh out of your demand for a data center in CA, but shouldn't we be asking the Googles of the world instead to find the places where their dollars will do the most to decarbonize in general. As is pointed out over and over, climate change is a global phenomenon, so why not help clean up dirty grids in developing countries before spending too much money on the last little bit in relatively clean grids in certain parts of the US and Europe?
But my real question is whether or not there are trustworthy and accessible pathways for regular people in advanced economies to help clean energy projects take off in less developed parts of the world. Are there investment funds for little guys to put some dollars/euros into? If so, are they being careful not to repeat histories of colonialist misdeeds? Do they have potential to actually do real good, or just make us feel good?
Hi, does anyone know which date and title of the episode where a guy was using blocks of carbon for thermal storage, and what was his name and company name? And, also, the episode where there was CCS in Iceland? I could not find those two.
The thermal storage one might be from Feb 7th "Another hot rock company gets into the storage game".
I think those are these two:
https://www.volts.wtf/p/a-super-battery-aimed-at-decarbonizing
https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-cheapest-way-to-permanently-sequester