Environmentalism has typically focused on outdoor air quality, but climate change is pushing more people indoors more of the time, even as airborne pathogens and wildfire smoke challenge indoor air quality. I discuss the fight for better indoor air with Dr. Georgia Lagoudas, who recently coordinated a global pledge declaring it a basic human right. We dig into what pollutes indoor air, the technologies that can keep it clean, and the enormous social and economic benefits clean air in schools.

Distributed energy resources are everywhere, but connecting buyers and sellers is a coordination nightmare; I talk with James Johnston, whose company Piclo is tackling that problem head-on. He explains how they’ve built a transparent, open marketplace where utilities and other buyers can procure flexibility as a simple commodity from a wide range of sellers. We discuss how this model is already working in the UK and how it could allow data centers to pay for faster grid access in the US — potentially unlocking billions in private investment for VPPs.

In this episode, I welcome back Caroline Spears from Climate Cabinet for a post-election debrief that, unlike last year’s, is full of good news. We explore how a slate of pro-climate candidates defied expectations in tough districts across the country, driven by a powerful backlash against the Trump administration.

In this episode, I chat with Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, about bringing the company’s customer-focused, tech-forward model to America. We get into the details of how Octopus simplifies home energy management for its retail customers and its plan to help regulated utilities do the same. We also touch on ambitious ideas like the “Zero Bills” home and how to build gigawatt-scale virtual power plants that benefit both consumers and the grid.

With the White House actively dismantling clean transportation policy, what can states do to salvage progress? I talk with former DOT policy advisor Liya Rechtman about a little-known authority that lets states transfer highway dollars to fund transit, EV charging, and bike lanes. We explore how governors can use this tool, but only if they act quickly.

Lately, everyone from Tony Blair to Daniel Yergin is calling for a “climate reset,” so I brought on clean-energy analyst Michael Liebreich to discuss his own, very different version. While others push expensive distractions, Liebreich argues that the inexorable growth of cheap renewables is already on track to displace fossil fuels, a “tortoise” strategy that will win without the need for crisis politics.

In this episode I’m joined by Wilson Ricks and Killian Daly, who are involved in the process of updating the Greenhouse Gas Protocol that governs (among other things) corporate clean-energy procurement. We explore the proposed shift to requiring hourly, local matching for Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), a change designed to end the “race to the bottom” where companies buy cheap, low-impact RECs to paper over the fact that being “100 percent clean” is genuinely difficult.

Redwood Materials has long dominated EV battery recycling, but what if they could drain every last drop of energy from those batteries before recycling them? I talk with the company’s CTO, Colin Campbell, about Redwood Energy, a new division doing just that by deploying used batteries as grid-scale storage at a massive scale. This isn’t just a side project; it’s a plan to turn a massive wave of incoming used batteries into a key resource for the grid.