The Earth renews itself with fresh winds and rain. I returned from a lovely visit to Harrisonburg VA with my uncle, aunt, and cousin rejuvenated. The trail greeted me with rain and cool. Color swelled in leaves. Vigor replaced arduousness, vibrancy displacing a miry sky.
Shenandoah National Park is prepared to frame such art in its ample vantage points.
A similar renewal is occurring in the energy space during the 2020s, despite the challenges of a pandemic. Solar electricity became the cheapest form of energy generation in human history. The United States passed a massive climate and green tech industrial policy bill, making our Paris Agreement carbon emissions targets possible with the enactment of a single document.
During the rainy and refreshing day, I listened to some 8 episodes of the Volts podcast to learn about these fast-paced developments. Volts is an energy and politics podcast that features conversations with leaders in a range of industries and fields that encompass the clean energy revolution. Though its host, David Roberts, a long-time and top-tier climate journalist would be the first to identify himself as a gloomy pessimist, the last nine months of episodes following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (the aforementioned climate and green tech bill) have truly brimmed with hope. David’s stories are of how the clean energy revolution in the United States is well underway: pilot geogrid shared water heating infrastructure in Boston, a new economic model being used for commercial building efficiency retrofits, a battery company developing a next-generation EV cat battery, an induction stove company building a battery into their stove, and much more. The podcast has given me a better sense of how this field is developing and what sorts of jobs I will apply for. In these stories, the world becomes more possible. The future feels like the previous photo: a sunbeam shining after the storm.
David Roberts likes to take a high-level look at the energy transition space, and he is the best I know at covering the field in sufficient depth but also enough breadth to connect dots and develop an overall picture. It’s like standing on the crests of the Shenandoahs, looking over an expansive view.
