The Big Switch
To slow climate change, we need to transform our homes, buildings, cars, and economy quickly. "The Big Switch" explains how to rebuild the energy systems all around us. Dr. Melissa Lott of Columbia University brings together historical examples, current events, and incisive analysis to give listeners a deep understanding of the solutions to climate change.
Episodes
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Batteries are finding their way into everything – from cars to heavy equipment to the electric grid.
But scaling up production to meet the demands of a net-zero economy is complicated and contentious. In this 5-episode season, we’re digging into the ways batteries are made and asking: what gets mined, traded, and consumed on the road to decarbonization?
This week, we’re running an episode of Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers, from our friends at Environmental Defense Fund: “The fastest electric vehicle fleet makeover in the west”.
Degrees is an action hub for green job seekers to find career guidance and connect to a community of mentors, especially now that green jobs are among the fastest growing jobs globally, surging over 237% in the pas...
This is the fifth episode of a five-part series exploring the European energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If you haven’t listened to the first four episodes, we recommend you start there.
In March of 2022, European officials unveiled a plan to push their energy transition much further, much faster – and rid their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
REPowerEU was ambiti...
This is the fourth episode of a five-part series exploring the European energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If you haven’t listened to the first three episodes, we recommend you start there.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Germans and Poles installed heat pumps and residential solar panels to reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
But do the countr...
This is the third episode of a five-part series exploring the European energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If you haven’t listened to the first two episodes, we recommend you start there.
Even with a plan to phase down fossil fuel use, Poland still gets 70% of its electricity from coal. Can a country so dependent on coal make the transition to green energy effectively—and quickly?
This is the second episode of a five-part series exploring the European energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If you haven’t listened to the first episode, we recommend you start there.
Germany has grown its wind and solar sectors dramatically over the past 20 years. And yet, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked an energy crisis, Germany fired up idle coal plants and began import...
Putin’s assault on Ukraine triggered an energy crisis that sent Europe’s economies into a tailspin and put the European energy transition to the test. But how did the European Union, a leader in climate action, become so dependent on Russian oil and gas to begin with?
This season, we look at the energy systems of Germany and Poland. Both have very different energy systems, but both became dependent on Rus...
Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked supply shortages, fears of blackouts, and a scramble to find new sources of energy.
In this season of The Big Switch we’re trying to answer the trillion-dollar question: Will the energy crisis speed up or slow down Europe’s clean energy transition? And what will it mean for the rest of the world?
Over the next five episodes, we’ll look at Poland and Germany...
Geothermal energy doesn’t get near the attention that wind and solar do. But to decarbonize our energy systems, we need a team of net zero technologies. And despite geothermal’s low profile, it’s an always-on, zero carbon technology that can complement intermittent renewables like wind and solar.
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There’s been a pretty major shake-up in the world of transit decarbonization. This summer, the California Air Resources Board – a state organization that regulates air quality – approved a rule mandating that by 2035, all new cars sold in California will be zero-emissions.
This rule will transform California's car market; and deliver some huge climate and hea...
In this episode, a former oil-and-gas man named Efrem Jernigan catches the solar bug. Inspired by the potential for lower energy bills and green jobs, he looks into bringing solar to the neighborhood he grew up in, a historically black part of Houston called Sunnyside.
But for many Sunnyside residents, the technology is out of reach: Many are renters. Others ...
On this show we talk a lot about the “big switch” to zero-carbon energy sources. But there’s another kind of switch that needs to happen, too. You might have heard the term “just transition” before – the idea that as we make the switch to new energy sources, we also have to help transition the workers and communities that produce that energy to new sources of employment and revenue.
Frogs. Bees. Finicky software. There are a lot of things that can cause an electric vehicle charging station to break. We need to replace fossil-fuel powered vehicles with EVs as soon as possible—but if the stations don’t work, it will slow the adoption of EVs.
In Los Angeles, two Black women have started training a small army of technicians to fix broken char...
We’re switching things up a bit for the next few weeks. Instead of continuing our sector-by-sector decarbonization tour, we’re taking you to the front lines of the energy transition – to communities where the big switch to a zero carbon future is already underway.
We’re starting with New York City, where there’s a project underway that’s tackling decarbonization...
Building codes: they might sound boring, but they’re actually the front lines in a nationwide battle to decarbonize our buildings. And they do a lot more than keeping your home from falling down over your head. They regulate everything from energy efficiency, to the kind of fuel your stove runs on, to whether your building has an electric vehicle charging port – all super important facets of buildin...
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