Aviation is a notoriously difficult sector to decarbonize. So as Melissa plans a family trip, she wrestles with her options. Which flights emit the least carbon? How well do offsets work? Should we even be flying at all?
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When one of the biggest ships in the world got stuck in the Suez Canal, it threw a giant...
Heavy trucks emit an outsize share of greenhouse gasses and toxic pollutants. But we rely on them for nearly everything we buy. What will it take to decarbonize them?
We hear from staff at the Community Center for...
Electric autonomous vehicles shuttle us to high-tech mass transit hubs. Our fare system is contactless. We’ve already paid via a customized, equitable subscription model. All the trains and buses are on time. And we don’t have to wait in traffic. This is a world...
In the next five episodes, we'll take a deep dive into decarbonizing the entire transportation sector -- everything from bulldozers and planes to ships and trains.
In this episode we start with cars. How do we switch the world's over 1 billion fossil-fuel-powered cars to zero-carbon...
In the first five episodes of this show, we talked about cleaning up our electricity system—the power grid.
In upcoming episodes, we're going to explain how to make that Big Switch in every other sector of the economy—...
We have a whole year of episodes coming up.
In the first five episodes of The Big Switch, we talked about cleaning up our electricity system--the power grid.
Next, host Dr. Melissa Lott will talk with experts about how to transform every other sector of the economy, including...
In episode 2, we explored how to build a championship zero-carbon “team” on the grid. We could have the best players in the world — rooftop solar, batteries, net metering, demand response, high-voltage transmission, and so many others — but if the rules prevent...
Matching electricity supply and demand is a high-wire balancing act. As we add more solar, wind and batteries, and shut down thermal generation, it shifts the balance. New kinds of distributed resources can help to balance things out -- but they also make grid...
If the grid system is the backbone of a low-carbon economy, then transmission lines are the nervous system.
We need a dramatic build-out of the transmission system to connect renewable energy to the places that need it...
Building a low-carbon grid is like building a sports team with star players and supporting players. Or, more accurately, it’s like re-building a sports team, where you have to go from underdogs to world champs.
First...
The electric grid is the vast machine that powers everything around us. It’s also the part of the energy system where we're seeing the most dramatic changes as we address climate change.
So what are the stakes,...
Welcome to our first season of "The Big Switch." It's a five-part series that explores how the power grid works, how it's changing, and how those changes can benefit society.
Your host is Dr. Melissa Lott of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.
To slow climate...
