Happy Candlemas, erm, eve eve…to all those who celebrate. You didn’t know Christmas was actually 40 days long, did you? Well now you know. And you can still enjoy your holiday decorations for a day more without being a complete freak.
Anything that brings light into this dark week is welcome so we’re keeping the decorations on til the last possible minute.
Outro Track
In the spirit of identifying and removing barriers to progress, we could do no better than select Soul Coughing’s anthem for our outro today:
So much is happening that it’s hard to drink from the firehose of US executive orders on energy and crazy chaos orangutang screeches on presidential letterhead, UK debates about growth versus climate, and parsing the statements of tech broligarchs to the only people left who can hold them accountable – their investors during earnings calls this week.
And that’s before we get into Heathrow, followed by a Scottish court ruling that the Rosebank field was unlawfully given permission because it ignored carbon emissions – something I’m sure peaked the interest of lawyers for the 16 Just Stop Oil protestors facing some of the longest sentences ever handed down for non-violent protests.
So we’ve got a mega-episode for you this Friday the last day of January.
We’ve got climate comedian and UCL academic Matt Winning, along with climate journalist and BlueSky maestro Dave Vetter to help make sense of all of that. And we’ve got Adam Grant Bell of the UK consultancy Stonehaven, who after decades in and out of government has a pretty good sense for these things, setting some odds on what’s going to happen this year in getting enough renewables built to achieve the UK government’s goals of hitting clean power by 2030. And he thinks the UK government might this year finally move away from a national price for electricity and to a system where cheaper electricity from things like wind and solar will be reflected locally, something Octopus’s Greg Jackson and others have been calling for and could radically change decisions about where power gets generated and where you site things like factories that will use it.
And because we can’t ignore that chaos orangutang with nuclear weapons, US-based Financial Times journos Amanda Chu and me aul mucker Jamie Smyth of Energy Source join us.
00:13 Government's Role in the Chaos
00:18 Trump's Impact on Renewable Energy
00:45 Weekly Recap and Upcoming Topics
01:11 Elon Musk
02:31 Climate and Energy Policies
04:37 Interview with FT Journalists
05:49 Tracking Executive Orders
09:41 Impact on Renewable Energy Projects
10:29 Texas and Clean Energy Growth
12:48 Energy Policy and Executive Authority
13:49 Challenges in Renewable Energy Development
15:58 Geopolitical Factors and Market Dynamics
20:11 Future of Renewable Energy Auctions
36:55 Enhanced Geothermal and Government Policies
37:31 Small Modular Reactors and Long Duration Storage
38:22 Chancellor's Speech and Planning Reforms
39:30 Environmental and Climate Change Debates
40:37 Rosebank Ruling and Oil and Gas Projects
42:48 Interview with Dave Vedder and Matt Winning
44:34 AI Advancements and Energy Implications
53:46 Heathrow Expansion and Sustainable Aviation Fuel
01:04:43 Closing Thoughts and Upcoming Events
All the Tunes
If you’re enjoying the tunes, check out the whole outro playlist:
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