Shift Key with Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins

Why has it been so hard for the world to make progress on climate change over the past 30 years? Maybe it’s because we’ve been thinking about the problem wrong. Academics and economists have often framed climate change as a free-rider or collective action problem, one in which countries must agree not to emit greenhouse gases and abuse the public commons. But maybe the better way to understand climate action is as a fight that gene...

Did the Supreme Court just make it easier to build things in this country — or did it give a once-in-a-lifetime gift to the fossil fuel industry? Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 against environmentalists who sought to use a key permitting law, the National Environmental Policy Act, to slow down a railroad in a remote but oil-rich part of Utah. Even the court’s liberals ruled against the green groups. 

But the court’s...

Shift Key is off this week for Memorial Day, so we’re re-running one of our favorite episodes from the past. With Republicans in the White House and Congress now halfway to effectively repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States’ signature climate law, we thought now might be a good moment to remind ourselves why emissions reductions matter in the first place.

To that end, we’re resurfacing our chat from November wi...

Republicans are preparing to tear up America’s clean energy tax credits as part of their budget reconciliation megabill. Hollowing out those policies will have sweeping implications for the country’s energy system — it could set back solar, nuclear, and geothermal development; bring less electricity supply onto the grid; and devastate the country’s fledgling electric vehicle supply chain. 

A new report — written by our own ...

The fight over the Inflation Reduction Act has arrived. After months of discussion, the Republican majority in the House is now beginning to write, review, and argue about its plans to transform the climate law’s energy tax provisions. 

We wanted to record a show about how to follow that battle. But then — halfway through recording that episode — the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee dropped the first dra...

Last week, more than 50 million people across mainland Spain and Portugal suffered a blackout that lasted more than 10 hours and shuttered stores, halted trains, and dealt more than $1 billion in economic damage. At least eight deaths have been attributed to the power outage.

Almost immediately, some commentators blamed the blackout on the large share of renewables on the Iberian peninsula’s power grid. Are they right? How does ...

Texas is one of the country’s biggest producers of zero-emissions energy. Last year, the Lone Star State surpassed California to become the country’s No. 1 market for utility-scale solar. More solar and batteries were added to the Texas grid in 2024 than any other energy source, and the state has long dominated in onshore wind.

But that buildout is now threatened. A new tranche of bills in the Texas House and Senate could impose...

In just the past few years, Chinese EV-maker BYD has become the most important car company most Americans have still never heard of. It is China’s biggest private employer, the world’s third most valuable automaker (after Tesla and Toyota), and it’s capable of producing more than 5 million cars a year. It’s also just one of dozens of innovative new Chinese auto companies that are set to transform the global mobility market — regard...

Donald Trump has implemented what is easily the most chaotic set of American economic policies in recent memory. First, the U.S. declared a trade war on the entire world, imposing breathtaking tariffs on many of the country’s biggest trading partners. He’s paused that effort — but scaled up punitive tariffs on China, launching what would be the 21st century’s biggest global economic realignment without any apparent plan. Now Trump ...

China’s industrial policy for clean energy has turned the country into a powerhouse of solar, wind, battery, and electric vehicle manufacturing. 

But long before the country’s factories moved global markets — and invited Trump’s self-destructive tariffs — the country implemented energy and technology policy to level up its domestic industry. How did those policies work? Which tools worked best? And if the United States need...

The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.

It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Si...

If you care about decarbonizing the power grid anytime soon, you have to care about data centers. The AI boom and the ongoing growth of the internet have driven a big new cycle of data center construction in the United States, with tech companies trying to buy amounts of electricity comparable to those used by large cities. 

Peter Freed has seen this up close. As Meta’s former director of energy strategy, he worked on clean...

Republicans in Washington are pushing for at least two big changes to the country’s car-related policies. In Congress, some lawmakers want to repeal the $7,500 tax credit that helps consumers buy or lease a new electric vehicle — as well as a matching tax credit that lets companies buy heavy-duty zero-carbon trucks. And at the Environmental Protection Agency, officials are trying to roll back Biden-era rules encouraging dealerships...

Donald Trump’s second term has now entered its second month. His administration is doing much to slow down renewables, and everything it can to slow down offshore wind. Jael Holzman is a senior reporter at Heatmap and the author of our newsletter, “The Fight,” about local battles over renewable permitting around the country. 

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk to Jael about the bleak outlook for offshor...

Longtime listeners of Shift Key will recognize the name Intersolar and Energy Storage North America, one of the country’s premier solar industry conferences. Shift Key was live at this year’s event, hosting a panel on the present and future of the solar industry featuring a pair of marquee panelists: Tom Starrs, currently the vice president for government and public affairs at EDP Renewables, North America, who has more than 30 yea...

Congress is still debating the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act, but the Trump administration has already torn up energy and climate policies across the federal government. It’s time to step back and try to take stock. How much damage has the Trump administration already done to decarbonization? What’s most worrying? What was going to happen anyway? And what might still be saved? 

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob...

The most important energy regulators in the United States aren’t all in the federal government. Each state has its own public utility commission, a set of elected or appointed officials who regulate local power companies. This set of 200 individuals wield an enormous amount of power — they oversee 1% of U.S. GDP — but they’re often outmatched by local utility lobbyists and overlooked in discussions from climate advocates. 

...

The first few weeks of the new Trump administration have seen an onslaught of anti-climate actions: an order punishing the wind industry, an attempted reversal of the Environmental Protection Administration’s climate authority, and a brazen — and possibly unconstitutional — attempt to freeze all spending under Biden’s climate laws. Democrats’ climate legacy seems to be under assault. How will they respond? 

Senator Brian Sc...

Over the past 30 years, the U.S. automaking industry has transformed how it builds cars and trucks, constructing a continent-sized network of factories, machine shops, and warehouses that some call “Factory North America.” President Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports will disrupt and transform those supply chains. What will that mean for the automaking industry and the transition to EVs?

Ellen Hughes-Crom...