V Volts

Podcast

Volts

Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind. I've been reporting on and explaining clean-energy topics for almost 20 years, and I love talking to politicians, analysts, innovators, and activists about the latest progress in the world's most important fight. (Volts is entirely subscriber-supported. Sign up!) www.volts.wtf

Website ↗ Last published 30 October 2026 559 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on Volts

“We're seeing a lot of data center growth being served by new fossil fuel plants. Very easy to understand. Like you just have this new fossil fuel plant manifest next to a data center, and it's just burning through fuels that wouldn't have been burned if that data center wasn't built at that size with that level of impatience.” — Ketan Joshi, Volts
Ketan Joshi · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Certainly, the U.S. public has no such sympathy. Three in four Americans now say they would oppose a data center near them. Something like $260 billion worth of projects have been canceled this year alone, mainly in the face of local backlash.” — David Roberts, Volts
David Roberts · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Climate itself has ebbed away from public discourse… I don't think that communities are out there protesting data centers because they're worried about the heating of the atmosphere as a consequence of data centers, or at least not indirectly through global warming.” — Ketan Joshi, Volts
Ketan Joshi · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“There is no road to decarbonization that does not involve radically increased demand for electricity because we're going to be switching everything over to electricity. So, in some sense, when I see this drive in demand for electricity cast as a bad thing, I get very nervous.” — David Roberts, Volts
David Roberts · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“The line for emissions is going down, but the atmosphere responds to how much you pump into it, right? So if you kind of lazily decrease your emissions more slowly over time, you just have a worse atmospheric outcome for us.” — Ketan Joshi, Volts
Ketan Joshi · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“There's difference between agreement and popularity, and people confuse those two things. What we have is agreement with people. The iPhone is popular… for most Americans they want their lights to work and they want their bill to be, you know, moderate and, you know, they don't want dirty skies and dirty water and we can deliver all those things, but we're still not delivering 3,000 songs in their pocket and social media. Like we're not popular.” — Tom Matzzie, Volts
Tom Matzzie · 28 Oct 2026 Listen →
“My theory of change is you need people to perceive you as powerful. The perception actually matters more than anything. The metaphor I use is you have to be a lion and not a gazelle. Plenty of gazelles out there, and they have a wonderful life as gazelles, but no one Fs with the lions.” — Tom Matzzie, Volts
Tom Matzzie · 28 Oct 2026 Listen →
“There's all these technologies that were invented in California, for instance. And if I was like, hey, I just want to make a factory and make this, it wouldn't be more expensive. It would actually just be illegal for me to do it.” — Sam D'Amico, Volts
Sam D'Amico · 23 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Shenzhen is turning into this, what I would call a matter compiler. It's like, okay, cool. You can almost vibe code out hardware just by asking for it. We're getting the Star Trek replicator, it just happens to be a city.” — Sam D'Amico, Volts
Sam D'Amico · 23 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Interestingly, because Texas energy market has been so deliberalized and there's been so much utility-scale solar and storage deployed, Texas volatility has essentially been destroyed.” — Nick Chaset, Volts
Nick Chaset · 21 Oct 2026 Listen →
“I come from a rural area. Going back, my family has always been farmers. So some of them might not like what I'm saying right now. But there is more biodiversity in a solar farm than a traditional corn field.” — Kristian Jensen, Volts
Kristian Jensen · 16 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Right now, data centers are just firing at the grid like they're throwing darts at a board, wanting to go wherever they can, hoping to get a connection, and perhaps asking for three or four locations, but only want to use one. The 70 gigawatts of demand that's out there is not real demand.” — Kristian Jensen, Volts
Kristian Jensen · 16 Oct 2026 Listen →

Hosts

Volts is hosted by Jordan Heath-Rawlings , Dan Ilic , Matthew Sitman , Matthew Sheffield and Sam Adler-Bell .

Recent Episodes

  1. 30 Oct 2026

    The (climate) case against (AI) data centers

    With Ketan Joshi

  2. 28 Oct 2026

    The PAC taking out clean energy opponents

    With Tom Matzzie

  3. 23 Oct 2026

    Building our piece of the electric stack

    With Sam D'Amico

  4. 21 Oct 2026

    Can distributed energy work around American utilities?

    With Nick Chaset

  5. 16 Oct 2026

    What’s up with Denmark?

    With Kristian Jensen

  6. 14 Oct 2026

    Checking back in with Greenlight America

  7. 14 Oct 2026

    Checking back in with Greenlight America

    With Matt Traldi

  8. 12 Oct 2026

    Volts community thread #31: Postcard from Denmark

  9. 9 Oct 2026

    What’s up with the new federal permitting reform bill?

    With Daniel Palkin and Daniel Palken

  10. 7 Oct 2026

    The grueling fight to pass the Inflation Reduction Act

    With Leah Stokes

  11. 2 Oct 2026

    Best of September 2026

    With Leah Kuspa , Carl Hoyland and Joel Edwards

  12. 30 Sep 2026

    What’s up with heat-pump water heaters?

    With Luke Winston-Amanzar

Guests

Jesse Jenkins (8 episodes), Jigar Shah (5 episodes), Leah Stokes (4 episodes), Caroline Spears (4 episodes), Lisa Hymas (4 episodes), Saul Griffith (3 episodes), Patrick Miller (3 episodes), Zeyneb Magavi (3 episodes), Adam McKay (3 episodes), Sean Casten (3 episodes), Kostantsa Rangelova (2 episodes), Joel Edwards (2 episodes), and 419 more.