John Harpole is the president of Denver-based natural gas broker Mercator Energy. In this episode, Harpole explains how Europe “fell into the trap” set by Russia and Vladimir Putin, fertilizer shortages, why Europe’s energy crisis will last for years, and why the US should launch a “natural gas Lend-Lease” program for Europe.

Benny Peiser is the director of Net Zero Watch, a London-based group that focuses on the “implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies.” Peiser talks about Europe’s “unilateral energy disarmament,” the “cult” of climate-change activism, how Germany led the anti-hydrocarbon campaign in Europe, Britain’s shale gas potential, and why Europe needs to reverse its opposition to hydraulic fracturing and begin drilling for oil and gas immediately. 

Ukraine special podcast: Mark Nelson managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund, joins the podcast for the third time to talk about the global energy crisis after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We talk about the soaring price of coal (the Newcastle benchmark is now over $400 per ton), Germany’s plans to restart the three nuclear plants it closed in December, France’s nuclear sector, and why the crisis may end up bringing more industrial plants to the United States. 

In 2020, Heather Stancil was elected to the Madison County Board of Supervisors on an anti-wind-energy platform by a margin of 65 to 35%. In this episode, Stancil, who lives in Earlham, (population 1,400) talks about the county’s legal battle with MidAmerican Energy (which sued the county for banning wind projects), the bridges of Madison County, National Public Radio’s reporting, and why her opposition to Big Wind is about “the health, safety, and welfare of the people.” 

Simon Irish is the CEO of Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian company that is developing a molten-salt reactor for commercial electricity generation. Irish explains why Terrestrial is seeking initial licensing in Canada instead of the U.S., why it may be another decade before his company can deploy its first commercial reactor, and why policy support for new nuclear reactors “needs to accelerate.”

For the third episode marking the one-year anniversary of the Texas Blackouts, we welcome Roger Pielke Jr. back to the podcast for a third time. In this episode, Pielke talks about why policymakers should not commit to decarbonization targets before they have realistic plans to meet them, Germany’s energy mess, a new “taxonomy” for thinking about disasters, doping at the Winter Olympics, and why we may have some good news on climate change.

For the one-year anniversary of the Texas Blackouts, our second guest this week is Brent Bennett, the policy director for Life:Powered, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In this episode, Bennett explains why the ERCOT market is “broken,” how it is being distorted by federal subsidies for wind and solar, why there’s no Moore’s law for batteries, and why there is an “oversupply of capital” being directed toward alternative energy sources.

For the one-year anniversary of the Texas Blackouts, we welcome back – for a record fourth appearance -- Meredith Angwin, the author of Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid. In this episode, Meredith explains why entities like ERCOT and other regional transmission organizations are “fatally flawed,” why Texas regulators should be incentivizing power plants to have onsite fuel, why offshore wind is “a tremendous amount of money,” the problems with trying to electrify everything, and why we should be thinking about the electric grid as an “orchestra.”

Donald Sadoway is an emeritus professor of materials chemistry at MIT and the chief science advisor at Ambri Incorporated, a molten-metal battery company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In this episode, Sadoway explains why lithium-ion batteries are so dangerous, why we need to develop batteries with super-cheap ingredients, Ambri’s decade-long road to commercialization, the origin of the neodymium-iron-boron magnet, coercivity, and why iridium is his favorite element.

John Constable is the director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a British public charity. In this episode, Constable discusses the ongoing energy crisis in Europe, misconceptions about the Industrial Revolution, offshore wind, why “renewables are a land play,” how increasing energy use leads to greater liberty and freedom, and why “solar and wind energy are a mirage.”