Two years ago, Donald Trump made an outlandish campaign promise: He would cut Americans’ power bills in half.

It was a ridiculous, impossible pledge — but even so, the affordability problem didn’t need to get this bad. A new report, out this week from the Natural Resources Defense Council, looks at the economic, environmental, and public health costs of Trump’s regulatory and legislative clean energy policies, including his rollback of the wind and solar tax credits.

The report’s author, Amanda Levin, joins Rob on this episode of Shift Key. Levin is a Director of Policy Analysis at the NRDC’s Science Office. They discuss why Trump’s repeal will have long-term effects, the underrated public health impacts of the rollback, and why Levin believes the credits should be restored.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

Amanda Levin’s new report: An Affordability Crisis of Trump’s Own Making

A ‘Glass Half Full’ Isn’t Enough to Fight Climate Change

Previously on Shift Key: The New Paper Arguing Biden’s Power Sector Emissions Cuts Are Largely Intact — Even Under Trump

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This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

Discover the Yale Clean and Equitable Energy Development online certificate program at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. In this fully online, 5-month program, you’ll learn from leading experts, develop practical skills, and grow a powerful network. Visit cbey.yale.edu to learn more and apply.

Verse's software platform Aria helps data centers connect to the grid faster and optimize power operations in real time. Learn more at verse.inc.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

California now has the most expensive electricity in the continental United States. It also has expensive housing … and an increasingly broken home insurance market.

Are the three phenomena linked? They might be. Due to a peculiarity in the state’s constitution, electricity utilities are incentivized to pay for a huge amount of wildfire prevention, above and beyond what would be seen as economically reasonable in another state. Fixing that constitutional peculiarity could help bring down energy costs and heal the home insurance market, but it will be complicated — and a number of policies will need to get passed at the same time.

That’s what Lauren Teixeira argues in her new report, “Rewiring Risk.” Teixeira, a senior climate and energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, joins Rob for today’s episode of Shift Key. They discuss how California found itself in this situation, how it might be fixed, and why the state treats utilities as a sin-eater for wildfire risk.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

Lauren’s report: Rewiring Risk

Rethinking Utility Wildfire Risk in California

Previously on Shift Key: How California Broke Its Electricity Bills

Previously on Shift Key: How Wildfires Destroyed California’s Insurance Market

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This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

Discover the Yale Clean and Equitable Energy Development online certificate program at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. In this fully online, 5-month program, you’ll learn from leading experts, develop practical skills, and grow a powerful network. Visit cbey.yale.edu to learn more and apply.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every few years, the Pacific Ocean’s surface waters become especially warm near the equator, a climatic phenomenon known as El Niño.

El Niño is a normal part of the climate system, but even in a normal year, it can trigger extreme weather around the world. Forecasters are worried that the current El Niño — which just began a few weeks ago — is going to be anything but normal. Models suggest that we could soon see the hottest El Niño ever measured, with unpredictable and catastrophic effects for ecosystems and societies around the world.

What does that mean? And why does this El Niño look so bad? On this episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by Zeke Hausfather, a climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. They discuss what forecast models are saying about this El Niño, why it gives us a glance at the future, and whether climate change itself is accelerating.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned:

NOAA’s El Niño page and the relative El Niño index

An Assessment of Earth's Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence, the 2020 paper where Zeke was a coauthor

Zeke’s blog post on AI emissions: The real energy use of agentic AI

John Bistline’s post on AI emissions at Watershed

Heatmap’s coverage of AI emissions: A New Guesstimate for Corporate AI Emissions

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This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...

Discover the Yale Clean and Equitable Energy Development online certificate program at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. In this fully online, 5-month program, you’ll learn from leading experts, develop practical skills, and grow a powerful network. Visit cbey.yale.edu to learn more and apply.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.