Denmark gets a large share of its power from wind and other renewables and has cut its emissions roughly in half since 1990, but independent analysts doubt it will hit its 70 percent target for 2030. Kristian Jensen, CEO of Green Power Denmark and a former Danish minister of taxation, foreign affairs, and finance, argues the next stage is electrifying how Denmark uses energy: heat, transport, and industry. I talk with him about district heating and heat pumps, EVs and vehicle-to-grid, municipally owned grid companies and hourly power prices, biomass, carbon capture, power-to-X, solar’s “fields of iron” backlash, a grid oversubscribed with data center requests (an October 1 agreement has since put most data centers at the back of the queue), and whether the country’s political consensus will hold.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction: Denmark and industrial symbiosis

02:44 – Is the 70% target for 2030 out of reach?

06:24 – Carbon capture and storage, and the peatlands lag

09:57 – Why electrification has lagged: biomass and wood pellets

14:45 – Few batteries, many interconnectors

16:48 – Data centers and the grid-connection prioritization bill

21:34 – Municipally owned grid companies

24:32 – Smart meters, hourly prices, and thermal batteries

28:40 – The solar backlash and local ownership

35:04 – Agrivoltaics and biodiversity

37:24 – District heating: heat pumps, geothermal, and finance

43:24 – The EV transition and vehicle-to-grid

47:45 – Road pricing and fiscal room

50:07 – Power-to-X and eSAF

54:21 – Can Denmark build enough clean power?

57:12 – Will the political consensus hold?

On this episode, recorded live at Climate Week NYC, I talk with Matt Traldi. He’s the founder and CEO of Greenlight America, which finds the local meetings where clean energy’s fate is being decided and recruits supporters to attend. Traldi argues that siting and permitting approvals turn on who shows up, and that local partners, conservative groups included, outperform outside advocates. We discuss how to measure impact, recent wins and losses, blue-state resistance, data center backlash, and Greenlight’s growth.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:09 – What Greenlight does and why Matt started it

04:41 – How Greenlight finds the decisions that matter

07:27 – Growth, and the tax credit deadline sprint

13:38 – Who shows up to local hearings

19:39 – Winning in conservative communities

22:35 – Bodies in the room, measuring impact, and win rates

27:46 – Losses, wins, and “there is no bag”

32:44 – Blue-state obstacles and organized opposition

36:31 – When data center backlash spills over onto clean energy

42:31 – Which projects Greenlight won’t back

45:38 – Lessons from housing and growing an organization

50:17 – Audience Q&A: disinformation and state permitting reform

54:39 – Audience Q&A: developers and elections

59:30 – Audience Q&A: funding local groups and designing community input

The proposed bipartisan federal permitting bill is 417 pages filled with extremely consequential provisions that have left the climate community some mix of excited, infuriated, and confused. In an attempt to bring some clarity, I asked Daniel Palken of Arnold Ventures, a veteran of Senate permitting fights, to walk through what’s in it. We cover the blockbuster transmission reforms, the rule making data centers pay more than their share of grid costs, the wins for geothermal, and the fossil carve-outs. Then we get into NEPA reforms that render the act toothless, limits on state water permits, and the permit-certainty sections that have lawyers worried about “forever permits.” And finally: whether it restrains Trump, why Democrats shouldn’t wait for a better deal, what the modeling says about emissions impacts, and Daniel’s odds of passage. This is a long one, folks. Buckle up.

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro: the bipartisan permitting bill

04:15 – Why permitting reform matters

12:23 – Agency staffing and capacity

16:59 – Past permitting attempts

20:26 – Transmission 1: planning and federal backstop

28:28 – Transmission 2: who pays and grid upgrades

38:17 – Data centers 1: paying more for grid access

43:20 – Distributed energy and geothermal

49:06 – Oil, gas, and mining provisions

57:06 – Data centers 2: will they go off-grid?

1:00:19 – NEPA 1: courts can’t halt projects

1:08:57 – NEPA 2: the main objections

1:17:10 – State water permits

1:23:35 – Endangered species

1:27:37 – Permit certainty 1: limits on revoking permits

1:36:43 – Permit certainty 2: lawsuits and damages

1:48:12 – Politics 1: Trump’s wind blockades

1:52:57 – Politics 2: why not wait for a better deal?

1:58:33 – Politics 3: elections, courts, and modeling

2:10:57 – Politics 4: next steps and odds of passage