Shows / Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Every week, Heatmap News Executive Editor Robinson Meyer and a guest make sense of the biggest shift of our time -- navigating the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Drawing on their years of experience reporting on and researching climate change and decarbonization, Meyer and his partners unpack the most important issues of the week and how the impacts of climate change and efforts to address it are transforming our economy, politics, and society at large. Music by Adam Kromelow.
Hosted…
Episodes
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Biggest Lessons of a Not-So-Great Year for Climate Policy
2025 has been incredibly eventful for decarbonization — and not necessarily in a good way. The return of Donald Trump, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How to Make Your Climate Giving Count, According to an Expert
It’s been a tumultuous year for climate politics — and for climate nonprofits. The longtime activist group 350.org suspended its operations in the U.S. (at…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Clean Energy Could Prepare for an AI Bubble
The boom in artificial intelligence has become entangled with the clean energy industry over the past 18 months. Tech companies are willing to pay a lot for…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key Live: The 2025 Elections, the Gates Memo, and More
It’s been a huge few weeks for climate news. Democrats swept state and local elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York City — and won two…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key Classic: Have China’s Carbon Emissions Peaked?
Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins are off this week. Please enjoy this selection from the Shift Key archive. China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How EVs Can Actually Help the Electricity Crisis
Data centers aren’t the only driver of rising power use. The inexorable shift to electric vehicles — which has been slowed, but not stopped, by Donald Trump’s…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Lesson Nuclear Companies Should Take From the Dot-Com Boom
Electricity prices are the biggest economic issue in the New Jersey governor’s race, which is perhaps next month’s most closely watched election. Mikie…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Startup Trying to Put Geothermal Heat Pumps in America’s Homes
Simply operating America’s buildings uses more than a third of the country’s energy. A major chunk of that is temperature control — keeping the indoors cool in…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Julian Brave NoiseCat Changed His Mind About Climate Politics
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. His first book, We Survived the…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How China’s Power Grid Really Works
China announced a new climate commitment under the Paris Agreement at last month’s United Nations General Assembly meeting, pledging to cut its emissions by 7%…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Heatmap’s Reporters Talk About Electricity, Inflation, and the New Era in Climate Politics
It’s been a busy few weeks for climate and energy. New York Climate Week brought hundreds of events — and thousands of people — to the city to discuss…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Live From New York Climate Week: The AI and Electricity Moment
Artificial intelligence is helping to drive up electricity demand in America. Energy costs are rising, and utilities are struggling to adjust. How should…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Nobody in the West Knows How to Respond to the ‘Electrotech Revolution’
A new stack of electricity technologies — including solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, and power electronics — seem to be displacing fossil fuels…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
What J.P. Morgan’s Chief Climate Advisor Is Telling Energy Startups
We live in a new energy era — one in which the inputs and technologies key to clean electricity production are at the heart of international politics. What…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Utility Regulation Really Sucks
Electricity is getting more expensive — and the culprit, in much of the country, is the poles and wires. Since the pandemic, utility spending on the “last…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
What Carbon Dioxide Has to Do With the Meaning of Life
How did life first form on Earth? What does entropy have to do with the origins of mammalian life — or the creation of the modern economy? And what chemical…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key Classic: How to Hook Up More Power Plants
Shift Key is off for Labor Day, so we’re re-running this classic episode. For the first time in 15 years, American electricity demand is rising again as new…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
This Is What It’s Like to Run a Power Grid
So far on Shift Key Summer School we’ve covered how electricity gets made and how it gets sold. But none of that matters without the grid, which is how that…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Electricity Markets Work
Most electricity used in America today is sold on a wholesale power market. These markets are one of the most important institutions structuring the modern…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Trump’s Move to Kill the Clean Air Act’s Climate Authority, Forever
The Trump administration has formally declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not dangerous pollutants. If the president gets his way, then…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Why We’re Worried About Electricity Prices
In the next few years, the United States is going to see the fastest growth in electricity demand since the 1970s. And that’s only the beginning of the…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Sun and Wind Become Electricity
The two fastest-growing sources of electricity generation in the world represent a radical break with the energy technologies that came before them. That’s not…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Climate Policy in America: Where We Go From Here
It’s official. On July 4, President Trump signed the Republican reconciliation bill into law, gutting many of the country’s most significant clean energy tax…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Does a Power Plant Work?
Just two types of machines have produced the overwhelming majority of electricity generated since 1890. This week, we look at the history of those devices, how…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
What Is a Watt?
What is the difference between energy and power? How does the power grid work? And what’s the difference between a megawatt and a megawatt-hour? On this week’s…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
If You Care About Food, You Have to Care About Land
Food is a huge climate problem. It’s responsible for somewhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it concerns a much smaller…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
It’s Easiest to Electrify This Type of Truck
You might not think that often about medium-duty trucks, but they’re all around you: ambulances, UPS and FedEx delivery trucks, school buses. And although they…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
A New Grand Theory of Why Decarbonization Is So Hard
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Supreme Court’s Double-Edged Change to Permitting Law
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key Classic: The World Will Miss 1.5C. What Comes Next?
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How the GOP Megabill Would Reshape the U.S. Energy Economy
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Fight Over the Inflation Reduction Act Has Arrived
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Spain’s Blackout and the Miracle of the Modern Power Grid
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Texas Could Destroy Its Electricity Market
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How BYD Got So Big
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
What Happens to Global Decarbonization in a Trade War?
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How China’s Industrial Policy Really Works
China’s industrial policy for clean energy has turned the country into a powerhouse of solar, wind, battery, and electric vehicle manufacturing. But long…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Least-Noticed Climate Scandal of the Trump Administration
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
What’s Really Holding Back New Data Centers
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How to Crash America’s Manufacturing Renaissance
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Trump Has All But Halted Offshore Wind
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Why Solar Might Be Better Off Than You Think
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 with Robinson Meyer
The Early Lessons of Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How to Talk to Your Friendly Neighborhood Public Utility Regulator
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
What Senator Brian Schatz Wants Climate Advocates to Know
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The U.S. Auto Industry Wasn’t Built for Tariffs
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…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Trump Policy That Would Be Really Bad for Oil Companies
On February 1 — that is, three days from now — President Donald Trump has promised to apply a tariff of 25% to all U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, crude…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Wildfires Destroyed California’s Insurance Market
The Los Angeles wildfires have killed at least 27 people, destroyed more than 17,000 structures, and displaced tens of thousands. In the next few months, the…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
A Beginner’s Guide to the Hydrogen Economy
Hydrogen. What are you even supposed to think about it? If you’ve spent serious time focusing on climate policy, you’ve heard the hype about hydrogen — about…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Have China’s Emissions Already Peaked?
China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially flat this year — or they recorded a tiny increase, according to a recent report from the Centre for Research…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Answering Your Questions on AI and Energy, the Economics of Solar, the GND’s Legacy, and More
Happy new year! On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse answer some of the questions they’ve received from readers throughout the year. Hot topics…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
So, What Does AI Really Mean for Decarbonization?
The rise of artificial intelligence and the associated expansion of data centers is driving surging demand for new power supply. Earlier this fall at the…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on What Comes After Biden’s Climate Agenda
Jennifer Granholm has long been one of the most interesting figures in the Democratic Party. A former federal prosecutor, she was the governor of Michigan from…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Shift Key Classic: How China Created an EV Juggernaut
The Chinese electric automaker BYD is entering a new stage in its history. Last month, it sold more than half a million electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Democrats Are Trying to Trump-proof Their Big Climate Law
The Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, is the biggest investment in clean energy in American history. It is also in danger…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
How Trump Could Dent EVs in America
It’s been a news-filled few weeks — so it’s time for a roundup. On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk about what Trump’s cabinet selections…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The World Will Miss 1.5C. What Comes Next?
Here’s the bad news: The world is almost certainly going to miss the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Trump, China, and Climate Change: What Happens Next?
The rollbacks are coming. Donald Trump’s incoming administration is expected to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, weaken the Environmental…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
The Inflation Reduction Act Is About to Be Tested
Last night, Donald Trump secured a second term in the White House. He campaigned on an aggressively pro-fossil -fuel agenda, promising to repeal the Inflation…
- Shift Key with Robinson Meyer
Climate-o-Rama: EVs, Oil, Trump, and More
It’s all happening. The presidential election is a week away, and our cohost Jesse Jenkins is back from vacation. There is so much to talk about in the world…