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 process do people, insects, Volkswagens, an...
3 Sep 202559min
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 data centers, factories, and electric vehicl...
27 Aug 20251h 5min
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 electricity gets to you, the consumer. Who ...
20 Aug 20251h 7min
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 U.S. energy economy, but they’re also not ve...
13 Aug 20251h 6min
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 the Environmental Protection Agency may ...
6 Aug 20251h 9min
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 challenges that our power grid will face. When y...
30 Juli 20251h 6min
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 just because their fuels are the wind an...
23 Juli 202559min
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 credits. The future of the American solar,...
16 Juli 20251h 10min
