The Latitude

Apr 12 2024 49 ep. 434

The Latitude Podcast artwork

Dispatches from the new frontiers of climate technology. The Latitude features coverage of the business and tech trends that are reshaping energy and decarbonization, straight from the Latitude Media newsroom.

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

Australian outages show the value of solar and batteries

Apr 12 2024 11 mins

In Australia, one in three homes hosts a rooftop solar system. And 20% of those systems are attached to batteries. In February, a major grid outage put those systems to the test. Extreme weather caused a series of grid failures in the state of Victoria. And with coal plants tripping offline, solar capacity helped keep the blackouts from cascading further. So what does the incident

Can NVIDIA become an AI power broker on the grid?

Mar 22 2024 15 mins

There are two critical ingredients fueling the AI boom: energy and chips. And NVIDIA, one of the most important companies in AI, is looking to be a power player in both. NVIDIA was founded in the early 1990s as a chip maker for gaming. It has since evolved into a $2 trillion behemoth building the most sought-after graphics processing units for training AI. Now, the company is maki

Will government rules hinder green hydrogen?

Mar 21 2024 18 mins

The US green hydrogen industry is at a critical juncture. After months of input and debate, the government put out draft rules for tax credits at the end of last year – setting firm requirements for matching new, local renewables to hydrogen production. It was seen by many as a big step for ensuring that green hydrogen is actually green. But across the industry, the reaction was

Data center experts on AI energy demand

Feb 28 2024 9 mins

Data center energy use is spiking around the world. The International Energy Agency says that demand could double in the next two years, as artificial intelligence workloads soar. This increase in demand is alarming environmentalists and clean power advocates, who say AI is making decarbonization harder. But many experts in the data center industry see it differently. They say dat

A US city tries a novel approach to microgrids

Feb 26 2024 8 mins

As cities around the U.S. ramp up their renewable energy goals, they’re sometimes at odds with the utilities that serve them. Some have tried to break away and form their own utilities. Others are creating community choice aggregators to negotiate clean power supply for residents. The city of Ann Arbor is trying something different – building microgrid projects to serve local l

Under the hood of a novel virtual power plant

Feb 20 2024 9 mins

We have 60 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity in the US. But that needs to triple in the next decade to support a zero-carbon grid – while also meeting a surge in peak demand. There are lots of different models for building VPPs that link together solar, batteries, EV chargers, and smart thermostats. Sunrun and PG&E tested a model this summer that uses solar and batteries

Bigger, faster, cheaper: tech innovations in renewables

Jan 26 2024 9 mins

Wind and solar projects are relatively simple to build compared with thermal power plants. But there’s a lot of technological innovation going into how those renewable plants are designed, constructed and optimized – driven by robots, artificial intelligence, and data science. Can these technologies help offset higher labor costs, rising financing costs, and supply chain constr

Will the geologist shortage impact US critical minerals?

Jan 25 2024 10 mins

The world needs a lot of critical minerals. By the middle of the century, we could be looking at a six-fold increase in demand for lithium, copper, cobalt, nickel, and magnesium to make enough batteries and renewables to decarbonize the global economy. That means a lot of mining. And it also means we need a lot of geologists to help find new resources. But will a looming shortage o

Can AI alleviate the critical minerals crunch?

Jan 02 2024 8 mins

Elon Musk has called lithium “the new oil.” Demand for critical minerals is booming alongside the surge in global battery production. And countries are racing to control as much mining and processing of lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite quickly as possible. There’s also a race among companies that are exploring artificial intelligence to discover new deposits o

Cleantech’s weird year in the public markets

Dec 21 2023 8 mins

It’s been another tumultuous year for the clean energy sector in the stock market. Even with strong tailwinds from the Inflation Reduction Act, many public companies took a hit this year – thanks to investor concerns over high interest rates, supply chain constraints, uncertainty over policy implementation, and a rush back into oil & gas stocks. So what does it mean for cleant