👋 Welcome to the final PodSnacks’ Climate Picks of 2021.
🎙️ Discover selected quotes from my top 10 covered episodes in 2021.
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⚡ Carbon & Energy
Podcast: Cutting Carbon
Episode: “Direct Air Capture”
Hosts: Jeff Goldmeer & Brian Gutknect
Guest: Carlos Haertel | Chief Technology Officer | Climeworks AG
Category: 🌳 Carbon Capture
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 28 min | 🗓️ 07/22/2021
Selected Quote:
[8:40] “Reforestation/ afforestation […] is of the essence for a number of reasons. And capturing carbon is one of them, but restoring ecosystems, ensuring biodiversity and many other reasons speak for having more plants. But if you look at the various reports from the IPCC and from other organizations, you recognize that if you make an assessment of how much potential for carbon dioxide removal the various approaches have, you very soon find that it needs a portfolio approach. Not one approach alone can cut it. So you need natural methods, you need technological methods and on top you of course need a lot of decarbonization going on in industry, so avoiding emissions in the first place. If you don't avoid emissions, no air capture and no planting of trees is going to help us. So all these things need to come together.”
Podcast: Redefining Energy
Episode: “How to Decarbonise Aviation?”
Hosts: Gerard Reid & Laurent Segalen
Guest: Toby McCann | Deputy Director | Thales
Category: ☁️ Carbon Reduction
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 29 min | 🗓️ 08/15/2021
Selected Quote:
[12:03] “My rule of thumb is [to] electrify everything with battery power first. And only when you run out of battery power, then you're going to start looking at the other fuel options, because there's going to be an exponential difference in cost. So for eVTOL aircraft, the batteries should be able to cover it. But when it comes to training aircraft, sub regional aircrafts, short 500 mile distances, I'm fairly confident that the batteries will start to reach that in the next five to 10 years. Where in the meantime, as we need to do something right now, we can have batteries plus a hybrid solution. So batteries, complemented by a small gas turbine engine running on sustainable fuel that gives us the range. And then beyond that, when we're talking about transatlantic, the only options really are some kind of drop in fuel. And what I mean by dropp in fuel is a fuel we can replace the current kerosene with, which is identical in all respects, but sustainable. So we don't need to change the planes or the engines, because most of the current designs that are out there now would be the ones still flying around in 20-30 years time. So that's really the only solution for the long call at the time being.”
Podcast: Renewable Energy SmartPod
Episode: “The Growth of Green Hydrogen”
Host: Sean McMahon
Guest: Michael Ducker | Vice President, Renewable Fuels & Western Region | Mitsubishi Power
Category: ⚡ Renewable Energy
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 35 min | 🗓️ 08/17/2021
Selected Quote:
[14:35] “Ultimately, every industry will [benefit from hydrogen]. […] Hydrogen really is a catalyst to bring industries together. […] How great is it if I can take a transportation application, and actually piggyback it off of a large scale power application? Now we have these synergies between industries. […] I think it's more of a question of who's going to move first. And with the scale applications, we believe power is most prime to be the first mover, but that's going to naturally bring in some of these other industries, who can then benefit from the scale that power is bringing. And at the end of the day, […] the most exciting part is that this is a technology that's bringing multiple industries together to decarbonize at the same time, as opposed to trying to solve these problems discreetly and independently.”
Podcast: The Interchange
Episode: “The Big Moment for Carbon Accounting”
Host: Shayle Kann
Guest: Taylor Francis | Co-Founder | Watershed
Category: ☁️ Carbon Reduction
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 43 min | 🗓️ 08/13/2021
Selected Quote:
[26:36] “Our opinion is that true net zero requires three things. Number one, it requires you to count everything, scope one, scope two, and especially scope three […]. Pillar number two, have a reduction plan that is at least as good as what the Science Based Targets Initiative would ask you to do. Deep reductions in your supply chain in line with what the science demands of your overall sector. And then it adds in step three and this is where there's some debate. Our opinion is that step three, the zero part of net zero is true, durable, permanent carbon removal. That the way you get to zero is by taking carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground, not paying someone else not to pollute, which is what most offsets […] are.”
Podcast: The Energy Transition Show
Episode: “Market Design for the Energy Transition”
Host: Chris Nelder
Guest: Eric Gimon | Energy Consultant
Category: ⚡ Renewable Energy
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 40 min | 🗓️ 10/13/2021
Selected Quote:
[13:20] “I like to think of the US today as […] three broad categories in [the energy] market. There's an energy only market, which is basically Texas. There are capacity market constructs that we see in the Northeast […]. And then there's these hybrid markets, like in the Midwest […] and in the West […]. So I would say Texas […] is probably the closest to embodying this cascade that I'm talking about, but no market is perfect. […] But it's interesting to me that a state that is so pro oil and gas and and really not so excited about green is deploying just as many, if not more wind and solar than California, which extensively is the bluest of states and wants to be better than everybody else in the class. And I think a lot of that comes down to the efficiency of their market design, which hopefully they won't blow up in an effort to support oil and gas.”
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💧 Water
Podcast: Talk Water - BlueTech Research Podcast Series
Episode: “What’s Wrong with What We Drink (& How to Fix It)”
Host: Reinhard Huebner
Guest: Seth M. Siegel | NYT Bestselling Author
Category: 🔬 Research
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 35 min | 🗓️ 06/01/2021
Selected Quote:
[5:13] “It [comes down] to a couple of different areas that Israel's been so great [in water]. […] First of all, Israel from a governance point of view and from a culture point of view is as good as you can get. They teach about […] water scarcity, the value of water from the time children are in nursery school, and it never stops. The public education continues throughout everyone's lifetime. […] Second of all, the way water is administered in Israel is completely divorced from politics. In much of the world water, unfortunately, becomes very political and that means that winners and losers get either better or worse outcomes, but it also means that the price of water is adjusted as needed for the political needs of the moment. So Israel doesn't do that. Israel's administration is purely political and entirely technocratic, which leads to the second big important area that Israel charges the real price for water, which means that it can get really high quality outcomes by charging the full real price for water with zero government subsidies. […] Subsidies distort market signals and Israel therefore gets pure market signals from their full price of water. Consumers then also are becoming your partner, society’s partner in conservation and smart use of water. And the third area is that […] Israel overall is a technological marvel, […] a global center of innovation and problem solving, and certainly in water as well.”
Podcast: (don't) Waste Water!
Episode: “The Irresistible Rise of Bottled Water”
Host: Antoine Walter
Category: 🔬 Research
Apple | Spotify | YouTube | 🕰️ 12 min | 🗓️ 08/09/2021
Selected Quote:
[0:00] “In 2034 the world will spend more on bottled water than it does on utility water. $598 billion a year spent in Evian, Aquafina or Dasani. That's more than the GDP of a country like Belgium.”
Podcast: The School of Humanity
Episode: “Connecting Water to the Internet”
Host: Andrew Gottlieb
Guest: Samuel Ian Rosen aka Captain Planet | Founder & CEO | Tap
Category: 🌐 Digital
Apple | 🕰️ 35 min | 🗓️ 09/07/2021
Selected Quote:
[23:26] “My intention and mission is that people will see how much more profitable it is to dispense tap water than it is bottled water. And because the emissions and waste are less, and regulation is […] more significant with tap water than bottled water, I hope that the market demand will shift towards the better and less expensive product tap water over bottled water. So these stats are also to give consumers the confidence, to give the sellers the increased margin and understanding of where the money's going, to make this step function change in the marketplace.”
Podcast: waterloop
Episode: “Time for WASH in America”
Host: Travis Loop
Guest: George McGraw | Founder & CEO | DigDeep
Category: 🗣️ Opinion
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 32 min | 🗓️ 09/28/2021
Selected Quote:
[5:37] “It's at least 2.2 million [people in the US without water and sanitation] by the last most accurate count we had. But that count isn't super accurate. That's using census data from the American community and American housing survey. […] These folks without access to water and sanitation […] live in all 50 states. But we know that they live inside populations that are traditionally hard to count populations, meaning […] census tends to under count these communities. So the number is likely much higher. And that doesn't count the 44 million more, who maybe have access to running water, a working sink, a working shower, a flush toilet, but the water coming out of their tap isn't safe to drink, doesn't meet basic EPA standards. So that's really the human face of this problem: At least 2.2 million people all over the country who wake up every day and have to collect water outside their home because they don't even have basic plumbing, and 44 million more who maybe have basic plumbing but can't trust it to be safe.”
Podcast: (don't) Waste Water!
Episode: “Water is Too Cheap!”
Host: Antoine Walter
Category: 🗣️ Opinion
Apple | Spotify | YouTube | 🕰️ 14 min | 🗓️ 10/04/2021
Selected Quote:
[11:26] “Water tariffs have two […] welcomed side effects. First, they sent a direct signal regarding the value of the water resource and of the water and sanitation services. Then, they bring an incentive for more worthy practices. […] Supplying water to the International Space Station is quite a challenge. […] One liter of water delivered at the ISS […] costs $22,000. Hence, the incentive is exceptionally strong to reduce as much as possible the water use up there. This is why the entire system with four astronauts on board is designed to run on only one glass of water per day thanks to humankind's most advanced water recycling tools.”
