The Electric Grid-Lock

Trump's tariffs are making business harder for international olive oil producers and it turns out those tariffs are even complicating other parts of the Trump administration's agenda, too. Today on the show: Olive oil and the unintended consequences of Trump's tariffs. Related ep ... Show More

Last night, President Donald Trump posted a letter firing Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook. The reason? She was accused of listing two properties as her primary residences, which potentially gave her more favorable lending terms. This marks another escalation in the presi ... Show More

Businesses are scrambling for ways to minimize the impact of the Trump administration’s global tariff policy. Today on the show, we go over some of the tricks and legal loopholes that companies are employing to get around these sudden import taxes.Related episodes: The legal case ... Show More

Texas's energy grid is largely disconnected from the rest of the U.S. That led to disastrous consequences last year when the state's grid was overloaded during a winter storm. Back in the 1970s, one company attempted to change the system in a secret, middle-of-the-night operation ... Show More

As Britain’s sources of electricity change, along with significant changes in demand, how will the lights stay on? The major power blackout that hit the UK in early August – the worst in more than a decade – was an indication of how increasingly complicated our electricity grid i ... Show More

Today, electricity in the U.S. is a utility we notice only when it's suddenly unavailable. But over a hundred years ago, electricity in the homes of every American was a wild idea and the subject of a bitter fight over who would power, and profit from, the national grid. This wee ... Show More

AI isn’t just threatening to take our jobs, it’s also draining our electricity.Data centres centers used to have power demand measured in the tens of megawatts. Now they are in the hundreds of megawatts, and the new ones that are being proposed have demand in the thousands of meg ... Show More

Ten years ago this week, stock markets around the world cratered as fears grew that the global economy was headed into a deep, dark recession.Alan Greenspan called it “a once-in-a-century credit tsunami.”Today, we are still feeling the economic and geopolitical consequences of th ... Show More

We often talk about “the energy transition”. In this episode, we discuss what it means to be in the middle of that transition. Earlier this month, California was able to avoid blackouts as people came together to cut their electricity use. In Europe, leaders struggling to balance ... Show More

The target for many countries around the world is to reach net zero emissions within the next few decades. That means a dramatic move away from fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas. For some the answer to the problem is to boost “green” electricity production, so that we can run o ... Show More

Alternative sources of power are moving into the spotlight.As the share of dispatchable power in our electricity system declines, with coal-fired plants giving way to variable wind and solar, maintaining reliable supplies to keep the lights on becomes more complex. Investment in ... Show More