David Roberts interviews energy and policy experts on grids, solar, geothermal, and climate law.
Volts treats climate policy as an engineering, economic, and political problem all at once. Its conversations move from data centers and utility rates to rugged solar, housing policy, geoengineering, and the grid capacity already sitting underused.
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Volts is a long-form interview podcast hosted by David Roberts, who has covered clean-energy topics as a journalist for roughly two decades. The dominant format is a one-on-one conversation between Roberts and a single guest, usually running 60 to 90 minutes, though some episodes bring on two guests for a panel-style discussion. Guests are drawn from energy policy and industry: former Department of Energy officials, startup founders in solar and geothermal, urban planners, and researchers at organizations like WRI and the Federation of American Scientists. Recurring subject matter includes grid utilization and interconnection rules, the electricity demand created by data centers, rooftop solar permitting and soft costs, geothermal drilling technology, and the regulatory architecture underlying U.S. climate law. The show frequently pushes beyond narrow energy topics into housing policy and urban design, framing dense, walkable development and reduced vehicle miles traveled as climate strategies in their own right. Roberts tends to press guests on implementation specifics — utility incentive structures, permitting bottlenecks, financing models — rather than staying at a high level. Episodes reference specific companies, regulators, and legislative examples (Google's Minnesota data center deal, California Forever's planned city, Eavor's geothermal plants) rather than speaking in generalities. Listeners with a working knowledge of energy policy or utility regulation will get the most out of the show, though it aims to make jargon accessible along the way. Production is straightforward and conversation-driven, without narrative sound design or scripted segments beyond Roberts's framing at the top of each episode.
Made for: Clean energy professionals, climate policy wonks, and listeners who want detailed, wonky conversations about decarbonization rather than news summaries.
What sets it apart: Goes deeper into regulatory and engineering specifics than typical clean-energy news podcasts, with single-guest interviews built around one narrow technical or policy question per episode.
Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind. I've been reporting on and explaining clean-energy topics for almost 20 years, and I love talking to politicians, analysts, innovators, and activists about the latest progress in the world's most important fight. (Volts is entirely subscriber-supported. Sign up!) www.volts.wtf
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Volts connects clean-energy politics to the regulatory, financial and engineering decisions that determine what gets built and who pays.
Volts follows clean-energy policy into the machinery that determines whether it works. David Roberts builds guest conversations around specific systems, moving from data-center demand and utility rates to climate regulation, rooftop-solar permitting and new approaches to the…
David Roberts makes electricity infrastructure sound like the political thriller hiding behind your utility bill.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp Volts conversation on data centers, electricity bills, and the utility finance choices underneath the rate shock.
Volts turns the data-center electricity debate away from abstraction and toward the institutions that will decide who absorbs the cost. David Roberts sets up the collision clearly: fast-rising power demand, higher electric bills, and pressure to avoid sending emissions higher.
A grounded look at rugged solar for places where fuel is costly, dangerous, or unlikely to show up.
Volts looks at solar power far from the easy cases: disaster zones, remote clinics, island nations, forward operating bases, and infrastructure sites where diesel is expensive, dangerous, or slow to arrive.
A clear, numbers-backed argument for treating housing policy as climate policy, especially for funders still defaulting to technology.
Volts makes a focused case that housing and urban land use are not side issues for climate policy but part of the main decarbonization fight. David Roberts frames dense, walkable urbanism as a way to cut emissions alongside electrification, then presses the harder question: why…
A sharp climate-policy conversation about why replacing fossil fuels may require a new regulatory toolkit, not just a restored old one.
Volts takes a hard look at the instinct to rebuild federal climate policy exactly as it was before the Trump administration's rollback campaign.
A practical look at California Forever's pitch for a walkable, owner-oriented city from scratch.
Volts uses California Forever to ask whether a new city can do more than add another subdivision to California's housing map. David Roberts talks with founder Jan Sromic about the plan for a 400,000-person city in Solano County, with jobs, schools, parks, manufacturing, transit,…
A concrete look at why U.S. rooftop solar costs so much more than Australia's, and how smarter interconnection rules could help.
Rooftop solar's U.S. affordability problem is framed here as a paperwork and grid-access problem as much as a hardware problem. David Roberts sets up a rough moment for residential solar and batteries: federal tax credits gone, net metering under pressure, tariffs raising costs,…
A smart, technical case for treating the grid as a polite, modular network of electricity resources.
Volts turns a grid conversation into a fight over architecture: should electricity keep relying on centralized control, or start behaving more like an open network of local systems that can talk to one another?
A grounded look at closed-loop geothermal, from sealed-pipe basics to the hard scaling questions beneath the surface.
Closed-loop geothermal gets a practical, nuts-and-bolts treatment on Volts. David Roberts sets it against the wider geothermal landscape, from conventional projects that rely on volcanic or tectonic fractures to enhanced systems with engineered fractures, then lands on the…
Energy transition, counted in consequences.
Energy policy argued down to consequences.
David French and Sarah Isgur break down Supreme Court arguments and rulings twice a week.
David Roberts opens Volts on April 15, 2026 with Jigar Shah and his claim that data centers should be built “the not dumb way,” not with behind-the-meter natural gas plants.
Fuel is the problem.
April 8th, 2026, and Roberts has a bee in his bonnet: dense, walkable urbanism belongs in climate policy, not as a nice extra after electrification.
Federal climate policy is getting torched.
This episode explores how the U.S.
This episode explores the concept of intentionally injecting sulfur particles into the stratosphere to block sunlight and cool the planet, discussing the unintentional geoengineering effects of fossil fuel aerosols and the potential consequences of their reduction as clean energy replaces them.
This episode explores how introducing flexibility in data center energy consumption could help address grid capacity challenges and accommodate the AI boom without burdening rate payers.
David Roberts interviews Pete Sikora about the political battle over New York's climate law and Governor Hochul's attempt to roll it back due to affordability concerns.
Interview with a Tesla veteran about his new startup Lunar Energy and its approach to virtual power plants.
California Forever wants a whole city.
David Roberts examines the California Forever project to build a new city in Solano County, discussing its urbanist design, labor agreements, and whether it's a serious endeavor or a vanity project.
David Roberts discusses the challenges of phasing out fossil fuel systems during the transition to clean energy.
A crossover episode discussing the biggest open questions in clean energy technology and trends.
Explains what PJM Interconnection is and why stakeholders are frustrated with its slow interconnection process.
This episode explores whether fake meat can help solve climate change by discussing the environmental impact of meat production and the potential of plant-based and cultivated alternatives with expert Bruce Friedrich.
David Roberts discusses a proposal to reduce utility profits on capital spending and the political debate surrounding it.
Host David Roberts reflects on the state of climate science and politics after Trump's 2024 victory, questioning whether recent developments should increase or decrease concern.
David Roberts interviews a guest about Taiwan's challenge of decarbonizing its energy-intensive semiconductor industry on a crowded island.
David Roberts introduces a special political episode about reactionary centrism, warning listeners it is not about clean energy.
January 28, 2026, Volts gets practical.
An in-depth interview about the different types and capabilities of virtual power plants with the CEO of Energy Hub.
David Roberts opens with Sweden's broadband lesson.
Closed-loop geothermal gets the Volts treatment.
Host David Roberts interviews Kate Slevin about the one-year anniversary of NYC's congestion pricing program, discussing its successes and challenges.
Senator Brian Schatz discusses his opposition to a Republican permitting bill and the politics of clean energy.
An analysis of Australia's cheap rooftop solar boom and its implications for grid reliability, with expert Saul.
David Roberts discusses the deeper roots of misinformation and epistemic crisis in politics, referencing a post by political science professor Samuel Bagg.
Host David Roberts discusses the rise of balcony solar in Europe and the barriers to adopting it in the U.S.
David Roberts interviews Dr.
David Roberts interviews a company about creating a market for distributed energy flexibility to coordinate small-scale energy resources for grid benefit.
Host David Roberts interviews NYSERDA President Doreen Harris about New York's challenges in meeting its climate targets and how to get back on track.
David Roberts interviews Quaze about their novel microwave-based deep geothermal drilling technology.
This episode explores the economic and political challenges of decarbonizing low-temperature industrial processes like beer brewing, focusing on solutions such as heat pumps and policy initiatives.
This episode explores sodium-ion batteries as an alternative to lithium-ion, discussing their advantages in cost and safety for applications like grid storage despite lower energy density.
This episode features a fireside chat with Jigar Shah discussing Washington state climate policy, its flaws like over-reliance on grants versus oil, and broader climate innovation topics.