Building codes: they might sound boring, but they’re actually the front lines in a nationwide battle to decarbonize our buildings. And they do a lot more than keeping your  home from falling down over your head. They regulate everything from energy efficiency, to the kind of fuel your stove runs on, to whether your building has an electric vehicle charging port – all super important facets of building decarbonization. And if designed correctly, building codes can also help address issues like public health, pollution, and even adaptation to the effects of climate change.

In this episode, Melissa speaks with Michael Gerrard, an expert on environment and climate law and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University about how to unlock this secret weapon – and what’s getting in the way of greener building codes. 

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey.

There are 5.5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. Why are only 700 of them net-zero? We have the technology to slash carbon emissions from commercial buildings, which account for 16% of all U.S. emissions. And retrofitting commercial buildings saves money and energy for building owners.

So what gives?

In this episode, Melissa talks to Dr. Paul Mathew, who studies buildings as a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He explains the reasons for this “yawning adoption gap” and offers  potential solutions. They dig in on:

• Simplifying the retrofitting process through new solutions like  cities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/INNOVATE_guide_FINAL.pdf"> one-stop shops and energy-as-a-service providers
• Finding creative ways to pay for the upfront costs, like  green banks and energy service companies 
• The governments that are testing out new policies like building performance standards. 

Also featured in this episode is EcoWorks, a Detroit non-profit that supports energy security, sustainability and retrofits in southeast Michigan.

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey.

It’s officially summer in North America, and that means one thing – it’s getting hot. Every year, heat waves are the deadliest extreme weather event, and they’re only getting more severe. Often, the people who fall victim to heatwaves are those who are left without access to air conditioning. Dr. Diana Hernández has a name for this phenomenon: energy insecurity. 

Energy insecurity – inequitable access of affordable energy for basic needs like heating and cooling – is a massive environmental justice problem. It affects one in three American households, and disproportionately impacts Black and Latino households. In a heatwave, energy insecurity can have life or death consequences. This week on the show, host Melissa Lott and Diana talk about how to tackle energy insecurity and building decarbonization at the same time.   

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey. 

In this episode, we’re touring a home with a buildings doctor. Ian Hamilton is a professor of energy, environment and health at University College London. Together, Melissa and Ian show us the parts of our homes we need to upgrade to zero out carbon emissions—and to keep us safe in a more dangerous, changing climate. They talk about insulation, heat pumps, solar panels and more. 

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey. 

Correction: Texas experienced major power outages due to a winter storm in Februrary 2021. In the episode, Melissa mistakenly says February 2020.

This week on the show, we meet someone on a mission: to decarbonize America’s buildings. Decarbonizing buildings is is actually a huge piece of decarbonizing our economy: carbon pollution from heating, cooling, and powering our buildings accounts for 30 percent of U.S. carbon emissions – that includes our homes, schools, hospitals and office buildings. 

So is it possible to decarbonize all of our buildings – and make strides in health and economic development at the same time? Our guest this week, Keith Kinch, thinks so. He’s the co-founder of BlocPower, a company that’s electrifying buildings across the country. He walks us through a road map of what it’s going to take to get our buildings to net zero. 

Guest: Keith Kinch is General Manager and co-founder of BlocPower.

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey.

It turns out, there’s a whole rainbow of hydrogen fuel – gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen, even pink hydrogen. But the kind of hydrogen that’s most important for a net zero future is green hydrogen. It’s made with carbon free-electricity, and it could go a long way toward  decarbonizing sticky parts of the economy, like industry and shipping.

In this episode, we talked to a very musical scientist – Dr. direct.com"> Julio Friedmann, chief scientist and chief carbon wrangler at Carbon Direct, about the promises and challenges of hydrogen. Prepare for lots of singing.

Guests: direct.com/team/julio-friedmann/#:~:text=for%2015%20years.-,Dr.,and%20carbon%20capture%20and%20sequestration."> Dr. Julio Friedmann is chief scientist and chief carbon wrangler at Carbon Direct, and non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. 

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey. 

Hydrogen could be essential for the zero-carbon economy, especially for cleaning up concrete, steel, and chemicals. It’s also a promising fuel source for transportation and electricity that's attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in global investment.

But there’s a problem. Every year, the world produces millions of tons of hydrogen through a dirty process that creates  lots of CO2 and carbon monoxide.

For hydrogen to be a truly clean fuel, we have to find a cleaner way to make it. And today we’re bringing you the story of one person who's spent a decade trying to do just that. 

It’s an episode of one of our favorite podcasts, Watt It Takes. The show tells the stories of founders who are building our climate-positive future — their upbringings, their risks, their failures, and their breakthroughs.

Today’s episode is with Rob Hanson, co-founder and CEO of corp.com/">Monolith, a clean hydrogen and industrial materials manufacturer that was recently awarded a $1 billion conditional loan guarantee by the Department of Energy. Emily talks to Rob about his journey to founding Monolith, what the DOE loan means for the company, and the future of clean hydrogen.

Steel goes into pretty much everything around us – from buildings and bridges to the furniture in our homes. And decarbonizing the steel industry is essential because we need steel to decarbonize the world. Think about it. Solar panels, electric vehicles, even our power grid; steel goes into everything we need to fight climate change.

But there’s a problem. Steel manufacturing uses a lot of fossil fuels. It’s responsible for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In this episode we break down the race to green, zero-carbon steel. It’s a competition among four key technologies: recycling, carbon capture and storage (CCS), electrolysis, and — everyone’s current favorite — hydrogen. Or, as we call it in this episode, the Usain Bolt of technology. 

Guest Julia Attwood, head of advanced materials at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, profiles each of the competitors in this race and weighs in on which ones are best equipped to clean up the steel industry. We also take a look at how these competitors might actually work together. 

Guests: Julia Attwood is head of advanced materials at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Martin Pei is chief technology officer at the Swedish steel manufacturer SSAB. Usain Bolt was not a guest but makes many cameos on this episode. 

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey. 

St. James Parish, Louisiana sits in the middle of an 85-mile corridor along the Mississippi river that’s home to more than 150 petrochemical plants. This concentration of petrochemical facilities has taken a toll on the health of nearby communities – a toll that falls disproportionately on Black communities. Cancer risk in some parts of this corridor is more than 50 times the national average, giving it the moniker ‘cancer alley.’

In 2018, a new petrochemical plant was announced – one that would double pollution in St. James Parish and emit tons of carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde. For Sharon Lavigne, a retired special education teacher turned environmental justice organizer, it was time to fight back.  

Last week, we talked about decarbonizing the petrochemicals industry. This week, we’re talking about the public health and environmental justice costs of petrochemicals. What does an environmentally just future look like? And how can we get there?

Guests: Sharon Lavigne is an environmental justice advocate and the founder of Rise St. James. Dr. Robert Bullard is a distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy and director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University.

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey. 

Petrochemicals. You might not have heard of them, but you certainly use them every day. These chemicals, made from oil, are in almost everything – plastics, medicines, clothes, toothpaste, even the insulation in your home. 

So how can we decarbonize an industry that makes such a pervasive product? 

This week, we spoke with climate solutions expert Deborah Gordon about how we can cut carbon emissions from the petrochemicals industry. And producer Alexandria Herr and Melissa Lott go on a mission to become zero-waste influencers – and find the petrochemicals hidden in their everyday lives.

Guest: Deborah Gordon is a senior principal in the Climate Intelligence Program at the Rocky Mountain Institute.

The Big Switch is produced by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy in partnership with Post Script Media. This episode was produced by Alexandria Herr and Daniel Woldorff. Theme music and mixing by Sean Marquand. Story editing by Anne Bailey. A special thanks to Natalie Volk, Kirsten Smith and Kyu Lee. Our executive editor is Stephen Lacey.