Extreme Weather Keeps Maxing Out the Grid

<p>It’s been a very intense year for America’s power grid. Across the country, the electricity system just faced another stress-test as extreme heat taxed power plants and grid operators in the <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pacific-northwest-heatwave-utilities-grid-planning/602696/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pacific Northwest</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/climate/texas-heat-wave-electricity.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Texas</a>, and <a href="https://gizmodo.com/new-york-faces-blackouts-as-extreme-heat-strains-the-gr-1847206009" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New York</a>.</p><p>Since 2000, outages across the U.S. have <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/17/texas-storm-blackouts-shows-power-grid-vulnerable-to-climate-change-.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">increased by 67%</a>. Is the power system ready for tomorrow’s extreme weather -- today?</p><p>Stephen and Katherine are joined by <a href="https://twitter.com/mclott" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dr. Melissa Lott</a>, a senior research scholar and the director of research at the Center on Global Energy Policy.</p><p>Plus, we’ll discuss a secret recording of an Exxon lobbyist <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exxon-video-carbon-tax_n_60ddd9f7e4b0b94d34df629f" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bragging about the company’s efforts</a> to delay climate policy. What does it tell us about the oil industry’s grip in Washington?</p><p>We’ll finish with a look at <a href="https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/investing-us-natural-gas-pipeline-system-support-net-zero-targets" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a new report</a> from Columbia University: can we use natural gas pipelines to accelerate the low-carbon transition?</p><p><em>The Energy Gang is brought to you by Sungrow. As a leading provider of PV inverter solutions across the world, Sungrow has delivered more than 10 gigawatts of inverters to the Americas al