Dec 22, 2023 · 54m · green-blueprint
The storylines of the energy transition in 2023
Jeff St. John · 16m spoken Katherine Hamilton · 15m spoken Stephen Lacey · 9m spoken Maria Gallucci · 8m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this 2023 year-in-review episode of The Carbon Copy, host Stephen Lacey and expert panelists Catherine Hamilton, Maria Gallucci, and Jeff St. John evaluate the defining breakthroughs, market setbacks, unpredictable trends, and future policy forecasts shaping the clean energy transition.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.6 Guest teaching 3.9 Guest disagreement 0.7 The hosts pushing back 1.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 49:12 Gallucci politely rejects eVTOL comparison
Gallucci directly counters Lacey's comment on electric air taxis by clarifying that eVTOLs are an upscale convenience to avoid traffic rather than a solution for commercial aviation decarbonization.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 34:57 Lacey questions natural hydrogen feasibilityLacey challenges the narrative around natural hydrogen discovery by demanding to know why known reserves were never commercialized if genuine economic potential existed.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 20:15 Hamilton outlines multi-year ISO delays on Order 2222Hamilton walks the panel through the compliance timelines of ISOs like MISO and Cal ISO, demonstrating the decade-long regulatory lag facing distributed resource aggregation.
The host holds their own ▶ 11:33 Lacey details the technical evolution of geothermal systemsLacey demonstrates deep sector expertise by citing the 2006 MIT geothermal study, the transfer of fracking horizontal drilling techniques, and historical seismic mitigation regulations.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcoming the Panel and Establishing Review Categories | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Lacey introduces the roundtable panel, recaps major 2023 climate and energy milestones, and outlines the four review categories for the episode. The atmosphere is warm, collaborative, and conversational. | |
| Rising Star: Federal Agencies Implementing Climate Legislation | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Catherine Hamilton picks federal agencies implementing the IRA as her rising star, and Jeff St. John explains how strict Foreign Entity of Concern guidelines will constrain EV tax credits. Lacey prompts the panel on whether implementation has matched industry expectations. | |
| Rising Star: Breakthroughs in Next-Generation Geothermal | 7 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Maria Gallucci selects advanced geothermal (Fervo Energy), prompting Lacey to showcase substantial domain knowledge regarding the 2006 MIT study, horizontal drilling adaptation, and seismic regulation history. Hamilton and Gallucci expand on closed-loop systems and thermal storage. | |
| Rising Star: Plunging Lithium-Ion Battery Costs and Storage Growth | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Jeff St. John breaks down plummeting lithium-ion battery costs, California's rapid grid storage growth from 500 MW to 5,000 MW, and RMI projections for 2030 battery capacity. Lacey acts primarily as an attentive facilitator. | |
| Falling Star: Regulatory Delays Facing FERC Order 2222 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Hamilton delves into the slow implementation of FERC Order 2222 across regional ISOs, while St. John outlines the friction between state-regulated utilities and wholesale aggregation. Lacey inquires whether the emergent virtual power plant market depends strictly on these regulatory mechanisms. | |
| Falling Star: Headwinds in the Offshore Wind Sector | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Gallucci highlights offshore wind setbacks, quantifying 12 gigawatts of cancelled or renegotiated projects like Orsted's Ocean Wind. Lacey jokingly corrects his phrasing from highlights to lowlights and pushes for the underlying economic and supply-chain drivers. | |
| Falling Star: California's Distributed Solar Industry Contraction | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | St. John explains the contraction of California's residential solar market post-NEM 3.0 and resulting installer layoffs. Lacey actively builds on the analysis by citing financial distress and restructuring at market leaders SunPower and Enphase. | |
| Unpredictable Story: The Emerging Hunt for Natural Hydrogen | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Gallucci introduces naturally occurring geologic hydrogen as an unexpected development. Lacey offers skeptical pushback, questioning why reserves were never tapped before if they were genuinely economically viable. | |
| Unpredictable Story: Escalating Hype and Disconnects in Clean Hydrogen | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | St. John answers Lacey's skepticism by explaining the cheap economics of legacy steam methane reforming and critiques the speculative frenzy surrounding hydrogen tax credits. Lacey humorously ribs St. John for changing his pick in real time. | |
| Unpredictable Story: Pervasive Skilled Labor Shortages in Clean Tech | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Hamilton examines widespread skilled labor deficits across clean energy, and Gallucci gives a specific case study in geothermal well drilling. Lacey broadens the discussion with U.S. Chamber of Commerce data and parallels to severe shortages among air traffic controllers. | |
| Forecast: Balancing Transmission Infrastructure with Community Microgrids | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | St. John forecasts the tension between building large-scale transmission lines and deploying local grid-edge assets, citing Louisiana's 400-microgrid Community Lighthouses project. The panel engages collaboratively. | |
| Forecast: Scrutiny and Expansion of Sustainable Aviation Fuels | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Gallucci forecasts rising scrutiny over sustainable aviation fuel emissions accounting. When Lacey brings up electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs), Gallucci politely reframes the premise, explaining that eVTOLs bypass urban traffic rather than replacing commercial passenger flight emissions. | |
| Forecast: 2024 Election Stakes and the 2025 Tax Policy Cliff | 6 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Hamilton forecasts policy maneuvering around the 2024 elections and the expiring 2017 tax cuts in 2025. Lacey adds primary reporting from conversations with anxious federal political appointees who feel under severe pressure to finalize programs within a single year. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Lacey: Global temperatures briefly breached 2°C above pre-industrial levels in November 2023
“In November, the world briefly passed this critical threshold. Average global temperatures were two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It only lasted a day”
Hamilton: DOE Loan Programs Office Received $11.7B Under IRA
“Loan Programs Office was the big winner in the Inflation Reduction Act, so they have, you know, 11.7 billion dollars of new loan appropriations that they're trying to execute on.”
St. John: Very Few US EVs Will Qualify for $7,500 Tax Credit
“With China dominating so much, between 70 to 90% of key precursor, you know materials and kind of components of lithium ion batteries that very few, if any, EVs sold in the U.S. Will be eligible for that 7500 per EV tax credit”
Gallucci: Fervo and Google launched an advanced geothermal plant in Nevada
“And late last month Fervo and Google successfully started operating a first-of-its-kind power plant in Nevada using these advanced geothermal techniques. And it's now delivering electricity to the grid in Nevada, which is where Google operates some of its mass…”
Lacey: MIT report found US geothermal heat could power nation 2,000 times over
“I remember in 2006, MIT put out this really important report showing that we had enough technically recoverable heat under the United States to account for like 2000 times our primary energy use.”
St. John: Battery cell prices dropped 90% since 2008
“DOE reports that Battery cell prices have dropped 90% since 2008.”
St. John: California battery storage grew tenfold in three years
“From 20 20, when we had some issues with the grid, we had 503 megawatts Online. In 2023, as of last count, this is September, we had 5000 megawatts of energy storage online in California. I mean, in just three years, we've had a tenfold, nearly tenfold increas…”
RMI: Global battery capacity will reach 9 TWh annually by 2030
“They Are estimating that there's going to be global capacity of nine terawatt hours of batteries, lithium ion batteries per year by 2030. That's a kilowatt hour for every person on the planet. And they are estimating that just those batteries will surpass the …”
Hamilton: MISO Set FERC Order 2222 Implementation Timeline for 2030
“MISO in the Midwest said we're gonna do 2030. So, so this is 10 years from the time the order was issued. And FERC did issue a ruling that said, MISO, why so long? Why do you need so long to implement this?”
Gallucci: Cancelled projects comprise half of advanced offshore wind pipeline
“So in this year, BNEF kind of did a tally. I spoke with an analyst recently, said that 5.5 gigawatts worth of offshore wind projects that had contracts for their power were canceled. That includes most recently Two Orsted projects in New Jersey, Ocean Wind One…”
St. John: California Rooftop Solar Installations Dropped 75% to 80% Post-NEM 3.0
“The new regime cuts the compensation or economic value for rooftop solar for Single-family homes roughly in half and the installations have dropped by roughly three-quarters to four-fifths since that went into effect in April, and California solar installers a…”
Lacey: Enphase and SunPower Face Layoffs and Financial Distress
“And some industry stalwarts like Enphase and SunPower are really struggling financially, laying people off. I know SunPower is really financially distressed.”
Gallucci: Extracted Geologic Hydrogen in Mali Generates Local Electricity
“About a decade ago, hydrogen was found in an old water well in Mali, and actually that site is being used, they've developed or extracted the hydrogen and are using it locally to generate electricity, and it sort of sparked this phenomenon of wildcatters looki…”
Gallucci: USGS Estimates 1% of Geologic Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 200 Years
“The U.S. Geological Survey did put out a simulation estimating that there's anywhere between tens of 1,000,010 of billions of megatons of natural hydrogen. If just one percent of that was recovered, it would be enough to fuel the world for two centuries.”
St. John: Clean hydrogen lacks the infrastructure and economics for end-user adoption
“Governments, the United States, the European Union, South Korea, Japan, others, are incentivizing hydrogen production for these purposes And making goals that are kind of astounding in their scope for gigawatts, tens of gigawatts of hydrogen production, and ye…”
St. John: Clean hydrogen incentives risk becoming a tax-credit mining scheme
“I fear some jockeying around from folks who see this as being either a tax credit mining or farming opportunity, or a chance to see their existing fossil fuel assets be repurposed for use in what is putatively a decarbonization strategy, but which runs the sig…”
Hamilton: 90% of Solar Companies Face Skilled Labor Shortages
“Like, 90% of solar companies are having real trouble finding skilled labor, according to the twenty-twenty-three job census, which is taking twenty-twenty-two information.”
Hamilton: Clean Energy Transition Needs 1 Million More Electricians
“We need, like, another million electricians where we need a 104 113,000 construction workers, 764,000 manufacturing workers. This is across all clean energy sectors.”
Hamilton: Fossil Fuel Workers Resist Solar and Wind Jobs Due to Pay
“And we have 1.7 million folks working in the fossil fuel industry. And a lot of those people are going to be transitioning to clean energy jobs of one type or another, but they don't translate very well to solar and wind jobs because they make a lot more money…”
Gallucci: eVTOLs target taxi replacement rather than airline emissions
“Well, with the eVTOLs that you brought up, those are so interesting because they're kind of not, at least at this stage in their development, they're not going after the emissions from passenger air travel. They're kind of trying to create a new segment of avi…”