The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 239 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Florida Power & Light paid Matrix millions to fund ghost candidates
“An investigation from the Miami Herald and Orlando Sentinel found that FPNL, Florida's biggest utility, sent millions of dollars to Matrix to prop up fake candidates in local races. Those so-called ghost candidates siphoned votes away from candidates who the u…”
Matrix used utility funds to secretly finance six local news sites
“The floodlight team found direct financial links between six local news outlets, Matrix, FPNL, and Alabama Power. Matrix used utility money to fund political websites with names like Alabama Today, Florida Politics, and The Capitalist, and buy favorable covera…”
Elon Musk laid off Tesla's entire Supercharger team to prioritize robotaxis
“Musk also laid off the entire supercharger team, and now he's putting all his attention on an autonomous robo-taxi.”
Lacey: AI data centers need grid transmission, not advanced nuclear breakthroughs
“I don't think we really need any energy breakthroughs to serve these data centers, though. We just need a lot more transmission to get clean power to these data centers, and it's, I mean, it's an infrastructure challenge and there are a lot of ways that you ca…”
Lacey: Zero EV chargers built yet from $7.5B federal infrastructure program
“The Inflation Reduction Act allocated seven and a half billion dollars to building out a national EV charger network in this country, and two billion of those funds have been allocated to states, but there have been zero chargers built as part of those funds, …”
Lacey: Over Half of US Manufacturing Incentives Go to Foreign Firms
“More than half of the incentives are actually being in on the manufacturing side are being taken and Advantage of by firms outside the US.”
Lacey: 99% of US coal plants cost more than new renewables
“Back in February, we made an episode about how 99% of coal plants in America are more expensive to operate than new renewables.”
Lacey: America Excels at Inventing Energy Technologies, Not Manufacturing Them
“A-one-two-three systems was supposed to represent the next generation of U.S. Manufacturing. Instead, it showed how America excels at inventing new energy technologies, but not building them.”
Lacey: GOP threats to repeal IRA incentives are economically insane
“In any case, even if these are hollow threats, they are just economically insane.”
Lacey: Republican districts get 5x more IRA clean energy funding than Democrats
“According to the Financial Times, Republican-held congressional districts are getting five times more funding for clean energy projects, including new manufacturing plants, than ones controlled by Democrats through this IRA legislation.”
Susan Ralston's firm received $300,000 from the Paul Singer Foundation
“At the time she was setting up Citizens for Responsible Solar, Ralston's firm pulled in 300,000 dollars from the Paul Singer Foundation,”
Lacey: FPL wants monopoly control over its massive renewable footprint
“Florida Power and Light has one of the biggest renewable energy development arms in the country, but they want to own it, and, ah, any policies that promote customer empowerment are potentially a threat to the utility”
Lacey: Clean Energy Is Only 5% of Global Oil Capex
“And even with windfall profits, clean energy only accounts for five percent of oil company capital expenditures globally.”
Lacey: Tesla faced a DOJ criminal probe for inflating Autopilot capabilities
“Tesla was facing a criminal probe from the Department of Justice for inflating autopilot capabilities, and a handful of startups were facing cash flow crunches.”
Lacey: Study finds 42% of corporate emissions targets fail real-world mitigation
“A study just published in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at a 115 companies with science-based targets. These are targets modeled after the Paris Climate Accord, and researchers found that 42% of planned emissions cuts from those companies will quote…”
Power outage durations doubled under privatized grid operator LUMA Energy
“In the fall of last year, there was some investigative reporting about what was happening to the grid under Luma, and one of the stats that grabbed me was that outage times have actually doubled under Luma. It's taking them longer to repair service than it did…”
The CBO lacks a method to calculate economic costs of climate change
“Is that it has no way of calculating the cost of climate change to the economy.”
Lacey: Political Backlash Over Solyndra Was "Incredibly Stupid" Theater
“This was an incredibly stupid piece of political theater.”
Lacey: A single Bitcoin transaction can power a US home for six weeks
“And if you want to trade that Bitcoin or use it to buy something, no matter how small, that single transaction could use enough energy to power an American home for six weeks.”
Lacey: Struggling US Fossil Fuel Plants Get Lifeline From Bitcoin Miners
“What Brian saw in Lake Seneca is unfolding across the U.S. Coal and gas power plants that are under pressure in Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, and even elsewhere in New York are now getting an economic lifeline thanks to partnerships with Bitcoin miners.”
Lacey: Biden Administration Considers Using Wartime Powers to Produce Heat Pumps
“There's a real serious consideration inside the Biden administration to use wartime powers to boost heat pump production and then to send those heat pumps over to Europe to for heating to reduce natural gas consumption.”
Lacey: BP invented the 'carbon footprint' in a PR campaign
“And so Mark dug into the history of the term, and he soon found that this popular framing wasn't grounded in science or academia. It was the direct result of a public relations campaign. It was a story made up by a multinational oil company.”
Lacey: 100 companies generated 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988
“Since 1988, only a hundred companies have been the source of 70% of the world's heat-trapping gases, and BP's campaign did a miraculously good job of deflecting that blame for nearly two decades”
Tampa Electric used lobbying funds to fight local gas bans
“Again, it was non-binding, but it scared the local investor-owned utility Tampa Electric, also known as TECO. So TECO did what a lot of other gas utilities are doing. It used its lobbying power and money to launch a more aggressive counter-strike.”
DeSantis signed laws preempting local bans on gas stations and energy
“The bills passed, and in June, Governor Ron DeSantis signed them into law. One would preempt any bans on gasoline refueling stations, and another would prevent all local governments across Florida from restricting any source of energy from utilities.”
Lacey: Freezing federal contracts will deter investment in nuclear and CDR
“It's contradictory to this idea of energy abundance, and so there's, like, very little strategic thought to these actions, and I think it could be extremely detrimental to bringing in investment for the set of technologies that this administration does want.”
Lacey: US needs 200 gigawatts in new peak resources by 2030
“According to the Department of Energy, we're going to need new resources to meet this amount of peak demand by 2030 because of new load, like data centers electric vehicles, broader electrification, manufacturing facilities, and then also retiring coal plants.…”
Brattle: 20M EVs Will Add 10-20 GW of Peak Load by 2030
“10 to 20 gigawatts of peak load to the system, requiring 12 to 18 gigawatts of renewable capacity.”
Lacey: AI time series models boost grid forecasting accuracy by 30-50%
“What they found was that these AI-driven time series models could improve accuracy by 30 to 50%.”
Lacey: Supply chain investment is the only sector on track for net zero
“And not only are we seeing an increase, a massive increase in investment, but that that's the only piece of the clean energy transition that's on track for a net zero scenario. So we're actually ahead of schedule in supply chain investments, particularly in so…”
Lacey: Fossil fuel consumption will decline gradually past 2030
“It doesn't mean that fossil fuel extraction or consumption is going to decline precipitously. It just means that we've reached the peak and that we hopefully will see a steep decline, but we're more likely going to see a Gradual decline past 2030.”
Lacey: 80% of technologies needed for rapid decarbonization exist today
“Almost nobody would disagree that we have about 80% of the technologies today across the electricity sector, industry, and transportation to decarbonize and decarbonize fast if we were really putting our shoulders into it.”
Lacey: Tripling VPP capacity is necessary for an affordable zero-carbon grid
“If we want any chance of building a grid powered by a hundred percent zero carbon resources and do it affordably and reliably, we need to triple capacity of VPPs.”
Lacey: Utility transmission declines cause terawatt-scale clean energy backlog
“Meeting that demand is going to require tens of billions of dollars in new transmission, but transmission investments among investor-owned utilities have actually declined in the last few years, and so that's causing this massive backlog of renewables and batt…”
Lacey: Wood Mackenzie forecasts 370 GW yearly solar installations by 2030
“Now, Wood Mac expects about 370 gigawatts yearly by then.”
Lacey: Princeton estimates light-duty EVs will use 3,000% more electricity by 2035
“Princeton University has estimated that we're gonna, ah, light duty vehicles, ah, are gonna use 3000% more electricity by 20 35 than they do today.”
Lacey: EIA Data Shows Gas-Heated Homes Benefit from 40% Lower Bills
“The EIA's Winter Fuels Outlook... Showing that because of the decline in gas prices, homeowners who heat with fossil gas will on average see 40% lower bills than those that heat with electricity”
Ørsted cancels two NJ offshore wind projects, taking $5.5B write-down
“Just today, right before we started recording, the Danish developer Orsted said it would ditch two offshore wind farms off the coast of New Jersey because of rising financing and construction costs, and it'll take maybe a five and a half billion dollar write d…”
There will not be a standalone 'AI-only' category in climate tech
“It's sort of a subcategory where you're going to see a lot of AI integration into existing products, but there's not going to be this like AI only category and climate tech. It's going to be a part of many of the other existing climate tech categories”
US industrial emissions will surpass power and transport by 2035
“The industrial sector is set to overtake power generation and transportation as the biggest source of planet warming emissions in the U.S. By twenty-thirty-five.”
Lacey: Only 4% of announced green hydrogen projects are actually funded
“Only four percent Of projects, of green hydrogen projects hydrogen made by electrolyzers are, that have been announced in the last couple of years are actually under construction or have reached final investment stage”
Lacey: Rooftop solar shaved enough demand to shut down major fossil plant
“And then suddenly you have this finding that rooftop solar can shave enough demand to shut down the region's third biggest fossil power plant.”
Lacey: Most Grid Researchers Agree Grids Can Handle 80% Renewables
“And now most serious people who are studying this say we can handle on a lot of grids, 80% renewable energy.”
Lacey: Caesar Rodney Institute is Koch-funded and bankrolls offshore wind opposition
“It's this free market think tank supported by the Kochs that is bankrolling opposition to offshore wind, and that quickly brought him to Facebook.”
Lacey: FPL CEO Resigned Amid Campaign Finance and Surveillance Scandals
“Earlier this year, FPNL's CEO stepped down amidst a swirl of scandal at the company, including campaign finance violations, journalist surveillance, and media manipulation.”
Make Sunsets launched geoengineering balloons in Nevada after Mexican government pushback
“Their first experimental launch in the Mexican state of Baja resulted in a swift regulatory response from the Mexican government, but undeterred, they were ready to run another test, and a few weeks ago, they launched some more balloons just outside of Reno, N…”