Electrify This!
Electrify This! explores the movement to electrify everything as a strategy to decarbonize and revitalize all sectors of our economy. Featuring diverse experts, the show examines the most important policy, regulatory, and market issues surrounding electrification of transportation, buildings, and industry. Electrify This! helps demystify issues surrounding the transition to 100 percent clean electricity, and focuses on the challenges, scalable solutions, and what decision-makers can do to ensure the movement to electrify is equitable for all. Electrify This! is an original Energy Innovation Policy & Technology LLC® podcast hosted by Electrification Director Sara Baldwin (former host of Grid Geeks podcast). Our podcasts are accessible under the CC BY license. Users are free to copy, distribute, transform, and build upon the material as long as they credit Energy Innovation® for the original creation and indicate if changes were made.
Electrify This!
A Roadmap for the Zero-Carbon Industrial Transition (Part 1 of 3)
Did you know that industrial activity around the world is responsible for one-third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions? In the U.S. alone, direct emissions from the industrial sector make up 23% of our total GHG emissions. The industrial sector is also essential for producing the tools and products we need for our daily lives – from food and beverage products, textiles and paper, steel and concrete, and the technologies necessary to tackle climate change, like wind turbines and batteries. Yet, despite its importance to our economy and its omnipresence in our lives, efforts to reduce industrial emissions are lagging compared with other sectors.
This episode features a conversation with Jeffrey Rissman, the author of a new book, Zero-Carbon Industry: Transformative Technologies and Policies to Achieve Sustainable Prosperity. We explore the wide world of industry and the technologies, policies, and market mechanisms necessary to reduce the industrial sector’s emissions for a climate safe future. Join us for the first in a three-part series on the topic.
Guest Bio:
Jeffrey Rissman is the Senior Director of Industry at Energy Innovation, where he leads the company’s work on technologies and policies to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the industry sector. He is the author of Zero-Carbon Industry: Transformative Technologies and Policies to Achieve Sustainable Prosperity (2024) and coauthor of Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy (2018). In 2024, Jeffrey was appointed by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to serve on the Department of Energy’s Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee.
Jeff is also the creator of the Energy Policy Simulator, an open-source computer model that quantifies the effects of various energy and environmental policies; versions of the simulator have been developed for an ever-growing list of countries and regions, in partnership with in-country government agencies or NGOs, accounting for more than 50 percent of the world’s emissions.
Previously, Jeff worked on policies supporting R&D for clean energy and efficiency technologies for the American Energy Innovation Council. He holds an M.S. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering and a Masters in City and Regional Planning, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a Research Fellow for the University of North Carolina Institute for the Environment, where he studied aircraft emissions for the Federal Aviation Administration. Jeff also holds a B.A. in International Relations with honors from Stanford University.
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