The 'Win-Win-Win' Strategy To Retire Coal
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet.
Coal-fired power plants are closing at record rates. But many are still scheduled to remain operational for the foreseeable future -- despite losing lots of money every year.
How do we shut these uneconomic coal plants down faster? One answer: coal debt securitization.
Coal debt securitization is like refinancing a mortgage. States across the country are considering policies that would make it easier for owners of coal-fired power plants to restructure their debt.
In this episode, A Matter Of Degrees Host Leah Stokes and How To Save A Planet Host Alex Blumberg team up to explore how securitization would work -- and why utilities are getting behind it.
This episode features Ashok Gupta, a Senior Energy economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council and Jason Klindt, the Senior Director Of Government Affairs for Evergy.
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A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everyone, we've got something special for you today. It's a collaboration between |
| 0:05.6 | A Matter of Degrees and the awesome podcast, How to Save a Planet. I'm Dr. Leah Stokes. |
| 0:11.7 | And I'm Alex, you're not exactly my normal co-host of a matter of degrees, Dr. Catherine |
| 0:18.0 | Wilkinson. And you're not my normal co-host, Dr. Ianna, Elizabeth Johnson. Although, they're both doctors. Well, are you, you're a doctor, too, though. I am. We've got a lot of doctors in the house. Yeah, I'm the only non-doctor. So I was going to, I was going to share my inferiority complex of being the only non-doctor and my co-host duo, but you're not the person |
| 0:38.2 | that's going to talk to me about that. You're just judging me also. You're one of those judgy |
| 0:42.2 | doctors looking down on me. I can't do surgery, though, so, you know, not that serious of a doctor. |
| 0:48.5 | Anyway, the point is we have big shoes, both of us, to fill. Yep. But we're super excited to be doing |
| 0:53.5 | this big collaboration episode. |
| 0:58.8 | And we begin today's episode with a puzzle, a puzzle we heard about from this guy. |
| 1:04.2 | My name is Jason Clint, and I am the senior director of government affairs and economic |
| 1:08.8 | development for Evergee. |
| 1:10.9 | Evergee is a big electric utility, and Jason is essentially one of its in-house lobbyists. |
| 1:16.5 | So it's his job to rep Evergy in policy conversations, and sometimes in other places. |
| 1:22.2 | Believe it or not, this is my second podcast, so I don't want to, I don't want to make you guys, |
| 1:25.9 | I don't want to make you guys nervous, but I'm |
| 1:27.5 | kind of a veteran at this. We got a professional on our hands here, Alex. Professional Chimer. |
| 1:32.8 | And Evergey is located in Kansas. And as anyone who's watched the Wizard of Oz knows, Kansas is a |
| 1:39.1 | windy place. In Kansas, we're the Saudi Arabia of wind. I'm not sure that that's exactly true, but nevertheless, |
| 1:46.5 | that's what we like to say. But despite being located in the Saudi Arabia of wind, two-thirds of |
| 1:53.1 | the energy that Everidgey provides to people in Kansas is still coming from fossil fuels. Most of that |
| 1:58.7 | actually coming from the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal. |
| 2:01.6 | And for a long time, Alex, that mix made sense, at least from a narrow economic perspective, |
... |
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