The Energy Transition Show Continues

Hi Energy Transition Show members,

We launched the Energy Transition Show in September 2015 with a simple aim, which was to make deeper knowledge about energy and climate available to the people who wanted to learn, and to do it in a way that would be useful to everyone doing the work. We invited Chris Nelder to host it, and the first episode, about coal, went out eleven years ago this month. In our initial launch episode Chris thanked us “for putting the idea out there in the first place and sponsoring it and producing it and making it all happen.” More than 280 episodes later, those goals still hold, and we are proud to produce it. What we have all come to know and love as the Energy Transition Show has never been a sole creation.

The way the Energy Transition Show sounds was established before we made that first episode. Our team had been podcasting since 2009, and by 2015 we had refined what we realized the medium needed into one core idea: the thinking about these important topics should stand out, and everything else should serve it. What we covered on the show was always shaped in consultation as a team, and then hours of interview tape were edited down until the ideas came through clearly and everyone sounded their best, with every cut and every transition crafted, so that what reached you was a finished piece of work rather than a recording of two people talking. It didn’t sound like anything else in this field when we started, and it still doesn’t. We always knew who that work was for. Members were paying out of their own pockets, and every episode had to be worth their time. We built everything around the Energy Transition Show to the same standard, and we are still making new episodes in this way.

The show has since grown into more than we could have imagined in 2015, to thousands of members, to public agencies and research institutions in more than two dozen countries on group subscriptions, and to universities across the world. Through all of it, everything we’ve done has carried the same promise of substantive episodes, every month, for people who find them genuinely useful.

The best part of it all is what you tell us the show has done for you, whether that is engineers and planners who found technical grounding they could not get elsewhere, researchers and professors who teach with it, listeners who came to a subject they thought they knew and found something new in it, and people who tell us it shaped their careers. Many messages like that have arrived in recent weeks, telling us how much you have valued the show over the years and how often you return to the back catalog, and we have read every one.

Please keep reaching out. Guests gave us their time, members paid for the work, and colleagues kept it moving. We’re excited to keep going. To all of you, across eleven years, thank you.

Sincerely,

Justin Ritchie
Producer, Energy Transition Show
Executive Director, XE Network
and the XE Network team

Hello Energy Transition Show members,

You may have seen the post Chris Nelder published on his website on August 5 about the future of our show. After nearly eleven years and 280 episodes together, from everyone who works on the Show at XE Network, we are grateful for everything he has brought to a show we have all come to know and love.

As we were putting together Episode #280 for release on July 15, Chris let us know he wanted to make changes to the Show. Over the weeks since, we started work on a plan for the future of the podcast, one that would let us share news about its direction jointly, and that work continues. The content of announcements about the Show has historically been planned together. His August 5 post was not, and it does not accurately reflect the state of the Energy Transition Show. What it raised about his own future involvement is a question that is still open, and one we are working through with him. We would have preferred to bring you any news about the Show’s future together, carrying the gratitude for your part in this journey that Chris expressed so often on air.

What this means for you is that Energy Transition Show continues. Episode #281 is out now, and more episodes are already recorded and in production. Our team is continuing to work with Chris on new content ideas, and nothing has been decided about how he will contribute going forward. If that changes, you will hear it from us directly, with enough notice to make whatever decision is right for you. We’ve told you what we can say with confidence right now, and we’d rather do that than speculate. We’ll keep this page updated as we have more to share.

After eleven years, his August 5 announcement was sudden for all of us, and we’re working to keep the release schedule you expect as a listener, whether you joined us recently or have been with us for years. Our release rhythm may be uneven for a stretch, and we’re aiming to get back to a regular schedule as soon as we can.

In some of our new episode releases over the coming months, we’ll revisit the most enduring conversations from the Show’s archive of 280+ episodes. More than 80% of our members joined in 2020 or later, by which time the Show had already produced 111 episodes, so many of these will be new to you and remain strikingly relevant today. Chris’s voice will still be part of the Show.

The Energy Transition Show remains what it has always been: long-form, in-depth exploration that stays relevant long after it publishes, for people working on the transition all over the world.

The Energy Transition Show and our membership have continued going strong, and grown a great deal over the years, thanks to the partners who helped make it happen and to the members who backed it. Whatever comes next for the Show has to respect what all of you have put into it. That includes the door staying open to Chris, however he’d like to be involved. He would be welcome to keep contributing to the Energy Transition Show, and we would be glad if he did. Whatever his role turns out to be, we will always be fans of his work on the energy transition.

Our vision when we originally built the Energy Transition Show was that there is a broad audience across the globe for in-depth, meaty conversations about the energy transition. Many thousands of members later, that hasn’t changed, and we’ve been thrilled to do it all with you.

We look forward to bringing you many more episodes, in the format and to the standard you have come to know and that Chris helped us establish. We’re excited about what comes next.

We understand that a sudden post like this from the Energy Transition Show’s host may have made you reconsider your membership, or you may have thoughts to share. We’ve set up a form so that anything you send us reaches the right person: member-request.energytransition.show

For any other questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you at [email protected], as always.

Thank you for being part of the Energy Transition Show’s journey.

Sincerely,

Justin Ritchie
Producer, Energy Transition Show
Executive Director, XE Network
and the XE Network team