Policy expert and climate scientist Anna Farro Henderson explores how science is done, discussed, legislated, and imagined in her new book, Core Samples: A Climate Scientist’s Experiments in Politics and Motherhood. Grounded in her experience as an environmental policy advisor to Minnesota Senator Al Franken and Governor Mark Dayton, Henderson brings readers behind the closed doors of discovery and debate—and illuminates the messy, contradictory humanity of our scientific and political institutions. Here, Henderson is joined in conversation with Tenzin Dolkar and Roberta Downing on getting your voice heard in politics.



Anna Farro Henderson is an award-winning writer, PhD scientist, and environmental policy expert. She is a fellow at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, teaches at the Loft Literary Center, and works in climate advocacy. She lives with her family in St. Paul, where she makes daily visits to the Mississippi River.

Tenzin Dolkar has more than 15 years of experience in policy development, advocacy, community organizing, and management with state and local governments. Dolkar is a council member on the Metropolitan Council, and has previously served as the State of Minnesota’s Rail Director and as a policy advisor on transportation, agriculture, and rural issues for Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton.

Roberta Downing is a public policy professional with more than 20 years of experience. Downing held a congressional fellowship administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served on the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions under Senator Edward M. Kennedy; has held several academic and policy-focused positions, including the offices of US Senator Sherrod Brown and DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser; and is principal and co-founder of Harper Downing LLC, a Minnesota-based government affairs consulting firm.



Praise for the book:

“Honest and immersive, this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at how culture (and who crafts it) shapes everything from the sediment the narrator studies to the policies that define climate action today.”
—Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening

“Anna Farro Henderson’s deep encounters with Big Science and Big Bureaucracy will help you understand why progress on matters of life and death can be so maddeningly slow; her encounters with herself may help you figure out how to live your own life.”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“With fierce intelligence and wild exuberance, Anna Farro Henderson throws herself headlong into the biggest challenges of our time: how to love fully, create abundantly, and stop the ruin of the precious ecosystems that sustain us.”
—Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers

“Some books are so good I want to shout about them to the rooftops. Core Samples is one of those.”
—Vick Mickunas, Dayton Daily News



Core Samples: A Climate Scientist’s Experiments in Politics and Motherhood by Anna Farro Henderson is available from University of Minnesota Press.


Public policy and the room where it happens.

Steam is used for a wide variety of critical processes across many industrial sectors. For example, pulp and paper facilities use steam to power paper machines, dry paper and wood products, and provide heat for chemical recovery processes. Steam is used by metal and mining companies, as well as in the food and beverage industry, petroleum refining, pharmaceutical manufacturing, textile production, and many other industrial processes.
“About 20% of global carbon emissions come from the industrial heat sector, and virtually all of that industrial heat today is produced by burning hydrocarbons—coal and natural gas—and emitting carbon into the atmosphere,” Clay Sell, CEO of X-energy, said as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “With our technology, we have the opportunity to replace hydrocarbons and use nuclear-generated carbon-free steam to dramatically decarbonize these so-called hard-to-decarbonize sectors.”
X-energy is a nuclear reactor and fuel design engineering company. It is developing Generation-IV high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors and what’s known as TRISO-X fuel to power them. 
The company’s Xe-100 small modular reactor (SMR) is an 80-MWe reactor that can be scaled into a four-pack (320-MWe power plant) that can grow even larger as needed. “The most significant advantages that we have over large-scale traditional nuclear power plants is the evolution of our technology, our safety case, and the smaller, more simplified designs that can be built with much less time and much less money,” Sell said. “We’re a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor using a TRISO fuel form—that’s ceramic, encapsulated fuel in a round pebble that flows through the reactor like gumballs through a gumball machine.”
The Xe-100 design’s intrinsic safety makes it especially unique. “This is a plant that cannot melt down under any scenario that one could imagine affecting the plant. So, that extraordinary safety case allows us to operate on a very small footprint,” said Sell. The simplified design has fewer subsystems and components, less concrete, less steel, and less equipment than traditional nuclear power plants. 
As noted previously, X-energy’s SMR is capable of producing high-quality steam, which is especially attractive for use in industrial processes. As such, Dow Inc., one of the world’s leading materials science companies, has agreed to deploy the first Xe-100 unit at its Union Carbide Corp. Seadrift Operations, a sprawling chemical materials manufacturing site in Seadrift, Calhoun County, Texas. “Our first project is going to be deployed in a public-private partnership with the U.S. government and Dow Inc., the large chemical manufacturer, at a site southwest of Houston, Texas, that will come online around the end of this decade,” Sell reported.
Currently, X-energy is in the final stages of its design effort. Once complete, the next step will be to submit a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). If all goes according to plan, the application should be approved by the NRC in early 2027, which would allow construction to start around that time. “We anticipate construction on the plant to be about a three- to three-and-a-half-year process, which will then bring it online in the early 2030s,” Sell explained.
Beyond that, X-energy has an agreement to supply Amazon with 5 GW of new SMR projects (64 units) by 2039, starting with an initial four-unit 320-MWe Xe-100 plant with regional utility Energy Northwest in central Washington. Sell believes the deal positions X-energy to quickly apply lessons learned from its first-of-a-kind project with Dow, replicate and repeat the effort to achieve scale, and reach a favorable nth-of-a-kind cost structure faster than anyone else in the SMR market today.
Said Sell, “When we imagine a future of a decarbonized economy with reliable power supporting dramatic growth at a reasonable cost, I believe X-energy is going to be a central technology to that future.”

177. How Nuclear Power Could Help Decarbonize Industrial Steam Needs

We’re rebroadcasting another episode from the Resources Radio archive while the team is on a break through the rest of December. This week’s episode is a throwback to the final installment of a three-part series that celebrated the 70th anniversary of Resources for the Future (RFF), back in 2022. We’ll return with new episodes in the new year; in the meantime, enjoy this one and poke around the archive at Resources.org for more topics you might be interested in.

In this week’s episode rerun, host Daniel Raimi looks toward the future of RFF, as seen through the eyes of the organization’s talented and dedicated research analysts and associates. RFF’s research analysts gather and analyze data, review published studies, help write papers and reports, and do it all with dedication and enthusiasm. They’re an essential part of the organization’s research. In this episode, Raimi talks with RFF Research Analysts Emily Joiner, Sophie Pesek, Nicholas Roy, and Steven Witkin, along with Senior Research Associate and Geographic Information Systems Coordinator Alexandra Thompson. While these young scholars share how they first got interested in environmental economics, they mostly focus on the future by lending insights about the topics they think RFF scholars will be working on in 20 or 30 years—and what role they see for themselves in that future.

References and recommendations:

“70 Years of RFF: A Day in the Life at Resources for the Future, with RFF Staff” Resources Radio podcast episode; https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/70-years-of-rff-a-day-in-the-life-at-resources-for-the-future-with-rff-staff/

“70 Years of RFF: The Legacy of Resources for the Future, with Ray Kopp and Kerry Smith” Resources Radio podcast episode; https://www.resources.org/resources-radio/70-years-of-rff-the-legacy-of-resources-for-the-future-with-ray-kopp-and-kerry-smith/

“Chesapeake” by James A. Michener; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114052/chesapeake-by-james-a-michener/

“Alaska” by James A. Michener; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114041/alaska-by-james-a-michener/

“Hawaii” by James A. Michener; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114063/hawaii-by-james-a-michener/

“Caribbean” by James A. Michener; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/114048/caribbean-by-james-a-michener/

“Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future” by Elizabeth Kolbert; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617060/under-a-white-sky-by-elizabeth-kolbert/

“The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848” by Eric Hobsbawm; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/80964/the-age-of-revolution-1749-1848-by-eric-hobsbawm/

“Rip It Up and Start Again” by Simon Reynolds; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291130/rip-it-up-and-start-again-by-simon-reynolds/

“A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac

“Severance” television series; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11280740/

70 Years of RFF: Looking Ahead with Young Economists at Resources for the Future (Rebroadcast)

Jason Dodier is a recognized business leader and global authority on the circular economy, biochar, and decarbonization. As Co-Founder of Grain Ecosystem, he has championed the use of Al and data-driven solutions to revolutionize waste-to-energy projects. His work highlights biochar as a pivotal tool for carbon sequestration and community optimization while improving access to project financing. Driven by a mission to turn cost centers into profit centers and accelerate biodiversity at every step, Jason's approach delivers both environmental and economic benefits.

With a strong foundation in project finance and a distinguished career in commercial leadership at sustainability pioneer Schneider Electric, Jason has worked across the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas to advance some of the world's most transformative public-private partnerships and energy transition initiatives. Among his notable achievements are leading the development of the microgrid at JFK Terminal 1 -featuring the largest solar array in New York City and at any airport terminal in the U.S.-and spearheading Schneider Electric's Access to Energy Program, which has brought clean energy solutions to underserved communities worldwide.

With nearly two decades of international experience, Jason is a sought-after thought leader and speaker on sustainability, innovation, and economic models. He serves on the boards of the Amazonia Fund Alliance and Fountain Head Rhode Island in his home state, where he continues to advocate for environmental stewardship and sustainable development.
#JasonDodier #iicsr #sustainable #sustainabledevelopment

LICG with Jason Dodier CEO and Co Founder Grain

Decarbonizing energy- and carbon-intensive industrial sectors is key to reaching net-zero emissions by 2025. But how can industries and economies continue to grow while pursuing a decarbonized future? Learn more from our latest episode of SLB New Energy Conversations.

How can industries continue to grow while pursuing decarbonization?

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Aaron Cosbey, a senior associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, about the future of climate policy in Canada. The newly elected leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, Mark Carney, has replaced Justin Trudeau as prime minister and likely will face Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, in a general election. Cosbey discusses the consequences of these election outcomes for a controversial policy that taxes Canadians for consuming fossil fuels—though this policy also issues rebates of equivalent value, or more, to most Canadians. Cosbey also discusses how the Liberal and Conservative Parties differ in their views on carbon pricing, why the fuel tax on consumers is no longer politically viable, and what emissions-reduction policies Carney may support if the Liberal Party wins a general election.

References and recommendations:

“The New Abolitionism” by Chris Hayes; https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/new-abolitionism/

The End of Canada’s Carbon Price?, with Aaron Cosbey

Green tech in North Africa fuels resource exploitation and environmental racism, sparking geopolitical risks over critical minerals and renewable energy conflicts.

Green Tech Conflict Africa Dangerous Secrets

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Sandeep Pai, director of climate and energy policy at Swaniti Global. Pai grew up in India’s coal belt; he has spent his career examining the coal and energy sectors in India, first as a journalist and now as a researcher and advisor focused on justice in the clean energy transition. He joins the podcast to discuss India’s energy and power sectors: the unique trajectory of the country in first carbonizing its economy and now decarbonizing and building out its renewable energy sector while balancing its goals for economic development. Pai also discusses what justice in the energy transition looks like in different contexts around the world, and how political and social realities shape the challenges and considerations involved in building an equitable clean energy future.

References and recommendations:

“The Climate Question” podcast from the BBC; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvb6

What’s the Role of Coal in India?, with Sandeep Pai

In this episode of the Pumps & Systems podcast, we’re speaking with Frank Ma, president of JFMA Consulting, about carbon capture and storage, or CCS. He’s going to tell us about the role pumps manufacturers can play in the growth of this technology and related decarbonization efforts. Tune in the first Wednesday of every month for new episodes of the podcast! 

(*Note: This episode was recorded on March 18, 2025.)

For more on this topic, read Frank's recent article for Pumps & Systems magazine: https://www.pumpsandsystems.com/market-outlook-centrifugal-pumps-carbon-capture-storage

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2Kpt6VRlHpY?si=hhcxjdtG-CkrHQxs

Pumps & Systems Podcast homepage: https://www.pumpsandsystems.com/podcast/
Pumps & Systems Magazine: http://www.pumpsandsystems.com

Opening music: Know Myself - Patrick Patrikios
Closing music: Freeling - Lauren Duski


Pumps & Systems Podcast: The Role of Pumps in Carbon Capture & Storage [Episode 110]

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Rami talks with Heather Zichal, global head of sustainability at JPMorganChase, about the role of financial institutions in the energy transition. Zichal explains how she has advanced climate policy goals from positions in the United States Congress, the executive branch, nonprofits, and the financial sector. From these diverse perspectives, Zichal outlines the opportunities and challenges for climate-policy stakeholders as they navigate an uncertain political environment. Zichal highlights how financial institutions support the energy transition through green finance commitments, supporting clients’ sustainability goals, and investing in emerging technologies to support the world’s energy needs. Zichal underscores the importance of promoting climate solutions that focus on long-term value in the context of commercial and sustainability goals and that balance environmental and business priorities.

References and recommendations:

“Ocean” with David Attenborough; https://silverbackfilms.tv/shows/oceanwithdavidattenborough/

Financing the Energy Transition amid Unpredictable Climate Policy, with Heather Zichal

Harsha in her podcasts series covers all her interactions with eminent people creating impact on society. The show Live interactions with global changemakers and Youth Questions are interactions with the Corporate Honchos and publicly elected political leaders. It emphasizes strategy to implementation of sustainable development goals and integration of Responsible business practices. The conversations are focussed on understanding the journey to find solutions of complex problems in growing business in tandem with social development.

She is also a poet and in her album universal messages she recites some of her finest words.

SLB New Energy Conversations is a series of SLB videos and podcasts focusing on the acceleration of industrial decarbonization and innovation across the new energy landscape by leveraging science, engineering, and digital expertise. 

  

Hear from our diverse team of change makers and experts in the areas of the energy transition, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), low-carbon hydrogen, geothermal energy, geoenergy for heating and cooling, energy storage systems, and more-sustainable lithium production solutions.

The POWER Podcast provides listeners with insight into the latest news and technology that is poised to affect the power industry. POWER’s Executive Editor Aaron Larson conducts interviews with leading industry experts and gets updates from insiders at power-related conferences and events held around the world.

Pumps & Systems is the voice of the international pump and rotating equipment industry. As the leading media brand for pump users worldwide since 1993, it delivers relevant industry news and powerful technical information to a total average monthly audience of 187,173* managers, engineers, operators and other maintenance professionals. Pumps & Systems is the only North American trade publication that covers pumps and related equipment in every issue. We deliver timely information and pump industry news through our e-newsletters—Pump Users Digest and Products for Pump Users. *web traffic + e-news subscribers + print & pass-along, minus known overlap (Sources: Omeda + BPA)

Pumps & Systems provides easy-to-read editorial that covers practical solutions, real-world applications and technical information, along with industry news and trends.

Resources Radio is a weekly podcast by Resources for the Future. Each week we talk to leading experts about climate change, electricity, ecosystems, and more, making the latest research accessible to everyone.

New tracks tagged #decarbonization