‘energy, explained’ podcast: Climate change’s big question: Can we get to zero carbon?

Scott Blanchard/WITF

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As director of journalism, I work on things like newsroom strategy, culture, ethics, and training; I work with reporters (mainly climate reporter Rachel McDevitt) on stories; and I'm deeply involved with our community engagement efforts and collaborations with other news organizations.

My roots in journalism go back to growing up outside Washington, D.C., reading Woodward and Bernstein in my hometown paper, and being drawn to the ideals of freedom of the press and holding the powerful to account. I also idolized the Post’s sports columnists, and in fact was a sports reporter/editor before I moved to news.

I followed journalism’s call to the University of Missouri, then to jobs in Virginia and Maryland before landing in Pennsylvania, and I’ve lived near Gettysburg for more than two decades. Living in rural Pa. helps inform my work as a journalist and my belief that listening is one of the most important things we can do.

If I’m not doing journalism stuff, I may be traveling, bird-watching, or both.

Scott Blanchard / StateImpact Pennsylvania

StateImpact Pennsylvania reporter Amy Sisk, left, with panelists Paulina Jaramillo, Greg Reed and Ivonne Peña at a public event in Pittsburgh Tuesday Jan. 29 called "The future of energy: Can we get to zero carbon?" Sisk and StateImpact reporter Reid Frazier moderated the discussion at the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh.

April 16, 2019 | 6:52 AM

Recent reports stress the urgency of reducing carbon emissions to check the worst effects of climate change. At a public event Jan. 29 at the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh, a distinguished panel waded into the possibilites, obstacles and potential solutions.

The panelists:

Paulina Jaramillo, associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and co-director of the Green Design Institute; Ivonne Peña, an energy analyst who has worked for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the U.S. and the Colombia’s Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission; and Greg Reed, a professor of electric power engineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, and director of Pitt’s Center for Energy and the Energy GRID Institute.

StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Reid Frazier and Amy Sisk moderated the panel, and this ‘energy, explained’ podcast episode brings you the best of the discussion: