Welcome to Quitting Carbon
Reporting and analysis on the projects, people, and policies advancing the energy transition.
Welcome to Quitting Carbon, a newsletter that will chronicle the most important story of our lives: humanity’s urgent and vital obligation to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy to power our economies and avert climate catastrophe. I’m your guide, Justin Gerdes, and I’ve been reporting on climate solutions and clean energy for more than 20 years.
What to expect from Quitting Carbon
My plan for Quitting Carbon is explaining the unfolding energy transition. In the coming months, expect to hear from me once or twice a week. I’ll report from the field, from across my home base of California, and occasionally beyond. I’ll publish Q&As with researchers, policymakers, and business leaders. And I’ll write columns digging into legislation and policy sausage-making in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
The through line at Quitting Carbon will be the projects, people, and policies advancing the energy transition and reducing climate pollution – everything from efforts to stand up a floating offshore industry on the US West Coast to decarbonizing buildings to building renewable energy microgrids in fire-prone areas, and so much more.
About me
I studied environmental science and political science at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, in the shadow of the San Francisco Peaks. My J-School was an editorial internship and fellowship with the fact-checking department at Mother Jones magazine, in San Francisco, arriving in the Bay Area just after 9/11/2001.
In the fall of 2008, I accepted a job in Copenhagen, Denmark, to work as an editor for the Copenhagen Climate Council, a project run by a prominent Danish publishing house and think tank called Mandag Morgen (Monday Morning), in the lead up to COP15 UN climate negotiations.
For a decade after returning home to Northern California from Copenhagen, I reported on energy, climate, and the environment as a freelancer for outlets like Yale Environment 360, Smithsonian.com, and Chinadialogue, and as a longtime contributing writer for Greentech Media. My time in Copenhagen, and subsequent reporting trips back to Denmark, was grist for an e-book I published on the country’s energy transition, Quitting Carbon, which inspired the name of this newsletter.
In the fall of 2020, I joined a startup online publication called Energy Monitor, a guide to the global energy transition, as the US correspondent. Later, as managing editor, I helped to lead a team of talented reporters and data journalists.
Why Quitting Carbon – and why now?
So, why launch my own newsletter?
At Energy Monitor, we rarely broke news. We were the place to go to for long-form reporting and analysis on why breaking news, or emerging trends, mattered. Context.
Like far too many journalists, I’ve both hustled to try to make a decent living as a freelancer and been laid off from a staff job. Never-ending rounds of layoffs continue to send too many talented journalists to the freelance ranks, depressing rates for us all. And my recent stint in corporate media, which ended when Energy Monitor’s parent company laid off me and other senior members of the team, makes me doubt that traditional media will be a source of stable, good-paying jobs for journalists going forward.
Two recent health scares have also focused my mind ever more on what truly matters in my life, and in my work, that means writing stories I genuinely want to share, on my terms. Even more so now, with Donald Trump set to return to the White House. Quitting Carbon is a bet that many of you will crave stories of success in the ongoing quest to get off fossil fuels and decarbonize our economies.
I know it’s a big ask for many of you to subscribe to yet another publication. I get it. I subscribe to nearly a dozen publications and newsletters myself to support fellow journalists whose work I respect.
But I promise not to waste your time. When you hear from me, you’ll know you’re getting reporting or analysis you can’t find anywhere else, from a journalist with more than two decades of experience covering the energy and climate beat.
Please join me on this journey by becoming a paid subscriber to Quitting Carbon, or by sharing this post with friends, family, colleagues, or anyone else interested in following the world’s most important story.
With gratitude,
Justin
P.S. You can find me on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Mastodon and reach me at justingerdes@gmail.com to share feedback, tips, and story ideas.
