Course Beginner-friendly

How energy and climate actually work

Energy is never created or destroyed — only moved and degraded. See how that one rule powers the world and warms it, and learn to tell a real climate-energy claim from a sales pitch.

What you'll be able to do

Explain what energy is, that it's only ever converted, and use watts correctly.
Trace how the world is powered, and why electricity must be balanced second by second.
Explain the greenhouse mechanism, the carbon bathtub, and why a small average shift matters.
Judge a climate or energy claim on its physics, separating an honest number from spin.

Energy is the one thing nothing happens without — and it follows a rule so strict it has no exceptions: it is never created or destroyed, only moved from one form to another, losing a little to heat each time. This course takes the lid off the machine that rule builds. What energy is. How we actually power the world. Why burning it warms the planet. What changing that requires. Not a policy argument and not a doom story — a working understanding of the coupled energy-and-climate system you live inside, with the physics stated plainly and the numbers stated honestly.

Module 1 — Energy: the rule underneath everything

What energy actually is

Explain that energy is conserved, and every device is just a converter.

Power versus energy

Tell power (watts) from energy (watt-hours), and why confusing them muddles energy talk.

Why you always lose some

Explain why every conversion spills waste heat, and read an efficiency figure.

Module 2 — How we power the world

Where our energy comes from

Explain why fossil fuels won — high energy density and easy storage.

Electricity and the grid

Explain why electricity supply must equal demand every single second.

The intermittency problem

Explain why wind and solar shift the hard problem from cost to timing.

Module 3 — Why burning it warms the planet

The greenhouse effect

Explain how greenhouse gases trap outgoing infrared and warm the planet.

The carbon bathtub

Explain the carbon cycle as a bathtub — emissions the tap, absorption the drain.

Why the system amplifies

Explain the feedback loops that make the climate an amplifier, not a straight line.

Why a small number is a big deal

Explain why a couple of degrees of average warming moves the extremes far more.

Module 4 — The transition, the price, and the spin

What decarbonizing really requires

Explain why the transition is a whole-system rebuild, including the hard-to-abate sectors.

The price that's missing

Explain an externality, and how a carbon price puts the missing cost back.

Capstone: reading a climate or energy claim

Decode a real-style climate or energy claim using the whole course.