Energy Empire

Kathy Castor has represented Tampa in Congress for 20 years — four of them chairing the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the policy engine behind the Inflation Reduction Act. Now Florida's new congressional map has carved her district into five pieces, turning a seat Democrats won by 12 into one Trump carried by 11.Jigar and Jamie talk with the congresswoman about why the Sunshine State gets 75% of its electricity from gas, the Thriving Economy Project — the next climate bill, drafted before Democrats have the votes to pass it, with 1,200 policy proposals already in — and where permitting reform could move with Trump still in the White House.Along the way: the congressman who entered a battery into the committee record, electric bills burned in a garbage can, and why MacDill Air Force Base relocates every time a storm approaches.Plus, Ask Jigar: where one person's effort actually counts, whether AI changes the value of a college degree, the case for 50 climate tech IPOs, and which states pay you for the battery in your EV.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Electric utilities are on track to spend $1.4 trillion on the power grid by 2030. Hyperscalers keep asking for gigawatt-scale data centers. Nobody is required to show the math.Katherine Blunt covered PG&E's bankruptcy and the Camp Fire for The Wall Street Journal and wrote California Burning, the book PG&E CEO Patti Poppe made mandatory reading for all her employees when she took over. Now, Blunt covers Alphabet, where she is watching the AI buildout collide with the same regulatory machinery that produced PG&E.Jigar and Katherine get into PJM's white paper conceding the market needs to be redesigned, what Google figured out in its Xcel Minnesota deal that other hyperscalers haven't, and what trust looks like when utilities ask for a record-setting decade of spending.Plus: the one thing Katherine would mandate if she could — and it isn't interruptible service.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

California built the one of the cleanest grids in the country and wholesale prices have never been lower — but utility bills keep going up. One reason: utilities make more money by spending more. California State Senator Josh Becker is writing the bills to change that. Before politics, Becker was in venture capital — he seeded Opower and worked on EPA's first Clean Air Marketplace Conference in 1992. Now he runs much of California's energy policy from Sacramento.Jigar and Arnab Pal (in for Jamie) talk with Becker about tying utility executive bonuses to keeping rates down, the metrics regulators should use to measure utility performance, why your home battery should count toward grid reliability, and how to use the grid we've already paid for before building more.Along the way: why the grid is like a Walmart parking lot built for Christmas Eve, the plan to take wildfire costs off your electricity bill, and Becker's blunt verdict that "hope is not a strategy."Plus: listener questions on virtual power plants, nuclear, and what happens when everyone goes off the grid — in this week's Ask Jigar.Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-orderOctopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

The backlash against data centers is, in many places, a backlash against rising electricity bills. Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, thinks the solution isn’t to stop building — it’s to change who benefits.In this episode, Nick explains why the way data centers currently connect to the American power system puts the costs on nearby communities while sending the upside elsewhere. He breaks down how Octopus Energy flipped that dynamic in the UK by giving communities a direct financial stake in local wind energy through discounted bills — and how the same model could reshape the data center boom now unfolding across the US.Jigar, Jamie, and Nick get into what virtual power plants actually are, why networks of home batteries, EVs, and smart thermostats can function like power plants, why Texas is moving faster than California on clean energy deployment, and what it would take for homeowners in places like Loudoun County to get paid instead of squeezed. Plus: whether 160 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity by 2030 is realistic — or wildly optimistic.Links:Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarS2G Investments: ⁠https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/podcast-global-energy-order⁠Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

The Energy Empire logo has a two-prong plug. Apparently, that's a problem. Since launch, we've been getting called out on LinkedIn by people who are very concerned about electrical safety. So we brought in our designer, Rosie Jewell, to finally answer for it — is our brand unsafe? What happens if Lady Liberty gets struck by lightning holding a janky appliance? What exactly is she plugging in? Does artistic license cover electrical code violations?Jamie talks with Rosie about how the Energy Empire brand came together — the symbols they rejected (Roman architecture, the eagle, the flag, and yes, a lightning bolt), why Lady Liberty was the only image that worked, and what it took to get from pencil sketch to a mark that's already generating opinions on LinkedIn.Along the way: why clean energy needs to put down the lightning bolt, what most energy brands get wrong about visual identity, and the one American symbol that hasn't been co-opted by either side.Learn more about Rosie’s work at https://www.rosiejewell.comGet in touch with us at energyempire.fm

When COVID broke global logistics in 2020, Dan Shugar made a call most of his peers didn't. Nextpower absorbed over $100 million honoring existing contracts, then built the manufacturing it needed at home. Today the company has 35+ US factories — including a former Bethlehem Steel mill in Pittsburgh now shipping hundreds of trucks a week — and a backlog north of $5 billion.Jigar joins SunCast's Nico Johnson to talk with Dan about onshoring through the chaos, why solar and storage are no longer "alternative" energy when they made up 83% of new US power capacity last year, and how Nextpower's culture has kept its team intact across cycles.Along the way: why the industry's biggest enemy is its own narrative, the $10 million bet ACP made to fix it, and the wedding-guest argument that turned into a video series.Recorded at the UNC Clean Tech Summit.Learn more at energyempire.fm

The Iran war is now the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Physical crude hit $150 a barrel. Futures markets are acting like a deal is around the corner. And James Gutman is back on Energy Empire to explain why those two numbers don't match — and what happens when they do.This is James's fourth time on the show. He walks us through why the shock has already been absorbed but the real pain is still in the pipeline, why energy independence gave the US, Israel, Russia, and China each a permission structure to act more aggressively on the world stage, and why Europe — which didn't want this war — is now building a post-war security architecture for the Strait of Hormuz without the country that started it.On the ground: 70% of American farmers can't afford fertilizer. Europe has six weeks of jet fuel left. The US can't deliver the weapons its NATO allies already paid for. And James makes the case that this war may bring us to peak oil demand — not because of any climate agreement, but because the world is making sure this never happens again.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at energyempire.fm.

Tom Fanning spent 43 years at Southern Company — 15 different jobs, 13 years as CEO — and oversaw the construction of the only new nuclear reactors built in America in a generation.This is a special bonus episode recorded live at the UNC Clean Tech Summit in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in collaboration with Nico Johnson's Suncast podcast. Jigar and Nico sit down with Fanning to talk about what he learned building Plant Vogtle, why America has lost its ability to build big things, what utility leadership should look like in a moment of crisis, and why his answer to almost every problem is the same: get everybody in the boat.This is the first of three bonus episodes from UNC Clean Tech. Conversations with former EPA Administrator Michael Regan and NextPower CEO Dan Shugar drop over the next two Tuesdays.Two additional interviews from the summit — with John Szoka from the Conservative Energy Network and investor Ahmad Chatila — are available on Suncast: https://www.suncast.media/Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at energyempire.fm.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Everyone is focused on oil prices. But oil isn't just fuel — it's feedstock. 92% of the world's sulfur comes from refining oil and gas. A third of global helium is offline. Half the world's food depends on fertilizer that flows through a 21-mile chokepoint. And your kid's birthday balloons? Those need helium too.James Gutman returns to Energy Empire for a third time — and this time, the mood is different. On Day 31 of the war, the crisis is no longer theoretical. Pakistan is rationing fuel. Thailand is telling government workers to take the stairs. Hundreds of gas stations in Australia are running dry. Airlines are canceling flights across Southeast Asia. And as Gutman warns, the disruptions Americans will feel haven't even arrived yet — they're still in the pipeline.Jigar Shah and co-host Arnab Pal dig into the humanitarian fallout, the supply chain cascades nobody is talking about, the political consequences heading into the midterms, and how Iran turned the most important waterway on earth into a toll road — with payments in Chinese yuan.Plus: Is Trump still the accidental clean energy president? Is China becoming the new energy superpower? Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at energyempire.fm.

Electric semi trucks that go 500 miles on a single charge and fully recharge in 30 minutes. That's what the Tesla Semi is promising — and trucking companies are already placing orders by the hundreds.In this episode, Jigar and Jamie sit down with Adam Browning to dig into what's actually happening with zero-emission freight — what he saw inside the massive Tesla Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada last week, why legacy truck manufacturers are falling behind, and what it takes to get real electric trucks on real roads today. They also tackle the hard questions: What does this mean for refrigerated trucks? What are the real economics? And how does a trucker who averages seven to eight miles per gallon on diesel feel about all of this?Jamie brings questions directly from her dad — a working long-haul trucker — and the answers might surprise him.Adam is a leader at Forum Mobility, the company building charging depots for electric freight. He previously founded Vote Solar, where he helped grow the U.S. solar industry over two decades. He sees the same playbook unfolding in trucking — and he's betting his trucker hat on it.Learn more at energyempire.fm

Your utility bill keeps going up. But the problem isn't that we need to build more — it's that we're barely using what we already have. Arnab Pal, founder of clean energy advocacy group Deploy Action and co-author of a new grid affordability playbook, joins Jigar and Jamie to make the case for grid utilization: the unglamorous, cost-cutting strategy that governors, regulators, and utilities are finally starting to pay attention to.They get into why blue states like California and New York have struggled to actually build clean energy despite ambitious goals, what virtual power plants can do for your electricity bill, and why the debate over whether to say the word "climate" is more complicated than either side admits.Read the white paper: Grid Growth, Utilization, and Affordability — A Playbook for States https://www.deploy-action.org/post/grid-growth-utilization-and-affordability-a-playbook-for-states

Tim Hade, Air Force veteran and founder of Scale Microgrids, joins Jigar and Jamie to make the case that the rush to build off-grid data centers is solving the wrong problem. With 56 gigawatts of co-located data centers in the pipeline, Tim explains why most won't get built — and why the real answer is batteries, load flexibility, and making the grid work for data centers, not around them. From his journey building microgrids for cannabis facilities to pioneering distributed energy solutions, Tim breaks down the power electronics challenges that most developers are ignoring, why 10,000 batteries beat one giant power plant, and how communities can actually benefit from the data center boom instead of getting trampled by it.Don't miss Tim Hade's new Substack and his must-read companion piece to this episode: "The Fastest Way to Ramp Compute Isn't a Power Plant Next to Every Data Center" — https://timhade.substack.com/p/the-fastest-way-to-ramp-compute-isntEnergy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm