Build Fast or Fall Behind with Michael Webber

For a long time, the basic story in U.S. energy was stability. Demand growth had flattened, efficiency was doing more work than most people realized, and expansion was steady. Not anymore. In this week’s conversation, Josh Rhodes talks with Michael Webber about what may be the most important shift now underway in energy: the dramatic growth in electricity demand, in Texas and beyond. Data centers are a big part of the story, but not all of it. Electrification, industrial growth, and population growth are also fueling the need for more energy. In this episode, Webber notes that energy progress moves fastest when markets, policy, and engineering align. That is true for shale development, and it may be true again with the coming growth of the grid. Texas is well-positioned to lead this next stage of energy development — we have a strong energy base, growing demand, and a mix of technologies competing to meet it. Josh and Michael talk through why geothermal power is gaining attention, why nuclear expansion plans feel different this time, and why wind, solar, storage, gas, and transmission remain essential. They also address a problem that is becoming hard to ignore: new load can be built faster than new generation, and new generation can be built faster than transmission. That mismatch is showing up in transformer backlogs, turbine supply constraints, and growing pressure to move much faster than some energy executives are used to. n many cases, the challenge Texas faces is not a lack of energy throughout the year — rather, it’s a shortage of power during a relatively small number of peak hours. That has real implications for cost, reliability, and what kinds of loads and technologies make sense for ERCOT. Tune in to hear Michael and Josh talk through those challenges — and opportunities. Energy Capital Podcast is produced by ClarityForge Studios. Timestamps * 00:03 – Introduction & Michael Webber Background * 01:14 – The Energy Three-Body Problem * 04:16 – Shale Revolution & Forecasting Misses * 08:42 – Webber’s 2029 Energy Predictions * 09:42 – Why Efficiency Still Matters * 13:37 – Gasoline, Natural Gas & Texas Exports * 18:13 – Electrifying the Texas Oil Patch * 19:45 – Why Webber Is Bullish on Geothermal * 23:32 – Nuclear’s New Momentum * 26:27 – The Three-Part Energy Transition * 33:30 – Scarcity, Flexibility & Data Centers * 39:11 – Build Faster, Then Career Advice * 45:15 – Closing & Outro Resources People & Organizations * Joshua Rhodes (LinkedIn) * IdeaSmiths (Website - LinkedIn) * Michael Webber (Website - LinkedIn) * Webber Energy Group (Website - LinkedIn) Company & Industry News * US power use to beat record highs in 2026 and 2027 as AI use surges, EIA says * GE Vernova expects to end 2025 with an 80-GW gas turbine backlog that stretches into 2029 * A tour of global geothermal projects in progress Books & Articles Discussed * Annual Energy Outlook Products - Archive * Energy Policy Act of 2005 Related Podcasts by Energy Capital * Interview with Energy Expert Dr. Michael Webber * Drilling for Geothermal Power and Storage with Cindy Taff * More Power that’s Faster and Fairer Related Posts by Texas Energy & Power * Reading & Podcast Picks — March 4, 2025: Data Centers, Nukes, VPPs, and More * The Growing Importance of Energy Efficiency, Reading and Podcast Picks Transcript Joshua Rhodes (00:03.726) Hey everyone, and welcome to the Energy Capital podcast. I am really excited to have Dr. Michael Weber on to talk about, well, energy. He’s an energy guy, and I’m really excited to talk to him about energy and Texas energy and all kinds of things. Most of you probably know Michael, but just really quickly, he’s got a PhD from mechanical engineering from Stanford. He’s worked at Rand, various clean energy incubators, really been in kind of the energy space for a long time. Joshua Rhodes (00:32.472) But really the kind of the main areas right now that Michael’s he’s a double chaired professor at the University of Texas, which is pretty rare thing. The Sid Richardson chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Cockrell family chair number 16 in mechanical engineering. He’s a former CTO at Energy Impact Partners, which is a big climate clean tech venture fund and a former chief science and technology officer at Engie, one of the world’s largest energy companies, as well as a founding partner of Ideasmus upon which he and I work together. Joshua Rhodes (01:01.688) So he really sits at the intersection of engineering and policy and commercialization. Welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. Dr. Michael Webber (01:10.008) Thanks for having me. Very excited to be part of the conversation today after being a long time listener. Joshua Rhodes (01:14.574) And so you really are kind of like a rare three world energy person. I mean you’ve kind of like gone across the spectrum from engineering to policy and you know commercialization. One of the things that this actually reminded me of and I’m gonna go off script almost immediately is kind of like the three body problem. You’re familiar with the three body problem in classical mechanics is that it’s basically impossible to predict the motions of three things that are gravitationally Joshua Rhodes (01:42.786) connected to each other at the same time. you feel this way in your three worlds? An engineering policy in the technical space? Like, is it similar? Dr. Michael Webber (01:51.34) That is a great orbital mechanics reference. did my undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at UT. I took a class on orbital mechanics from one of the famous professors, Zabihay. Professor Zabihay taught that. And we could solve the two-body problem. You cannot solve the three-body problem. You can only approximate it. So you’re exactly right. And it does feel like this tension between engineering policy and markets or commercialization are in tension where you can’t completely solve the problem with all three. Although in orbital mechanics, you do get alignment if one’s swallowed. Dr. Michael Webber (02:19.47) where the planets align or the different celestial bodies align. And in my observation, at least in the United States, things work best when policies and markets and innovation are all aligned. If they’re all pointed the same direction, amazing things can happen very quickly. And so I like this sort of idea, like you can’t solve it perfectly, you can kind of get close, you can do some numerical approximation, but sometimes you have alignment. And if you have alignment, then great things happen. So let me give an example of that from like 2005 to seven timeframe, the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Dr. Michael Webber (02:49.454) in other things were happening where the policies were calling for more domestic production. We more natural gas in particular. The markets were calling for more natural gas production. Natural gas prices were quite high, say 2003 and other years. So the markets were calling for more natural gas. The policies were calling for more natural gas. And the innovation engineering was also unlocking a lot of new natural gas, which was a combination of technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. So we had engineering policy and markets all aligned. Dr. Michael Webber (03:16.044) The world flipped, the whole shale revolution of producing so much oil and gas in such a sudden turnaround flipped geopolitics on its head. Where we went from LNG imports to exports, we went from feeling at the mercy of foreign countries for their oil and gas production to feeling a little more confident on the energy stage globally. That was a remarkable instance where things aligned. And we don’t have that very often in energy, frankly, for the decades before that. Dr. Michael Webber (03:41.164) We had groups calling for less production because of environmental concerns. have policies that inhibited production. The markets and innovation work there. So we often have misalignment, though when you have alignment, it goes quickly. And that’s another cool thing from Celestial Mechanics. So maybe we should write an artic… This is a public episode. 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