Energy Empire

Solar on the roof. Battery in the garage. You can run your house yourself now. The question is what that does to the grid we all share.This week on Ask Jigar: what local clean-energy leaders should do now that the feds have pulled back. Whether virtual power plants will hurt utility valuations. Why nuclear supporters should love cheap battery storage. And whether mass defection from the California grid is real — or if NEM 3.0 already changed the math.Four questions. One answer: use the grid we already paid for.Submit your question: octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar

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

A lot of people are walking around with energy questions and not getting straight answers. That changes now.Ask Jigar is a new weekly segment on Energy Empire. Three listener questions per episode. Jigar answers them on air. No hedging, no "it depends" non-answers.Should you sign a long-term electricity contract? Is your utility actually serious about clean energy? What separates the startups that make it from the ones that don't? Send it in.In this teaser: where do you actually start when you want to electrify your life?Submit your question: octopusenergy.com/ask-jigarAsk Jigar is supported by Octopus Energy.

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

Sandy Reisky started building wind farms in 2000, before it was an asset class. He founded Apex Clean Energy in Charlottesville, Virginia, scaled it into one of the country's largest independent wind developers, and in 2015 bought up distressed wind projects when the tax credit extension looked uncertain. Wind now generates around 12% of U.S. electricity — 30 to 50% across the Great Plains.Jigar and Jamie talk with Sandy about how he scaled Apex, why community relations was a competitive advantage most developers skipped, what wind looks like in a hostile policy environment, and his new focus: Pearl Score, a home energy performance rating that gives sellers credit for efficiency upgrades at the point of sale.Along the way: the power maps that helped Apex win over hostile communities, why fossil fuels have already lost the battle of physics, and Jamie's proposal to name an offshore wind farm after the president — and paint all the turbines gold.Learn more at energyempire.fmLinks:S2G 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

In 2013, Jigar wrote a book arguing climate didn't have a technology problem. It had a deployment problem. The breakthrough-tech crowd called him naive. A year later, he co-founded Generate Capital to prove it — a C-corp, not a fund, because seven-year fund lives kill infrastructure deals before they work.First close: $55 million. People were whispering "vanity project." By 2024, Generate had raised $10 billion and built 2,000 assets.Part 2 of the biography series. Jamie and Jigar revisit the argument with Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla over what was actually broken in clean energy, the C-corp bet the Trump tax cut accidentally made look brilliant, and the first $100 million checks into batteries, RNG, and behind-the-meter gas.Learn more 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

Michael Regan served as the 16th Administrator of the EPA under President Biden — the first Black man to hold the role — and before that ran North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality, where he won the largest coal ash settlement in U.S. history against Duke Energy.This is a special bonus episode from UNC Clean Tech Summit, recorded in collaboration with Nico Johnson's Suncast podcast. Jigar and Nico sit down with Regan to talk about why he considers the EPA a public health agency first, what he learned visiting 90 of North Carolina's 100 counties, how the current administration's retreat on enforcement is hitting red counties as hard as blue ones, and why communities are pushing back on data centers faster than the industry expected.This is the second of three bonus episodes from UNC Clean Tech. The final conversation, with NextPower CEO Dan Shugar, drops next Tuesday.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.

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.

For two decades, Russell Gold covered the energy industry for The Wall Street Journal, breaking the Deepwater Horizon story and exposing PG&E's role in the Camp Fire. Now he's on the other side — running communications and strategy for T1 Energy, a company building a fully domestic solar supply chain across the United States.Jigar and Jamie talk with Russell about why he left journalism, what the clean energy industry keeps getting wrong about its own story, and why he's stopped talking about carbon at work. Along the way: the Landman problem, the case that solar is the most American energy, why the industry needs to stop "bringing a fan to a gunfight," and what a $5 gallon of gas means for the politics of clean energy.Plus: what it actually takes to build a 5-gigawatt solar factory in Texas, and why Russell thinks localization — not carbon — is the argument that wins this decade.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.

Your electricity bill keeps going up. Utilities are spending billions on new infrastructure. But the grid we already have is running at a fraction of its capacity — and the technology to unlock it has existed for 20 years.Vishal Kapadia knows this firsthand. At Walmart, he watched reliability decline and costs rise across thousands of stores. Now, as CEO of LineVision, he's deploying sensors that unlock 30 to 40% more capacity on existing transmission lines for major utilities.Jigar Shah and co-host Arnab Pal sit down with Vishal to ask the obvious question: if the technology works, why hasn't anyone scaled it? They get into the slide rule problem, the $45 billion we spend on transmission every year, why Virginia just passed the first-in-the-nation grid utilization bill, and why proven solutions keep getting stuck in pilot programs while consumers pay the price.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.

After an accident totaled his Tesla, Philippe Dunsky forgot to remove it from the app. A year later, his 18-year-old daughter texted him: "Papa, what is Georgia doing in Ukraine?"Their old car — named Georgia — was charging in a rural town in western Ukraine near the Polish border. Someone had salvaged the 90-kilowatt-hour battery and repurposed it to keep homes warm and lights on during Russian bombardments of the electricity grid.In this episode, Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan sit down with Philippe Dunsky — one of Canada's top energy consultants — to follow Georgia's journey and ask a bigger question: why are millions of EV batteries sitting unused in American driveways when they could be powering homes, backing up the grid, and saving consumers money?They dig into why utilities would rather spend $50 million upgrading a substation than give you $10,000 in free equipment, why bi-directional chargers are only now reaching the U.S. when other countries have had them for years, and what it would take to turn a million EVs a year into the largest distributed power plant the country has ever seen.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

Trump promised to cut energy bills in half. Instead, he started a war that pushed oil past $100 a barrel, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and sent every oil-importing nation on earth scrambling for solar panels and batteries — mostly from China.James Gutman returns to Energy Empire with a provocative argument: Donald Trump has inadvertently done more to accelerate the global clean energy transition than any climate policy in history. Not because he wanted to — but because when you blow up the global energy order, countries don't wait around. They build something new.Jigar Shah, Jamie Nolan, and Gutman trace how the Iran war is rewiring global energy in real time — from Pakistan's 41 GW solar boom to China's $250 billion clean energy Marshall Plan to the fertilizer plants shutting down because of gas prices.

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

The US bombed Iran on Saturday. We threw out our planned episode and called James Gutman, Strategist & co-author of The New Joule Order at the Carlyle Group, to make sense of what comes next. James explains why the US has no incentive to protect global energy supply chains, how Venezuela and Iran are reshaping China's energy calculus, and why every oil-importing nation on earth is now rethinking its energy strategy. Plus, Jigar and Jamie break down what this means for American consumers — from gas prices to natural gas bills — and why the case for solar, batteries, and electrification just got a whole lot stronger.

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

Oil shocks once defined the global economy. But even as conflict returns to major energy regions, prices remain relatively stable.In this episode, Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan speak with Kevin Book about how electrification, energy efficiency, and avoided oil demand are reshaping global markets — and what it means for energy security in a world less dependent on the barrel. Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Abby Hopper spent nearly a decade as CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), representing one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S. economy at the center of Washington’s biggest political fights. In this episode of Energy Empire, she joins Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan to talk about what it’s really like to lead solar through culture wars, trade battles, and rising scrutiny from policymakers — even as it becomes the dominant source of new electricity.They discuss the reputational risks facing rooftop solar, why the industry still struggles to build political power, and what the next CEO of SEIA will need to do differently as energy demand surges and projects stall.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Dean Solon went from carrying his dad’s HVAC toolbox as a kid to building Shoals—and becoming one of solar’s rare self-made billionaires. Dean breaks down how he thinks, how he sells, and why he’s allergic to corporate nonsense. We talk tariffs, solar factories, microgrids, Disney, and the hard truth about what it takes to make clean energy in the U.S. without getting crushed.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

He’s helped finance billions in clean energy and served as one of the U.S. government’s top energy officials—but Jigar Shah rarely talks about himself. In this episode, Phil Radford, CEO of Consumer Reports and Jigar's best friend, joins to change that. Jigar shares the personal story behind SunEdison, the early days of third-party solar finance, and the setbacks that came with building companies in a then-nascent industry.From watching his hometown lose major employers to putting SunEdison’s first projects on his own credit card, Jigar reflects on the early risks, personal losses, and unlikely breaks that shaped his path from solar entrepreneur to public servant. It’s an inside look at the experiences—and people—that influenced a career spent helping scale clean energy worldwide.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these technologies simply work better. They’re cheaper to build, faster to deploy, and easier to scale than anything that came before.The technology is ready. Now the race is on to build it…everywhere.Energy Empire is a podcast about the people and ideas driving this transformation. We explore how abundant, affordable energy is reshaping the global economy, creating new industries, and unlocking what may be the greatest wealth-creation opportunity of our generation.Energy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm

A once-in-a-generation shift is underway in how the world is powered.Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these technologies simply work better. They’re cheaper to build, faster to deploy, and easier to scale than anything that came before.The technology is ready. Now the race is on to build it…everywhere.Energy Empire is a podcast about the people and ideas driving this transformation. We explore how abundant, affordable energy is reshaping the global economy, creating new industries, and unlocking what may be the greatest wealth-creation opportunity of our generation.Hosted by Jigar Shah — TIME100 honoree, serial entrepreneur, investor, and former U.S. Department of Energy leader — the show pulls back the curtain on the decisions, innovations, and power struggles shaping the future of energy.Whether you’re curious about where the economy is headed, how energy affects your daily life, or who’s really building the future behind the scenes, Energy Empire is your guide to what comes next.Listen to this teaser episode to hear what Energy Empire is all about—and where the show is headed.Learn more at energyempire.fmEnergy Empire is a weekly podcast about the people, capital, and billion-dollar decisions shaping the future of energy. Learn more at EnergyEmpire.fm