Texas is not short on energy.

Texas is short on time.

New load is arriving faster than the grid can plan, permit, and build, raising a question that will shape our state’s future: can Texas grow without sacrificing reliability or pushing costs onto the wrong people?

That was the backdrop for our first Energy Capital roundtable with Matt Boms, Joshua Rhodes, and Micalah Spenrath.

The Defining Story of 2025

When we talked about the biggest energy story of 2025, everything circled back to load. Not just more demand, but uncertain demand.

Planning gets harder when projections keep shifting. Transmission, interconnection, and long-term investments all depend on forecasts, and those forecasts suddenly feel less stable.

And yes, data centers are at the center of it.

As Josh put it, you almost cannot talk about energy anymore without talking about data centers. They are reshaping how fast demand shows up and where reliability pressure lands.

Markets still matter, but speed does too

Texas remains an energy-only market. Resources still need to compete on cost, reliability, and performance.

But markets only work if the system underneath them can move fast enough.

ERCOT and the PUC are working to plan for the future, but compressed timelines make responsible planning harder. Speed is no longer just a project challenge. It is becoming a grid constraint.

What constraints unlock

This is about more than just generation — ERCOT’s transmission system also is racing to keep up with rising load. Given such constraints, Texas needs to embrace fast, close-to-home energy strategies, including:

* Distributed energy resources (DERs)

* Demand response

* Backup power

* Energy waste reduction

As Josh noted, constraints force innovation. When the old approach cannot keep pace, the economics for flexibility get much clearer.

What we’re watching in 2026

Looking ahead, Micalah, Matt, and Josh kept returning to a few basic themes:

* Clean, firm power that can scale

* Backup power and resilience

* The untapped potential of DERs

These policy solutions sit at the intersection of reliability, affordability, and speed, which is exactly where the grid debate is heading.

Texas is going to build a lot of infrastructure in coming years. That brings real benefits, especially to rural communities, but also real impacts.

Micalah framed it simply: this is about balance and fairness. Growth works best when communities understand the trade-offs — and they trust that costs and benefits are being shared responsibly.

Closing Thoughts

Texas is entering a build-fast era where speed itself becomes a grid resource.

That does not mean cutting corners. It means prioritizing the highest-value infrastructure, being honest about who pays for what, and using every available tool to maintain reliability and affordability.

Moving forward, we’ll keep these conversations grounded, curious, and practical. If you have thoughts on what Texas should prioritize next, jump into the comments.

Timestamps:

* 00:06 – Welcome, roundtable kickoff

* 01:49 – Micalah origin story, policy path

* 03:54 – Josh background, technical roots

* 04:08 – Host reactions, early framing

* 13:19 – SB 6, PUC, building infrastructure

* 15:27 – Data centers, speed-to-power reality

* 18:58 – Siting, community benefits and burdens

* 20:37 – Pushback, bad actors, headlines

* 22:03 – AI hype, narratives, who shapes perception

* 24:12 – ADER, DER potential, batteries

Resources:

Guest & Company

* Matt Boms - LinkedIn

* Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance - LinkedIn

* Joshua Rhodes - LinkedIn

* Webber Energy Group

* IdeaSmiths

* Micalah Spenrath - LinkedIn

Transcript:

Matt Boms (00:05.966)

Hi everybody, welcome to the Energy Capital podcast. I’m Matt Boms and I’m here for our first round table today with Dr. Josh Rhodes and Michaelis Benrath. I’m gonna ask each of you to introduce themselves and then we’ll get started. Josh, you wanna kick us off?

Joshua Rhodes (00:22.894)

Sure, sounds good. Hey everybody, my name is Joshua Rhodes. I wear a bunch of different hats. I’m research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin where I study electricity system, the grid, just energy writ large, CTO of Ideasmus, as well as commissioner for Austin Energy. And yeah, just excited to be here.

Micalah Spenrath (00:40.0)

All right. Hi, everybody. My name is Micalah Spenrath. I also wear lot of hats, but my main and biggest hat is that I am a Deputy Director of Policy and Energy at the Houston Advanced Research Center, where I spearhead our legislative and regulatory engagement, specializing in energy policy. So happy to be here.

Matt Boms (00:56.824)

Well, I’m really excited to be with you both. And we’ve been tasked with this enormous responsibility of co-hosting this podcast. And I’m happy that we all have the chance today to talk. And I want to get into each of your backgrounds and ask each of you to just explain kind of how you got into the energy world, what inspired you to get into this topic and kind of how did it all start? What’s your origin story? Josh, Micalah, whoever wants to kick us off.

Micalah Spenrath (01:21.758)

Mine was actually already previewed on LinkedIn. So I’ll give you the Spark Notes version. I actually did not intend to get into energy policy. It just happened kind of serendipitously. I went to grad school for engineering, dabbled in some law and policy courses and was really inspired. And then I got some guidance from a mentor who said you should really look into getting into policy. He didn’t specify which kind, but

Micalah Spenrath (01:48.888)

Considering I’m very interested in climate action and things like that, I figured energy would be a great place to plug in. So yeah, I got a job with Matt. And then that was years ago now, and I’ve just been getting such positive feedback from the community and the work is so rewarding and intellectually challenging. And yeah, why mess with a good thing? I think I’m going to keep this going for a while.

Joshua Rhodes (02:16.376)

Yeah, so I didn’t start out with the idea of getting into energy. Like I like science, I like STEM. My undergrad and master’s are actually in mathematics. It’s Stephen F. Austin in Texas A And really every time I kept getting out of school was like during an economic recession. And so there was like no jobs to be had. And it was kind of like, well, I’m pretty good at the school thing. So I guess I’ll just keep going. Cause I found that if you keep going to school, you don’t have to pay your loans back. Like they just keep going.

Joshua Rhodes (02:44.332)

And so I just kept going and going and going, but after I got to like the masters in math, was like, well, I just don’t want to do this for like the math stake anymore. So I switched to engineering to try to be a bit more applied when I came to the University of Texas. One of the first classes I took was a thermodynamics course. And it took the math that I had learned and like knew, and it put it in terms of real systems, how systems use energy, like how nothing’s a hundred percent efficient. There are no perpetual motion machines. Just kind of made it all make sense.

Joshua Rhodes (03:13.638)

And from then I started working with Dr. Michael Weber at the University of Texas who does a bunch of energy stuff and first got into like how buildings consume energy. Did my dissertation work, you know, based on that topic from like American recovery and reinvestment funds from ARA funds. And then when I graduated, kind of switched more to the supply side. So I’ve been doing more grid modeling and other types of stuff, but it’s just like, I’ve just always been fascinated with just how

Joshua Rhodes (03:40.898)

we do things and it’s like the energy side of things let me kind of put my interest in kind of how things work and the math side into like doing something good, doing something good for people, for society and all that. Here we are.

Micalah Spenrath (03:54.296)

sounds very similar to my story as well. And actually thermodynamics was one of my favorite classes in college. So I double click on thermodynamics, but we won’t dive too much into that.

Joshua Rhodes (03:56.632)

Yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Rhodes (04:07.608)

would love to actually, but we won’t. Man, that’s a rarity to hear to be honest with you. Matt Renison.

Micalah Spenrath (04:12.238)

All right, pitching it to Matt.

Matt Boms (04:15.534)

Well, it’s fun to hear how everyone kind of gets into energy through the back door. Like a lot of us didn’t necessarily intend to work in this industry, but here we are and we’re kind of neat in energy issues. came into it through economics, like trying to study local e...