Podcast
Energy Empire
Hosted by Energy Empire · EN
Welcome to the Age of Energy Abundance
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.
27episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Utilities Want $1.4 Trillion. The Hyperscalers Want a Gigawatt. Nobody Did the Math.
1w ago00:54:24Tap to summarizeElectric 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
Transcribe →
Ask Jigar: Should You Cut the Cord on Your Utility?
1w ago00:07:07Tap to summarizeSolar 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
Transcribe →
Inside California's Plan to Fix the Utility Business Model with Senator Josh Becker
2w ago00:56:58Tap to summarizeCalifornia 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
Transcribe →
Ask Jigar: Where do you actually start when you want to electrify your life?
3w ago00:02:40Tap to summarizeA 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.
Transcribe →
What If Data Centers Paid You?
3w ago00:39:33Tap to summarizeThe 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
Transcribe →
The Guy Who Built American Wind — and What He’s Betting On Next
4w ago00:52:15Tap to summarizeSandy 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
Transcribe →
Bonus episode: Why Is Lady Liberty Holding a Power Cable?
May 500:49:12Tap to summarizeThe 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
Transcribe →
"Nobody Cared About Deployment" — Who is Jigar Shah? (Part 2)
Apr 3000:37:43Tap to summarizeIn 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
Transcribe →
Bonus Episode: Dan Shugar on Reshoring Solar Manufacturing (recorded at UNC Clean Tech Summit)
Apr 2800:28:20Tap to summarizeWhen 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
Transcribe →
Bonus Episode: Former EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Data Centers and Public Health (Recorded at UNC Clean Tech Summit)
Apr 2400:26:12Tap to summarizeMichael 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.
Transcribe →