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.
38episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
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.
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Trump's Iran War: Hubris, Blowback, and Peak Oil
Apr 2101:12:38Tap to summarizeThe 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.
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Russell Gold on Leaving The Wall Street Journal for the Solar Industry
Apr 1600:52:19Tap to summarizeFor 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
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Bonus Episode: Tom Fanning on 43 Years at Southern Company (recorded at UNC Clean Tech Summit)
Apr 1400:34:29Tap to summarizeTom 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.
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We've Been Piloting Grid Solutions for 20 Years. It's Time to Deploy.
Apr 900:49:39Tap to summarizeYour 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.
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No Fertilizer. No Data Centers. No Birthday Balloons. The Iran War Is Not Just Impacting Oil.
Apr 201:00:00Tap to summarizeIran 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.
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How My Retired EV Ended Up Powering Homes in Ukraine
Mar 2600:52:37Tap to summarizeAfter 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.
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500 Miles on a Charge: Is This the End of the Diesel Semi?
Mar 2000:52:41Tap to summarizeElectric 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
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Trump: The Accidental Clean Energy President
Mar 1800:48:21Tap to summarizeTrump 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.
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The Cheapest Grid Is the One We Already Paid For
Mar 1201:03:43Tap to summarizeYour 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
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