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- [00:03]
Stephanie Huang
Latitude Media covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.
- [00:07]
Stephen Lacy
Jigger, nice shirt.
- [00:09]
Jigar Shah
You know, I'm trying to bring it for the audience. It's, you know, it's this YouTube video now, right? So I gotta try to look the part.
- [00:17]
Julia Hamm
Jigger has the paisley, I've got the polka dots. What are you wearing, Steven? What are you bringing to this table?
- [00:23]
Caroline Golan
I've got blue with tiny little spots
- [00:26]
Stephen Lacy
that you might not be able to see. But if you want to see our fashion, you have to watch this whole episode on YouTube. In particular, Jigger's got patterns for the first time.
- [00:35]
Jigar Shah
Yes, I have been told that it doesn't suit me. So you may not see this ever again. But then again, if we get good comments on the video, then maybe I'll keep doing it.
- [00:46]
Stephen Lacy
I thought maybe you just got confused with the time change and picked the wrong shirt.
- [00:52]
Julia Hamm
He's in his pajamas still. This is his pajama top
- [00:58]
Stephen Lacy
from Latitude Media. This is Open Circuit. Right now, utilities are throwing a one trillion doll dollar infrastructure party. Equipment upgrades, gas plants, nuclear restarts. The kind of spending spree the power sector hasn't seen in a generation. But if you spend everything on the expensive stuff, eventually the cooler runs dry.
- [01:16]
Caroline Golan
And everyone knows the rule for keeping a party alive.
- [01:19]
Stephen Lacy
Byob on today's grid, the new rule
- [01:22]
Caroline Golan
might be byoc bring your own capacity.
- [01:26]
Stephen Lacy
Meaning if you want to plug in a giant new load, a data center, a factory, whatever, you might need to show up with some power of your own. This week we'll talk about a specific flavor of that idea. Bring your own distributed capacity. How do we make customer cited resources? The VIPs of the grid modernization party and the backdrop for this conversation couldn't be more urgent.
- [01:46]
Caroline Golan
Trump's war with Iran has jolted oil
- [01:48]
Stephen Lacy
and gas markets, threatening to push up prices across the economy and raising new questions about the security of energy infrastructure. Once again highlighting the value of a more distributed system. Could the chaos be another catalyst for solar and batteries? That is all coming right up after this.
- [02:13]
Caroline Golan
OpenCircuit is brought to you by the Yale center for Business and the Environment. They offer Yale's Financing and Deploying Clean Energy certificate. This certificate is a fully online 10 month program built for working professionals who are who want to shape the clean energy future. The program focuses on building real world skills in clean energy policy, technology, project finance and innovation all in just five hours a week. Learn more and apply @cbey yale.edu or just follow the link in the show Notes and good news, you can use the discount code OpenCircuit26 to save $500 on tuition applications. Close April 20, 2026 the AI revolution
- [02:53]
Stephanie Huang
is intersecting with a critical moment in the energy sector. I'm Stephanie Huang, host of where the Internet Lives, a podcast from Google and Latitude Studios about the unseen world of data centers. This season, explore the new era of AI innovation. Hear from Google leaders on Energy for AI and AI for Energy and how to build data centers that are good grid citizens. Find where the Internet lives wherever you get your podcasts.
- [03:20]
Caroline Golan
After four sold out shows, Latitude Media is bringing Transition AI to San Francisco. The two day conference on April 13th and 14th will bring together the people and companies who are successfully getting digital and energy projects cited financed and built
- [03:33]
Stephen Lacy
in the AI era.
- [03:34]
Caroline Golan
The solutions are getting more sophisticated, but there's still no uniform blueprint for building at gigawatt scale. Join attendees from Google, pge, edf, Energy Impact Partners and AES to align on what's real, what's, what's possible and what can get built. Head on over to latitudemedia.com events or just click the link in the show notes and there you'll see a full agenda and you can Register for Transition AI 2026. And as a bonus for our listeners, use the code PODS10. That's P O D S10 PODS10 for a 10% discount.
- [04:12]
Stephen Lacy
Welcome to the show. I'm Stephen Lacy. I am the Executive editor at Latitude Media. I am joined by Jigar Shah, the co managing partner of Multiplier and the host of the Energy Empire podcast. Hey Jigger.
- [04:24]
Jigar Shah
Hello.
- [04:25]
Stephen Lacy
How you doing? You're feeling fancy today?
- [04:27]
Jigar Shah
I am fancy.
- [04:29]
Stephen Lacy
And back in the mix with us is Julia Hamm, a partner with the Ad Hoc Group. Welcome back, Julia. Good to see you.
- [04:35]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, excited to be back. Thanks for having me again, Stephen.
- [04:38]
Stephen Lacy
You're in Aspen, I take it?
- [04:40]
Julia Hamm
I am. It is spring break week for my kids, so my kids and their dad are out skiing while I'm here doing this.
- [04:48]
Stephen Lacy
One of the worst snow droughts in decades in the West. There are you. Are they finding places to ski?
- [04:54]
Julia Hamm
Well, fortunately it snowed a little bit this weekend, so there is just enough for it to be decent. But other than the slopes, everything is totally barren here.
- [05:04]
Stephen Lacy
Well, Julia is here to help us dig into a concept that we have talked about a bit, but I think we're going to jump into Headfirst, which is bring your own distributed capacity and we're going to spend a good chunk of time unpacking how those programs are shaping up and what it could look like for utilities and large customers. Before we get there though, I want to start with a little news, a bit of political hardball. You know, for years the clean energy industry has tried to play the long game in Washington, building bipartisan coalitions emphasizing economic development, kind of mostly avoiding hard, direct political fights. But, you know, we're seeing a new strategy emerge. And earlier this year, a political action committee backed by the solar industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting Texas Congressman Chip Roy, one of the most vocal opponents of clean energy tax credits in his primary. And it didn't knock Roy out of the race, but it did force him into a runoff and sent a pretty clear signal that parts of the industry may be willing to play offense, not just defense. And jigar, you were actually involved in supporting that effort. What was it?
- [06:12]
Jigar Shah
Well, I think, as you know, right, it's one thing to say that you're against tax credits for certain technology, it's another thing to actually say that you are going to, you know, take the president states to the mat and actually reject his entire agenda unless solar gets the maximum punishment. Right. And that is really what Chip Roy and several of his colleagues said. And I think that there should be consequences for such stupidity. And so when, you know, when you do that and you hurt the lives of, you know, 500,000 plus people, then you know, you should have consequences and you shouldn't have a political future. And so we're going to make sure that Chip Roy never has a life. Politics again.
- [06:57]
Stephen Lacy
Is this representative of a on oncoming strategy from the solar industry or from, you know, adjacent industries?
- [07:05]
Jigar Shah
Well, I think it's been a strategy for some time. Right. As you and I have talked about, you know, back in 2013 in the energy Gang podcast where we're like, you know, with, with the state of Arizona and Arizona Public Service, I think, you know, the two regulators in Georgia and you know, now, you know, Tricia decided not to run for reelection at the Georgia Public Service Commission because she knows she can't get reelected. I think at some point, right, when you're 83% of everything that got added to the grid last year, which is solar and battery storage, and you're single handedly saving the ERCOT grid, which solar and batteries have done, and Chip Roy is like, is basically a liberal from Bethesda, Maryland that has somehow decided to move over and put a cowboy hat on and has decided that he's going to cosplay like Landman and at some point there should be consequences for that.
- [07:53]
Julia Hamm
Jigger, I was going to ask you in terms of the historical approach that the clean energy industry has taken, has it historically been more about supporting specific candidates and less about putting dollars towards opposing candidates? And this is the shift that's happening, or am I missing a piece of that equation?
- [08:11]
Jigar Shah
No, I think. Well, I mean, I think, you know firsthand from trying to, you know, like, look at these things, that the historical view of the clean energy industry is that we don't want anyone to notice us at all. And we're going to do everything behind the scenes in a way that is completely off the, off the radar of anybody that's out there. Right. These are like secret backroom deals that get things done. Right. And when you're $100 billion a year, you can't do that anymore. Right? I mean, we deploy more capital every year in the United States than the oil and gas industry does. And so at some point you just. The whole notion that you're not going to get targeted and that like you can just sort of sit under the radar screen doesn't work and it's causing huge conflicts. Right. When you think about the fact that people have had that strategy for so many years, we now have 24% of US counties that are now considering bans on solar and wind. And so we now need to proactively explain what we're doing, how much benefit we provide to communities. But also when people target us, we need to make sure that there are real consequences and so that the next group of people who want to target us know that there's real consequences to standing up.
- [09:21]
Stephen Lacy
Julia, you've spent your career on the coalition building side of this transition, specifically for, from, for many years trying to get utilities in the clean energy industry aligned. I mean, to some degree that is what you're doing now. What do you make of the push to get more confrontational politically?
- [09:39]
Julia Hamm
Well, I think we need all of it, right? I mean, we talk about an all of the above approach to our energy portfolio, but I do think we need an all, all of the above strategy to how we influence energy policy as well. So, you know, as you said, my background, I spent almost 20 years as the CEO of SIPA, which was not a lobbying organization. We were a 501C3, not a C6. We were focused on bringing parties together and looking for win win solutions. I think there's a very important role for that. But at the same time, I do think there is also an important role for these types of political campaigns. So, you know, different organizations and businesses are better suited for, for one approach over the other. But I think as an industry, we really need to be doing both.
- [10:24]
Stephen Lacy
Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you just have to look to the crypto industry, which, you know, over a decade and a half went from basically nothing and then in a period of years became one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. And so there is certainly a page of the playbook that the clean energy industry can take specifically from the crypto industry. Very interesting. And one last question for you, Jigger. Are you, are you planning to put more money into these campaigns? Like, what was your financial role?
- [10:53]
Jigar Shah
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, folks got to be donors, right? That's how these things happen. But more importantly, I think there are experts who know how to craft the messaging and do that work. And I think there's two or three more people on this list who I think, you know, need to see the consequences of their actions. And so we're going to make sure that we finish what we started.
- [11:15]
Stephen Lacy
Okay, let's broaden the scope here and talk about President Trump's war on Iran, a war that almost no one asked for, but everyone will be paying for. And the details of how this came together in the fallout are quite remarkable. Just a reminder that we are recording this conversation on Wednesday, March 11th. So God knows what will happen between now and Friday morning when this episode comes out. But here's what we know as of Wednesday mid morning. In the last couple of weeks, the bombing has already sent reverberations through oil, gas and power systems around the world. It shut down the Strait of Hormuz, this shipping corridor that moves one fifth of the world's oil and gas supply. This is one of Iran's key leverage points. And the war is starting to spill into natural gas and electricity markets, particularly because of lng. So Iranian strikes on regional infrastructure have forced Qatar, which supplies roughly 20% of the world's LNG, to declare force majeure on some exports. And that's triggered this scramble in Europe and Asia in particular. And in some markets we've seen gas prices have nearly doubled from pre war levels. And like utilities in Japan are already seeing power futures jump by more than 30% on expectations of higher LNG costs. So this is, this is really impacting Europe and Asia in particular. And even though the US Produces a lot of natural gas, our domestic market is no longer insulated from global shocks because we're building out these export terminals. And when global LNG prices spike, these signals can eventually make their way back into US Gas prices and electricity costs as well. And the impact is really about how long this war goes on for. And we don't really know the answer to that question. So I want to talk about what some of these consequences are and ultimately how this may, depending on how long the war lasts, accelerate the shift toward distributed energy, localized generation, more specifically solar and batteries.
- [13:18]
Caroline Golan
Julia, over to you.
- [13:19]
Stephen Lacy
Like everyone uses gasoline prices as a benchmark. What are the other impacts or exposures that you're watching for?
- [13:28]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the things I'm thinking about is I don't think the impact is going to be consistent nationwide. Right. So I think there are actually regional components to. So when we think about areas of the US some are feeling will feel the pain more than others and in particular as a result of increased wholesale electricity prices. So if we think about New England. Right. New England competes for LNG with the rest of the world. So they are going to feel the impacts faster and much more in a more meaningful way than other places. And then other places like Hawaii, which relies significantly on imported oil. So again, I think we need to be careful not to sort of take a broad brush stroke across the whole country and think about this in a more nuanced way. And I think we will see increases, but again, not consistently so we'll see. Right? I mean, I think you're right. Everybody looks at gasoline prices, the prices at the pump, and those impacts are going to be felt faster and just be more visible to customers than what's happening on the electricity side of things.
- [14:33]
Stephen Lacy
It certainly impacted the price of jet fuel. I just went to buy my ticket for transition AI and I should have bought it a few weeks ago. I don't know. Did you book your travel yet?
- [14:43]
Jigar Shah
I booked it several weeks ago. Smart man. It was ahead of the curve.
- [14:48]
Julia Hamm
Yeah. I think anybody who has big trips planned for the summer should start buying their flights this week. I think before, definitely before we see
- [14:55]
Jigar Shah
look for a local cabin.
- [14:58]
Stephen Lacy
Yeah. I think jet fuel is something around like 30% of an airline's operating cost. So it feeds directly into the price of a ticket.
- [15:06]
Julia Hamm
What about you and Stephen? I think that, that, that, that gets us into a whole nother conversation around the impact of transporting goods. Right. Whether it's via flight or cargo ships or. I mean, we're going to see this impact to diesel prices which is going to have a trickle down impact to consumers on anything that gets moved from one place to another.
- [15:27]
Stephen Lacy
Absolutely. And then you see dual pressures on the food system. So the cost of transporting fuel, the cost of refrigeration, and then the cost of fertilizers as well. And obviously those costs will really depend on how long this war lasts. But it is a multipronged impact. Jigger, what are the impacts that you're looking at either in the energy sector or beyond?
- [15:50]
Jigar Shah
Well, I think, as you know, I'm good friends with James Guttman, who is one of the authors of the new jewel order that came out of Carlisle early last year. I think, you know, I had him on the Energy Empire podcast. And, you know, I think that this really just reinforces that thesis, right? Like, the US Will have really difficult impacts for people on affordability, right? I mean, gasoline prices probably will touch $4 a gallon. And that is a psychological threshold for folks. But we are going to have far more muted impacts than the folks who live in Asia, where, you know, between 75 and 90% of everything that they import on the LNG and oil side comes from the Straits of Hormuz. I think you've got little less impact in Europe, although you've already started to see price impacts, but far more muted than during the Ukraine conflict, right? I mean, TTF, I think, had gone all the way up to $300amegawatt hour on the gas side in Europe. And I think here they've gone from $31amegawatt hour to $44amegawatt hour, which is large from a percentage increase. But the absolute numbers are not close to the Ukraine conflict numbers yet. So I think that you're going to see a lot more pain around the world. And I think the real question, I think, is what is the signal that the US Is sending to all of the people around the world? Right? Because we no longer need to protect the Straits of Hormuz, right? Because we are an oil exporting country and a gas exporting country. And so are we sending the signal that we are now Fortress America and we don't care about everyone else? Right. Whether it's Korea or Japan or other places, because remember, the Koreans and the Japanese are the ones who are supposed to be funding all of these 10 new nuclear plants in the United States. I don't know this week whether they're feeling confident about wanting to fund VC Summer, right? Which is where Department of Commerce Secretary Lutnick said the money was gonna come from for that plant, right? And so the interconnectedness, I think, is real. The other thing that people don't understand is that a lot of the reason why we have really cheap interest rates and cheap, you know, and a strong currency in the United States is that during the Arab oil embargo, we made a deal with all the Middle Eastern countries that they would take all their surplus money and invest it in New York banks. And so all of the U.S. treasuries, all of the, like, bonds that we sell on Wall street are owned by Middle Eastern oil sovereign wealth funds. Right. And so I don't know if they want to diversify that more. Right. Et cetera. Right. I just. The thing that I think this administration gets wrong on a regular basis is our standard of living doesn't just come from the fact that we're an oil super major and that we produce all of this oil and gas. It also comes from the fact that a lot of people trust us enough that they put a lot of their excess currency into US banks in the financial system. And I don't know whether they're going to continue to want to do that.
- [18:50]
Stephen Lacy
Yeah. To your point about whether this is sending the signal about the US's desire or willingness to protect some of these shipping routes, I don't know that the administration really thought much about that. I mean, if you look at reporting, I don't think they even had it in their scenario that Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz. And, you know, this is a place where roughly one fifth of the oil and gas supply flows through and it's, again, it's a point of leverage for Iran. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert on the Strait of Hormuz, but I don't think the administration was trying to be an expert either.
- [19:28]
Julia Hamm
And it wasn't strategic.
- [19:30]
Jigar Shah
No. I think you're being a little bit too glib about this. I mean, you know, like, I think you're saying that it was incompetence, but. I think I am. But what I would suggest to you is that all of these countries were sitting with Trump a week before this occurred. At the Board of Peace meeting, this conversation was had explicitly. I know that for a fact. And so they may have like, taken everyone's concerns and said they're not important. Right. But it's not that no one, like, remember we were building up all of these ships, et cetera, for a month beforehand. Right. Oil prices went up from the low 60s to the low 70s since January 1st. Right. Traders already knew that conflict was going to occur. People had been writing pieces in Foreign affairs and other things that this was a problem. Right. You could say that maybe they don't know how to read or they didn't read or whatever it is, but I'M just saying it's not like no one said that this was a potential tail risk, you know, before the conflict started.
- [20:35]
Stephen Lacy
That's fair enough. And I will, I know that the Biden administration mapped out this scenario in particular, but the New York Times came out with a great piece this morning reporting that several Trump officials, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, dismissed warnings that Iran might respond to military strikes by using the Strait as an economic weapon.
- [20:56]
Jigar Shah
That's not incompetence. I just want to make sure that we're being crystal clear.
- [21:00]
Stephen Lacy
Right.
- [21:00]
Jigar Shah
Like it's one thing to say that no planning was done and they used ChatGPT to plan the thing. Fine. But like, but what I'm saying is that when you have molecules, people who are running this administration, like Chris Wright, right. And Sarah Week is coming up, like right around the corner. Right. People have been having conversations every single day for a month. Right. Because like they were planning their keynote addresses at Sarah Week. Like, it's not like they haven't been having these conversations. So I think it's important to note that they, that these concerns were dismissed. Like, I think in some ways they're saying that they don't care. It's not that they didn't consider it, that they don't care. And that I think is worse.
- [21:42]
Julia Hamm
I think we can't have this conversation without talking about China also.
- [21:45]
Stephen Lacy
That's right.
- [21:45]
Julia Hamm
I mean, there's a lot of, you know, I've been reading a lot of sort of conflicting opinions on that. Some saying, you know, part of this, either by design or not by the administration, could be targeted at harming or weakening China. But also then I'm hearing China has diversified sufficiently that actually this really isn't going to be that painful for them. So, you know, I'm not sure, I'm curious to hear where you guys come out on that.
- [22:08]
Stephen Lacy
I mean, I agree that this will only embolden China as an electro state. I totally agree. You can't have this conversation without talking about China. They've invested a lot in oil stockpiles. They've been invested heavily in domestic coal, in nuclear and in renewables. They've, they've invested heavily in electric vehicles, which is offsetting, you know, a million barrels a day. I mean, it's kind of small amount in the bigger picture, but like increasingly they're offsetting oil use through electric vehicles. You know, renewables account for like 80% of new electricity demand. So they have, they represent a growing share of final energy consumption as the country electrifies oil and gas Relative to other Asian nations, that makes up just a few percent of electricity generation where in some other countries in Asia can make up 40% or so. So I think that like this is only going to strengthen China's position because they have seen the writing on the wall. You know, that goes back to the new dual order conversation that we had last year to jigger that like this investment in localization is something that China has been thinking about very heavily.
- [23:16]
Jigar Shah
Yeah, China is very well prepared. I mean, so they knew something like this could happen. They have been over buying oil for the past year, right. It's been well documented and reported particularly by Arjun Murthy over at veritan. And they filled up a huge stockpile of oil. Like they're sitting on a ton of oil in their SPR. LNG imports are only 6% of their energy and so it's actually very small. They built an overland pipeline with Russia. So they've got Russian gas coming in and Russia has no other place to sell it because the EU won't buy it. And so they're in a fantastic position. The thing that I find shocking, I mean this is where I just think we keep saying that the administration's incompetent, but I actually think this is more sort of willful neglect. You're in a situation where they're actively hurting the US LNG industry. I don't think they really understand that the amount of money that you have to spend to switch from coal to natural gas is really backbreaking amounts of money. It is not something that anyone should do lightly. It's a 50 year investment. It is now telling everybody to skip that step. Right. And so all of these countries, from China to other 50 oil importing countries are saying, wait, we don't actually want to use natural gas, we'll use it at the port. Right? So we have an LNG import terminal, we'll import LNG there, we'll have a power plant there and we'll, we'll maybe even put our industry there. Right. But we're no longer going to build out thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines to be able to switch people to natural gas in country. Right. Because it's so expensive. And if you're going to have this kind of supply disruption and the US just doesn't care about protecting any of these shipping lanes, then why would we do that when it's actually expensive? Right. The landed cost of LNG is not cheap and, and you know, we could just skip all the way to solar and battery storage and the Chinese are obviously exporting that stuff to those 50 countries. And so I do think that this is going to hurt the entire story around the coal to LNG switch.
- [25:39]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, actually, Jigger, I was speaking earlier this week to a very senior level person in the electricity sector and asking his opinion on this, you know, and he was pointing out, you know, we've been watching over the past handful of years all of this coal to natural gas switching. And he said he actually is concerned that, you know, if we see real significant international demand for LNG cargoes out of the US drastically increase, we could actually begin to see this drive from gas back to coal switching. Right.
- [26:09]
Jigar Shah
The opposite direction, which I'm okay with, by the way. Like, I have no problem with people burning more coal because. Because it's clearly not cost effective. And so like the fact that you actually have coal, like, like you're always going to have coal in the same way that we have natural gas for capacity. Right? Like you're never going to get rid of capacity because the electricity markets need it. But what you found is India and in China they burned 3% less coal last year than they did previous years, even after building another 60 gigawatts of coal power plants. So you're going to see people build coal power plants and not burn coal in them because it's so much cheaper to build out solar and battery storage and wind. And so, like, I actually don't have any problem with the fact that there might be a temporary increase in coal demand because I think what you're going to see long term is people just bypass LNG and move directly to solar, wind and battery storage.
- [27:00]
Julia Hamm
Stephen, I feel like there's a good sound clip you can take for Jigger there. Take it really out of context and blow him up.
- [27:06]
Jigar Shah
I have said it many times before, so totally happy.
- [27:09]
Stephen Lacy
I have never heard those words come out of your mouth. Jigger.
- [27:13]
Jigar Shah
No, I mean, it's the same, by the way, as my point of view on data centers, right? I think that the fact that they're building tons of natural gas, go do it, right? But like, they're not going to run any of it. The heat rates are too low. Like the grid is way cheaper to supply the power. They're just giving us all free capacity and that's fine. Like I like free capacity. Like we need the capacity auctions to be lower. So like, I just think that that is going to be the methodology by which people protect their electricity markets anyway. So we shouldn't be fearful of coal plant construction. We should be Fearful of coal plant burning.
- [27:47]
Julia Hamm
Well, still not good for affordability. We don't need to be building stuff we don't need and isn't going to be utilized.
- [27:53]
Stephen Lacy
Absolutely.
- [27:54]
Jigar Shah
Well, if the US is going to have this security posture, then you do need it. Right? This is the thing is, if you're going to localize all of these economies as per the new jewel order, then you have to have your own capacity. You can't rely on these flows. Right. I mean, Korea had nine days of total storage of natural gas. Like, I mean, this is like we're out of control now. Like, when you think about Asian refineries, they're now running at 25 to 50%. Whatever the minimum is that they can run on in the next few days, they're going to run out of feedstock. As soon as they run out of feedstock and shut down those refineries, which they have to. Right. It's going to take three months to build them back up. Right. This is like, you know, like, I don't think people are going to take energy security for granted, you know, for the next 50 years.
- [28:50]
Caroline Golan
Are you ready to accelerate your career in clean energy? Of course you are. Yale's Financing and Deploying Clean energy certificate, a 10 month online program, is designed for working professionals ready to become the next leaders of the clean energy economy. You'll dive into real world frameworks in clean energy policy, project finance, technology and innovation all in just five hours a week. If you're passionate about clean energy and ready to level up your career, the Yale center for Business and the Environment is the place to start. Join this year's cohort by visiting cbey yale.edu to learn more and enroll today. And be sure to use the code OpenCircuit26 to save $500 on tuition. Applications are open through April 20, 2026.
- [29:36]
Stephanie Huang
AI is pushing economic and technological progress into a full outset sprint and the energy sector is at the center of it all. Explore the new era of AI innovation in the fifth season of where the Internet Lives, an award winning podcast from Google and Latitude Studios. What does it take for a data center to be a good grid citizen? How is AI revolutionizing agriculture, medicine, art and manufacturing? And what does that mean for the future of energy demand and digital infrastructure? Find where the Internet lives wherever you listen to podcasts or click the link
- [30:09]
Julia Hamm
in the show notes.
- [30:11]
Caroline Golan
On April 13th and 14th, Latitude Media is offering the chance to hear from the experts on the front lines of the AI energy infrastructure buildout transition. AI 2026 is a two day in person conference in San Francisco addressing the challenges of building at gigawatt scale in
- [30:26]
Stephen Lacy
the face of AI load growth.
- [30:28]
Caroline Golan
And the programming includes two live recordings of our two original podcasts. That's Catalyst with Shayl Khan and Open Circuit with me, Caroline Golan and Jigar Shah. Shale's going to be interviewing Google's new chief of AI infrastructure, Amin Vadat, and you're not going to want to miss that. So our podcast listeners get a 10% discount. Use the code PODS10P O D S PODS10. When you check out, you can follow the link in the show notes or go to latitudemedia.com events to see the full agenda and register. We will see you April 13th and 14th in San Francisco for Transition AI.
- [31:11]
Stephen Lacy
You know, let's talk about the long term impacts here. It kind of gets to the question, the heart of the question that we often ask here. You know, historically when oil markets were disrupted, countries didn't have a lot of options. They paid more, they scrambled for new supply. But you know, today there is a third option, electric transport, solar and batteries in particular. They're cheap enough to provide a powerful hedge against fuel volatility, particularly, particularly in natural gas. So do you think a shock like this will push investment into solar, batteries, other demand side resources? We just heard part of Jigger's argument and I want you to flesh that out a little bit more. But Julia, to you first, Stephen, I
- [31:52]
Julia Hamm
think it goes back to where you started this conversation on. It really depends how long the war lasts, right? If this is over in the matter of days or weeks, people have very short memories and I think we just sort of go back and keep doing what we've been doing. If it lasts a lot longer, then potentially it could have longer term implications, positive ones hopefully, for the build out of more clean energy in the country.
- [32:14]
Stephen Lacy
To this point, Jigger, about the unwillingness of America to protect traditional supply routes, do you think that whatever the length of this conflict is, do you think that memory will stick around longer in the markets that like that would create a longer term transition imperative?
- [32:33]
Jigar Shah
Yeah, look, I mean every month this administration is in office, they are telling people to believe what they say, right? Which is that they don't care about anybody but, you know, the United States of America. And I think that that means that they actually don't care about the United States of America either because like we are an interconnected country and our financial markets are buoyed by the fact that people, you know, are doing commerce in US dollars. But I think that on the perspective of solar, wind, I mean, I've already seen it, right? Like, I mean, I talked to a friend this morning who said that there's $100 billion worth of contracts that have been pending for over 12 months that just got signed over the last weekend. Right. Like, I mean, there's a lot of projects that folks in Algeria have been like sitting on for solar. A lot of projects that were, people were sitting on in India, people were sitting on in South Africa, and they magically all got signed this last weekend.
- [33:28]
Stephen Lacy
Why?
- [33:29]
Julia Hamm
But jigger. What about here. But what about here in the US Though? I think that's, you know, I'm curious to hear your perspective on. Is, is it going to drive change here?
- [33:38]
Jigar Shah
Well, remember that like, you know, when you think about where we are in the United states, we're at 43% of all of our electricity comes from natural gas. Right. The reason why all of the utility CEOs lost their jobs from 2005 to 2007 was because of volatility in natural gas prices. Right. And so they all still have long memories. And so they don't want us to become more dependent on natural gas. So like they're fine with the data center companies putting in all sorts of like, you know, natural gas capacity. They don't want them to burn more natural gas in that capacity except for 100 hours a year. And so I think you're still seeing a tremendous amount of movement on solar and wind. And so EIA has projected that, that most of everything that gets added to the grid this year will be solar, wind and battery storage. And they projected that that's also true for next year. Right. And so I think that the big challenge that we have in the United States is not this Straits of Hormuz issue. Right. Cause we are fairly energy independent. I think our big problem is we are a petro state. Right? And so when you're a petro state, you basically want the buggy whip industry to last longer, right? That's how the world works. Right. And so we are going to transition more slowly than states that are desperate for solutions because they are oil importing and natural gas importing nations. Right? And so like, that is just the truth of where we are. Like, I don't know what else to do about it except to explain that to people. I think the electric utility CEOs are actually on the front lines and they could do a lot about this. But you know, as you know, you and I have fought about this for years. Old habits, you know, die hard.
- [35:21]
Stephen Lacy
Yeah, I Think that's a fair characterization of the difference between the US and the rest of the world. And certainly there are countries where you're seeing crazy amounts of rationing right now with the cutoff of a huge amount of LNG supply. And those are the countries that are going to see a more direct policy response that could benefit, you know, distributed resources. Let's just. Just talk about a security issue that utilities are paying attention to, Julia. Utilities are under so many threats, a lot of physical threats, increasingly physical threats with the rise of drones. You know, the government and NERC is warning utilities to be aware of possible drone attacks in the wake of this war. What are the kinds of threats that utilities need to be paying attention to right now? What are the warnings?
- [36:13]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, no, I think everything you just laid out is true. But I also want to acknowledge the utility industry for a long time has been thinking about threats from drones going all the way back to the metcalf attack in 2013. That was not drones. But part of the response to that physical attack on the system was a push from the federal government for utilities to build big walls around their substations and other critical equipment. But the utility industry response to that back all the way in 2013 was, but that's not going to protect us from drones. Right. Big walls do not keep the drones out. So they've been thinking about this for a long time. And there is, you know, one of the things that the electric utility industry is so good at is very close coordination, not only with each other, but also with federal, state, and other agencies that are very focused on security risks of all types, be it physical or cyber. So I think the industry is very well aware of the risks and being thoughtful, you know, in terms of, you know, how do we stop it? That's a good question. But it's not just thinking about the use of drones to attack utility infrastructure. Right. I mean, utilities themselves are using drones a lot and spending a lot of time thinking about what security risks does that introduce into the system, especially given this goes back to the supply chain conversation. Right. Most of the drones and related equipment and cameras that are used within the electric system at this point still come from China. And that's a real problem for the utility industry. So we. We need to see more equipment used for the electric grid in the US Both manufactured either domestically or, you know, in friendly countries.
- [38:03]
Stephen Lacy
Jigger, how worried are you about the increase of possible physical or cyber threats from a conflict like this?
- [38:11]
Jigar Shah
Well, I mean, I think it's been, as Julia suggested, it's been on the mind of a lot of folks for a long time. I just talked to Tom Fanning and the former CEO of Southern company and he's now doing this full time, right. Is working on figuring out a lot of these security risks and has moved to Washington D.C. and is now working with the administration to try to not just figure out these risks for utilities, but also how it's interconnected with the communications sector, the water sector. Because if you take out something in the water sector, it could affect the utility sector, electric utility sector. And so, I mean, I'm glad that super smart people like Tom are thinking about these things, putting plans together, figuring out how we respond to it. But I think to Julia's point, I think the notion that we're going to prevent any and all vulnerabilities is probably not something that is a standard that we can reach. And so the real question is how do you best make sure that the is these soft targets are not so soft and how do you make sure that, like, we're resilient and so that if something does happen, we can bounce back and have plans in place that people have practiced?
- [39:17]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, Jigar, your point about the interdependencies is so important. And actually I think that gets talked about. It does not get talked about anywhere near enough across our society.
- [39:26]
Stephen Lacy
Well, these heady topics always bring us back to one subject, and that is distributed resources. If we want to think about physical security, if we want to think about price hedges, we got to get back to distributed resources. Let's talk about the big idea that we want to unpack today. That is the concept of bring your own distributed capacity. Obviously, we know that utilities across the country are facing a very stark problem. Load growth is coming in faster than they can build infrastructure. And to fill the gap, there's this growing push to encourage large customers to help create the capacity themselves. Mostly data centers, where, you know, tech companies with lots of capital and this crazy urgency to power data centers are searching for solutions. The hyperscaler, for example, could fund distributed resources and these resources could reduce peak demand on the system, freeing up capacity. And Julia, I know that you have been really focused on these kinds of programs asking like, how you verify the
- [40:32]
Caroline Golan
capacity, who pays for it, what's the
- [40:34]
Stephen Lacy
best way to put it to work? Ad hoc. And the alliance to Save Energy recently put out this analysis looking at how to use this model to unlock gigawatts of capacity. The solutions are long established, but the backdrop is much different. What did you find?
- [40:51]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, thanks, Steven. So, like you Said, you know, there's not actually a lot of new here. It's just sort of the context is changing. Right. And so it is an interesting time where we can have commercial frameworks where we have large load customers like a hyperscaler that is funding these incremental investments in demand side management, things like heat pumps, rooftop solar storage, and there's multiple ways that can come about. Right. There are some situations where it can be done in very close partnership with the utility. And these are essentially utility programs and the resources are managed by the utility in partnership with its residential or CNI customers. And in other instances where there may be bilateral lateral agreements between the hyperscalers or other large load customers and aggregators that aren't, they don't need to work directly with the utility. So I think there's pros and cons to both approaches. Different approaches work in different market structures. But yeah, I mean, this idea of hyperscalers essentially creating the capacity headroom that they need. Right. I don't think bring your own distributed capacity is intended to say that it can provide all of the capacity that a hyperscaler is going to need, but it can create sort of that headroom in order to help get them speed to power, help bridge over time, create a bridge to when the utility actually can get the necessary infrastructure upgrades and capacity that's needed. So there's a lot of different components to this that we're seeing play out.
- [42:23]
Stephen Lacy
And when you looked across the industry, what are the figures for peak demand reductions that we could see in a typical system?
- [42:32]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, well, so there was the paper that we did with the alliance to Save Energy didn't do that analysis itself, but we spent a lot of time talking to different utilities, understanding their perspectives on these issues and also looking at what other work had been done. So there's a brattle study in particular, I think that's a good one to look at, which modeled the peak reduction potential of a demand response and energy efficiency portfolio for a single midwestern utility. So sort of take that as like a typical utility. And what they found was that together demand response and energy efficiency could meet up to 18% of that utility's 2030 seasonal peak load. So, you know, we're not, again, this is, this is one tool in the toolkit. Right. It's not 100%. In this particular case with this midwestern utility, we're talking about 18% of seasonal peak load.
- [43:24]
Jigar Shah
Julia, I think that a lot of us saw the rewiring analysis that came out earlier is that like in some Ways related to this effort.
- [43:31]
Julia Hamm
It is, yeah. So Rewiring America has this homegrown energy report that they issued which essentially found that household upgrades and heat pumps, again, rooftop solar storage essentially could collectively provide enough capacity to meet 100% of projected electricity demand growth from data centers. So there is that analysis, right? So we have these two pieces. We've got the Rewiring America work that says sort of theoretically we could, we could get 100% and then this more one single case study look at a Midwest typical Midwestern utility saying 18%. So you know, it's going to be situation dependent in different places that, you know, the number probably is somewhere in between those two numbers would be my guess. But I think a really important part of all of this is, is really not. I want to make sure we don't overlook the benefits to the actual residential customers when we're talking about a bring your own distributed capacity. Because that's like a foundational element of this concept is that yes, we are creating headroom for the data center, the capacity headroom for the data centers in a way in which it's directly benefiting individual customers. Right. So you know, if you have a data center that is providing the funding to add these distributed energy resources and energy efficiency improvements to residential customers, you know, you could be seeing these types of upgrades for households basically reducing their electricity bills anywhere from 700 to $1,000 a year, especially for low income customers. That's really meaningful. So if we can design these programs in a way in which they are focused on customers that have a really high energy burden. And again, it's very location specific. Right. Because these aren't intended, these bring your own distributed capacity programs really aren't intended to be system wide. They really need to be focused on very specific parts of the system where the data center is going to be located and where there are capacity constraints and then targeting them at customers within that same footprint and ultimately those residential customers will benefit. So this is very closely tied to the affordability conversation. There's the sort of macro level affordability conversation and then there's the micro level conversation about affordability for customers with high energy burden. And this really, if done well, can help address both levels of the affordability conversation.
- [46:03]
Stephen Lacy
Jigar, you've long been shaking your fist about how utilities are sort of taking the wrong approach to integrated resource planning and how they're meeting the current load growth picture. I do hear from a lot of these companies that are operating in this space. So they obviously have an incentive to say that things are going really well. But I'm hearing that they have increased confidence that utilities are like waking up to this reality and they're no longer thinking about efficiency, demand side management as like compliance, but about an actual resource. Do you think that that is true?
- [46:43]
Jigar Shah
Well, I mean, what did Winston Churchill say, right? Like America always does the right thing after exhausting all other avenues. I guess that applies to the utilities too. Look, I think we're in a unique situation. Chamath from the all in podcast also basically put an idea like this out into the world on Twitter like two or three weeks ago where he said, you know, like, we think we can actually bring all this capacity from battery storage and solar across the country. And he obviously is on the all in podcast with David Sacks, who's the AI head for Trump. And so I think that there are lots of different places that this conversation happening from different quarters. I think the thing that frustrates me the most about this moment is that the only people who have the, the resources to really drive this conversation is the U.S. department of Energy. And we're being asked to do this in private quarters with ad hoc and the alliance of Save Energy and Rewiring America and Chamath from the all in podcast and then our stuff. And now you have that new coalition that was announced this week called Utilize, which Google and Tesla and carrier are a part of. And when you think about carrier, I mean, Lord almighty, one third of all home air conditioning systems are carrier air conditioning systems. They want every single new air conditioning system sold in the United States of America by them to have their 4 kilowatt battery integrated into that thing. When you think about how quickly those 4 kilowatt batteries become like real grid resources, that's a lot of kilowatts very fast, right? And so this could be a huge solution really fast. I mean, the other big trend that I'm seeing is that you've got huge like anti data center movements going on, right? And so a lot of the reason why utilities should want to do this is because it actually like provides real tangible benefits to communities that then say, oh, this data center thing isn't just a burden because like, you know, if you just listen to the President in the State of the Union address and you know, you say, I promise you it's not going to raise your rates. Well, your rates went up 15%. But that wasn't because of the data center, that was because of something else. Right. And you know, instead you contrast that with, we're going to like help subsidize all of these carrier facilities to go into your homes. We'll pay the $3,500 extra for the battery or whatever it is. And you know, we're going to like, make sure that you have these benefits. Well, now it's tangible. You have something in your garage that actually happened because the data center company came in. Right. And so, like, even though I think the numbers do pencil and I think this report does a fabulous job of suggesting that it also is like what is needed in this moment to figure out how to negotiate the peace between these data center companies who want to get online quickly and communities who are just swimming in misinformation right now and are being told that these data center companies are going to do all these bad things to you.
- [49:46]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, right. I mean, it's in utilities best interest to have this load growth through the data centers. Right. And this is an opportunity for the utilities to bring a new solution to the table. That again, it's sort of, it's a bridge strategy. It's increasing speed to power. It could potentially, if the investments are well targeted, it could also potentially help either delay or not need capital intensive buildouts at all in some places, which, yes, theoretically, the utility business model says that they should want to do. But in this age of affordability, utilities have to be very careful about their investment strategy. And there is only so much price increase that the regulators are going to allow customers to absorb. And so that is now requiring utilities to think very differently about these resources than they have in the past because they have access to a lot of capital. But the capital allocation has to be done in a different way today.
- [50:44]
Stephen Lacy
What I'm trying to figure out is we often hear the industry introducing these concepts or talking about how important they are, and then the utilities obviously move at their own pace. Do you think that the narrative inside utilities, Julia, is consistent with what you both just outlined that like, they actually recognize those points?
- [51:06]
Julia Hamm
I think the answer is it depends. Yes, some of them do, but certainly they're not all there yet. I know you guys talked last week on the show quite a bit about the new Google agreement with Xcel Energy in Minnesota. Right. But that's a great example in that it has both the bring your own capacity portion, right. With the build out of large amounts of wind, solar storage at grid scale. But then it also has the bring your own distributed capacity portion with $50 million being put in by Google specifically to Excel's Capacity Connect program, which is focused on this distributed network of smaller batteries across their system in order to increase capacity and improve grid resilience. So it's good to begin the very early stages of utilities actually starting to begin to execute on these types of programs. But I also want to make sure we don't forget about the regulators and the importance of educating regulators. You know, we saw another example where NV Energy had proposed something similar to what Xcel is doing, but the commission in Nevada said, interesting concept. We're not ready to approve this yet. You need to go back to the drawing board and sort of give us more to prove that this is the right approach. So I think as an industry, we need to be very thoughtful about. And again, this goes back to my nature of sort of all those years at SIPA and sort of being the convener and the collaborator and bringing people together. It's gotta be the utilities, the regulators, the hyperscalers, the technology companies, the consumer advocates. We've all got to be getting educated together in order to make sure that these programs are designed in a way where we truly are maximizing the benefits for the entire ecosystem as opposed to creating winners and losers.
- [53:00]
Stephen Lacy
If I had a dollar for every time that we've talked about the need to educate regulators, well, I wouldn't.
- [53:05]
Julia Hamm
You'd be rich.
- [53:06]
Stephen Lacy
I wouldn't need to be finding sponsors for this podcast. But why don't we just get them all in a room and sit them down and make them listen to the entire back catalog of open circuit? Do you think that'll change?
- [53:15]
Jigar Shah
That was called the winter meeting of nehruk. I mean, like, honestly, what happened at the winter meeting of NARUC was the entire meeting was hijacked by grid utilization. Everyone from the Republican side of the aisle to the Democratic side of the aisle was talking about we need to get more out of the grid that we've already paid for. I think the big challenge that we have right now is we don't have a new macro narrative within which this fits. Right. And I think that's what we need to get to. So the macro narrative of the past was renewable portfolio standards, basically. Right. Like we need to pass 100% renewable energy mandates.
- [53:48]
Stephen Lacy
Whatever.
- [53:48]
Jigar Shah
Whatever it was. Right, Right. And I don't think the big green organizations. Right. Have come up with a new macro narrative on their side. And so I think a lot of what this response looks like is the industry itself coming up with a macro narrative around grid utilization. And that's dynamic line ratings and advanced conductors. And then a lot of this, you know, bring your own distributed capacity work. And then there's multiple layers to It. Right. And so that's why the big green dollars are needed, right? Because. Because that's like a $500 million NGO budget, right? So when you think about what this means, you could be stuck with a demand response framework, right? Or an emergency demand response framework, which is not what we want. So when you look at people like weavegrid or Spark Fund in the Capacity Connect program for Xcel Minnesota, they're suggesting real deferral that's capable of being accomplished on distribution system upgrades because of of a continuous approach to managing load and making sure that those peaks don't come up.
- [54:48]
Stephen Lacy
Right.
- [54:48]
Jigar Shah
Then you've got the recent BRA guidelines that came out of the pjm, right? And what's going to be allowed in the June auction. And so that means that all of these batteries and other things can now be used for transmission system capacity payments. Right. And Voltis and some of those folks are using these 2222 resources to do that. Right. And so I think that when you think about just layering the benefits on top of each other, I think we have not done a great job of putting all of that context in place because we certainly are deploying all of the assets. Right. I mean, when you talk to Rheem and some of these water heater companies, every one of them is like, we're a VPP now.
- [55:33]
Julia Hamm
Right?
- [55:34]
Jigar Shah
As a carrier is obviously coming out with a VPP product. Right. You know, Tesla is announcing how they've already shipped a million powerwalls and they've got VPPs across the country. Right. And so when you think about just how much is happening, Basepower, I think, just announced 100 megawatt contract with a rural electric co op. And so you're starting to see so much activity occurring, but the framework under which it sits is not yet like really clearly articulated so that utilities understand what the 20 year picture looks like.
- [56:07]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, jigger. On your point about grid utilization, I do think it's interesting to see what's happening in Virginia, right, with this new legislation that's going to require the investor and utilities to actually assess and be much more transparent with grid utilization. And so I'm really curious to see whether this becomes a trend, right. Are we going to see other states begin to do something similar? I think it's tricky though, right, because grid utilization, I think there's real benefit in doing this. But the grid is so complex. I am a little worried that policymakers are going to get information from the utilities on grid utilization and put in place laws and regulation that actually have unintended consequences because they don't understand how the system really works. So. So I'm sort of. I can argue that this is a really good thing to do, but I'm also cautious in that we need to make sure it doesn't have unintended negative consequences.
- [57:06]
Jigar Shah
Well, I think that's why the $500 million that goes into the big green groups needs to be focused on this. Right? It needs to be studied. There needs to be a lot of money going to SIPA and all the rest of the organizations to actually facilitate this conversation. I mean, right now, like, I was at the UNC Cleantech conference this week, week. And, you know, Tom Fanning was there and, like, Southern was there, and Southern was like, yeah, we just said yes to all this stuff. Like, you know, we're doing dynamic line ratings across Georgia. We're doing, you know, like, you know, gig, 6 gigawatts of battery storage. Right. We got a $26 billion loan from the, you know, loan programs office. We're saving $7 billion of ratepayer benefits. And Duke just shrugged their shoulders and was like, we make 50 a lot of money on 50, 50 equity debt ratios. Why would we do this? You know, what's going on? Like, we don't want to lead in any way, shape or form. I mean, the governor came to the conference and was like, like, what the hell? Like, you know, they just upped their capex by 18% to $103 billion. And, like, and are promising rate increases of 15%. Right? And so, like, every single utility is coming at this from their own perspective. Duke was actively badmouthing dynamic line ratings at the conference. Right? And so, like, I don't know where this goes, but I do know that, like, it's not going to go well for Duke. And so, like, my sense is, is that we're going to need a lot of this money and a lot of this expertise at the Rocky Mountain Institute, at nrdc, at edf, at all these other places to get up to speed on this stuff. Like, they still haven't weighed in. I think they're really talking mostly about, like, reducing utility roes and like. And like, I mean, I was like, you're out to lunch. What is wrong with you? This is not where the argument should be. And the people who work there, by the way, are fantastic. So I'm not badmouthing these places, but I think that their donors haven't given them a new scope of work to work on. And so we need to all coordinate this stuff well. And I Think this paper, frankly is super important to getting us there on the macro scale.
- [58:58]
Stephen Lacy
Do you really think that the enviros and industry will be aligned on this? Like, the environmental groups are hearing from their base that people are cynical about the AI build out. They don't want to be seen as championing this kind of load growth. And I think they see it as a step backward. And so, yes, we might be utilizing these resources, but to what end? And I think there's a lot of cynicism probably from the base of these environmental groups, whereas the industry is perfectly happy to slot into this all of the above framework, champion energy dominance, say yes, let's win the AI race and here's how we're going to do it. This is a new tool in the toolkit. And so I don't know that those messages are ever going to be really aligned.
- [59:40]
Jigar Shah
It's a very difficult thing, right? I mean, like I'm on the board of the Yale, like Environmental justice center and the environmental justice people are 100% behind this. Right? Because for them, like, it's not scarcity. Right. Like, I think the people you're talking about are the folks within the movement who just basically believe in degrowth. I think in, you know, but in the environmental justice community they want opportunity. Like the, this is not really about degrowth for them. They're just saying like all this stuff has occurred and our children in our neighborhoods weren't able to get jobs out of it. We want to get jobs this time around. Right?
- [60:13]
Stephen Lacy
We want, and we don't want gas engineers, engines parked on trucks in our neighborhood.
- [60:16]
Jigar Shah
Totally right. And we want to make sure that we get access to batteries and solar. We want to get access to this technology. And so the coalition has lots of different people with lots of different opinions. And you're right, the coalition's going to shift. But I think in general this is a more hopeful and a better future and I think the vast majority of folks see that.
- [60:36]
Stephen Lacy
Julia, do you see BYOCD as a bridge strategy or a permanent feature in how we could kind of build the next phase of the grid?
- [60:45]
Julia Hamm
I think it'll be both. Right. I think again, it's going to be different in different situations. So I think there are some places where it's a very logical bridge strategy and other places where the situation is different and it could be a long term solution.
- [60:59]
Stephen Lacy
I mean, man, if we can't make this model work now, when are we going to make it work really?
- [61:04]
Julia Hamm
I mean, one of the other things, Stephen, I just want to Mention, you know, when we talk, and this is sort of more macro beyond just the, the bringer and distributed capacity conversation, but in this conversation around data centers, hyperscalers, AI, we spend so much of our time as an industry talking about what's happening in pjm. And I just want to remind everybody there's a lot more to the country than pjm. And so sometimes I worry and when I think about it from a mass consumer perspective, the messaging around data centers are driving up costs, electricity prices for everyone is the narrative I think that people are hearing across the country, when in reality, yes, that's what's happening in pjm, but that's not what's currently happening in most other parts of the country. So I just want all of us as an industry to be very intentional about when we're talking about what's happening in pjm, being explicit about, here's how PJM is different from what's happening in the rest of the country.
- [62:03]
Stephen Lacy
Julia Hamm is a partner with the Ad Hoc Group. This was so much fun. Good to see you.
- [62:08]
Julia Hamm
Yeah, great to be here again.
- [62:09]
Stephen Lacy
I've got a pair of grass skis that in case you can't find any snow there. So just let me know if you want to borrow them.
- [62:17]
Julia Hamm
I have to give that a shot.
- [62:19]
Stephen Lacy
Great to see you. Jigger Shah is the co managing partner of Multiplier. Thanks, Jigger.
- [62:23]
Jigar Shah
Thank you. That was some dark humor. Lord almighty. Right? Like we are running out of water.
- [62:31]
Stephen Lacy
Don't change that shirt.
- [62:34]
Jigar Shah
I won't today.
- [62:35]
Stephen Lacy
All right. Open Circuit is produced by Latitude Media. The show is edited by me, Sean Marquand and Anne Bailey. You can find episodes of Open Circuit on Latitude Media's YouTube page. Click the link in the show notes and subscribe there. You can also of course, find the audio version anywhere you get get your podcast and transcripts of every episode are available@latitudemedia.com We've got newsletters there, so we're constantly reporting on many of the topics that we cover on this show. And you can sign up to our Daily Briefing, our AI Energy Nexus newsletter, and hear more about our upcoming events, one of which we had a very successful event with the Ad Hoc group and we are continuing to partner with Julia's organization to build really solid industry conferences is so just head on over to Latitude Media and hit subscribe and you'll stay up to date with what we're working on at Latitude. Thanks so much for being here. We will catch you next week.