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- [00:03]
A
Latitude Media, covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.
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B
Do you guys ever write reviews for things online?
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C
Never.
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D
I read them. I read them assiduously though. It's like. And you can't just read the first few because they're always like, oh, this is awesome. And then you go way down and it's like, this thing smells really weird or it's itchy or this. The place that said it had a kitchen doesn't actually have an oven. I mean, there's like, you gotta read deep.
- [00:32]
C
No, I have a system. Like, you have to click on the three star reviews, right? Not the one stars because they're just like out for blood. But like the three star reviews tell you all of that good stuff. And then I'll probably make the purchase anyway. But it's good to know what you're walking into.
- [00:49]
B
Do you guys ever read the reviews for Open Circuit?
- [00:51]
C
I think I did read the reviews for Energy Gang once. I don't think I've ever read the Open Surrogate reviews.
- [00:56]
B
Are they good? I'm refreshing Apple like every other day.
- [00:59]
C
Are they good? Do we have any good reviews?
- [01:01]
D
Do people review us?
- [01:02]
C
Really?
- [01:02]
B
Oh, yeah. That's. What do you think I'm asking for at the end of a show?
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C
Rate and review? Oh, goodness.
- [01:09]
B
I mean, look, we ask it at the end of every show, but this year, you know, we're asking for one gift from you all. If you want to help this show grow in 2026, go to Apple and write us a review. Spend some time while you're doing your Christmas shopping, just pop on over there and maybe you can give us rating on Spotify too. But the majority of you are on Apple, so go ahead and do that and I will force Jigger to read them.
- [01:33]
C
Only if they're three stars.
- [01:34]
B
No, no three star reviews. Five star review.
- [01:37]
C
Okay, only five star reviews. But give us constructive feedback within your five star reviews.
- [01:41]
B
Constructive feedback is good, but yeah, preferably five stars. But hey, I'm not going to force you to do anything. Also while you're doing that, our listener survey is linked in the show notes. So that's going to help us understand a little bit more about who you are and how we can structure content in 2020. All entrants are going to be entered into a raffle for a $100Amazon gift card.
- [02:02]
C
I have to say, for whatever reason, I have been an assiduous person that's filling out surveys this year. Oh, like I get all these random surveys right after I go to a conference and I'm like, we'd like to improve your experience next year. Please fill out a survey. And I'm like, you know what?
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B
I will and how critical.
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D
You know what you can and I've.
- [02:22]
B
Got time and what, what do you like, are you really critical or are you nice?
- [02:27]
C
Yeah, I am very critical. Like, I'm like, look, you know, you wasted my time in these three things and so like you should like fix that. And like this thing didn't work perfectly well and these things were good. And like, I don't know, I've gone to so many conferences now I have strong opinions.
- [02:41]
B
Well, if I see like a really overwhelmingly positive survey response from like sugar Jaw and I'll know, I'll know who to look to.
- [02:51]
C
Hi Nay, I put my name and email on them. You will know.
- [02:58]
B
From Latitude Media. This is Open Circuit it was almost exactly a year ago that three of us reunited. And somehow in that time, the energy world changed faster than we could talk about it. So as we barrel toward the end of the year, we're doing something that feels appropriate for a 12 month period that never stops surprising us. First, I'm going to make Jigger and Catherine revisit their own words and ask them to defend their takes and observations from the year. Then, in honor of awards season, we're handing out our own year end honors, celebrating the twists and characters and storylines that define 2025 for better or worse. And finally, we'll look ahead with one big prediction for 2030. Our 2025 retrospective is coming right up.
- [03:44]
A
Next Tracker is now Next Power as electricity demand surges with AI data centers and electrified infrastructure, solar is the only power source that can scale fast enough to meet this moment. Nextpower is the revolutionary technology platform ready to deliver it. By designing connected systems that unify the structural, electrical and digital technologies of a Solar Power Plant, NextPower is enabling smarter, more resilient energy generation that's ready to power our electric future. Powering what's next@nextpower.com OpenCircuit is brought to.
- [04:16]
B
You by Natural Power. For nearly two decades, Natural Power has provided engineering and consulting services for renewables projects across the US Natural Power supports clients in wind, solar and battery storage with a focus on independent engineering, technical due diligence, energy estimation and developer support. With more than 245 gigawatts of project experience in North America and acceptance from major financiers, Natural Power is responsive, able to meet tight timelines and pragmatic. Natural Power works with you to understand, quantify and mitigate risks. Learn more@naturalpower.com or click the link in the show notes.
- [04:51]
A
In the US a billion dollar disaster now strikes every three weeks on average. That's why Latitude Media and the Ad Hoc Group are launching the Power Resilience forum, taking place January 21 through 23 in Houston, Texas. PRF 2026 will be the center of the conversation on resilience. Utilities, regulators, innovators and investors will all be in the room talking about how to keep the grid running in this new era of heat waves, wildfires and storms. Expect conversations on everything from AI driven solutions to new financing models that can actually get projects built. If you work on the grid or depend on it, this is the place to be. Join us in Houston in January for the 2026 Power Resilience Forum. Check out the agenda and register@resilience-forum.com.
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B
Welcome to the show. I'm Stephen Lacy. I am executive editor at Latitude Media. Jigar Shah and Kathryn Hamilton are here with me as always. And guys, this is our 40th episode. Did you know that?
- [05:57]
C
Oh, for open Circuit. Because I started counting since like 2013.
- [06:02]
B
Okay. Yeah, it is probably somewhere around the mid-400s for us. I can't remember how many episodes we've recorded, but it's been a year or almost a year since we got back together. So this is episode 40. It's been therapeutic for me, I can tell you that.
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C
Oh, totally cathartic. I mean, you know, I have to yell like into the, into the microphone.
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D
Yeah, yeah. And I think everybody should start at the beginning of the series and listen all the way through or else you'll miss something.
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B
No, the jigger was just reminiscing about it like a 2016 episode or something. And even then it was a live show, so the audio quality was spotty. But like, things have changed radically since then.
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C
But our takes have never been hotter.
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B
Kathryn Hamilton is the co founder and chair of 38 North Solutions. How are we doing?
- [06:57]
D
I am doing great, thank you. We're approaching the holidays quickly, so I am in full on what am I going to bake and what am I going to buy People mood.
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B
So you're not like journaling and cleansing yourself mentally.
- [07:13]
D
That's what January is about.
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B
Jigger, are you a resolution guy?
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C
Oh, hell no.
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B
You just roll into the year.
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C
I feel like if I need to make an improvement, you gotta like, like just make the improvement. You know, you don't wait until like a certain time of the year.
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B
Or if you, if you have an improvement for Jigger, write it in the apple Comments? How about that?
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C
Oh, gosh, yes, please. I would love to crowdsource improvements.
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B
Jigar Shah is the co managing partner at Multiplayer. He's the former director of the Energy Dominance Financing Office. How's it going?
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C
Oh, my God. I'm not the former director of the Energy Dominance Financing Office. We had a far more respectable name and I actually, like, have my vest right. That says LPO on it, so. But I am super excited about the fact that, you know, two of my old colleagues got promoted this week to co chief investment officers. And so, you know, I think the office is continuing to operate.
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B
Do you guys ever listen back to the episodes that we publish?
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C
Well, I just randomly listened to1 from 2015.
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D
I sometimes like to listen to see what got cut and what stayed in, like, what was the storyline. Especially if I mention something and somebody that I know might be interested, I'd like to refer back to it and tell them when, you know, when we talked about whatever the thing is. And it sometimes helps to know how that all kind of turned out when you edited it.
- [08:41]
B
Well, I hope you went back and listened to a lot of episodes this year because it's going to help you out a lot in our first segment. And I need to put my hat on for this one, wherever it is here. So we're.
- [08:53]
C
No.
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D
I thought he was going to wear a Santa hat. He wears, like, a John Deere kind of hat.
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C
Exactly. He's like. He's like camouflaging himself for deer hunting.
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D
You look like the guy that builds those structures on Instagram out of, like.
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C
Bark and wood and, oh, my God, mud. That's. That's a New Hampshire coming back out.
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B
We. We collectively said 225,000 words this year, ranging from the informed to the wildly speculative. Got my. My stocking right here.
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C
Oh, wow.
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B
I have stuffed jigger. This is my stocking. And you've got your quotes in my stocking. So.
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C
Wow.
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B
I'm gonna put. I put a bunch of quotes from you both into separate stockings, and I am going to pull them out at random and read them back to you. And you have to respond with three different options. You can either defend it. Yep. Still. Right. You can update it. The world has changed. Here's what I'd say now. Or you can disown it. I was wrong. May have come.
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D
I never said that.
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C
I never said that that was AI Slob.
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B
I am at peace with that. So I'm holding jigger stalking here. Let's. Let's start here. Are you ready?
- [10:10]
C
No.
- [10:12]
B
No one in Their right mind is thinking about doubling down on manufacturing in the United States right now while all this uncertainty is occurring. So that is Jigger talking about the broad policy chaos. And we were talking specifically about the Trump administration's trade war with China, the imposition of new tariffs, and Jigger was arguing that the re industrialization was not going to happen under the current regime of the administration. So Jigger, explain what you meant by that and do you stand by it?
- [10:46]
C
Yeah, I think I was talking more about, like, the clean energy supply chain and all the stuff that we were working on under the Biden administration. So maybe there's a clarification there. But, like, I certainly think we're manufacturing more, you know, natural gas components in turbines right now than we have ever before. But I mean, I think I stick by it. Like, I think in general, the rules by which you get get paid back for manufacturing here in the United States have still not been clarified by the administration. I think a lot of the input costs still have tariffs on them. You know, I think that, like, when you think about what some of the long term policy might look like in the future, like, it still is very unclear. And so it's really hard to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a new manufacturing facility right now.
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B
So any thoughts on what you think the story of Trump's tariff policies will be when we look back on 2025?
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C
I mean, I don't think anyone actually has seared it into their brain. And so my sense is if he rolls most of it back in 26, they will have forgotten that we ever had them in 25. Like, that's the weird thing about Trump is he just, like, can get away with completely changing the story and then disowning the fact that he had any part in creating the conflict in the first place.
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D
Well, and claiming that he fixed it.
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B
Yeah, right. Create the problem. Get rid of the problem and say you fixed it. All right, Catherine, over to you.
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D
Uh, oh, whose stocking do I get exactly?
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B
You get Sandy's stocking.
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D
My wife, Sandy. Thank you. I hope I do okay.
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B
Here we go. I got a lot of quotes in here. I got a really big stocking full of paper. There are fewer EU companies wanting to come to the US Now. The US Is much less attractive. So I think this is kind of similar to the story we were just talking about. The policy uncertainty is now pushing a lot of US Companies over to Europe. We've talked about that extensively in a handful of shows, and many European companies are deciding not to invest here. How has that story played out, Catherine? And do you stand by that observation?
- [13:00]
D
Yeah, I definitely stand by it. Just anecdotally, I'm an advisor to a fund, a North American fund, and they had sort of gone. They're in Canada, so they had invested in Canadian companies, and they were really looking at US Companies. And they still are to some degree, but they're also like, let's go to the eu. The policies are more favorable right now. And I think a lot of this has to do with two things. Policies and then also just uncertainty of what's happening. And so I would stand by it. My hope is just watching what some states are doing, that maybe some states will be lowering companies back and keeping companies here. But, yeah, the overall gestalt is. Europe might be a better venture right now.
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B
Jager, you were bouncing all around the world this year, talking to lots of different countries, people administering clean energy policy, trying to figure out how to lure these companies. So how has that story shaped up as we close out the year?
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C
Yeah, it's been rough. I mean, you know, like, I think part of the challenge in these other countries is that they don't really have the attitude that is needed, I think, to attract a lot of these companies. Like Canada, for instance, has still not clarified whether they're willing to take real risk. They're like, well, we'll give you a loan, but only if a commercial bank would give you a loan. Or in the eu. The problem with the EU is it's now a much bigger market in terms of population than the United States.
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B
But.
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C
But it's still 27 member countries. Right. So getting something done in Germany does not mean that you could, like, really make any money in France or any of the other countries. And so the EU itself is not very powerful. And then Australia, like, continues to, like, just want to sell rocks. They keep talking about wanting to upgrade and, like, you know, make finished goods in Australia. But then every time you pitch them an idea, they're like, well, I don't know. That seems like a lot of risk. Like, why don't we just sell more rocks to China? And so, like, I. I think that I'm still waiting. I think that the ambition is there, but they haven't yet figured out how to really show leadership such that a lot of these companies feel like they want to make big moves into their jurisdiction.
- [15:17]
B
All right, let's pull out. Jigger's stocking. Here we go. Let's see if we can get a spicy one. So far, they've been a little tame.
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D
What Everybody in Blank State, City, country is stupid.
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C
I believe would be, yes, 100%.
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B
Here's a good one. I just have never met a better climate president than this one. That was during our live show in the spring. And you were reacting to news that like Democratic states were vigorously defending their state climate laws against federal executive orders and the president's policies were driving people to do more. Do you stand by it, do you defend it, do you clarify it or do you disown it?
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C
Oh, no, I still defend it. I mean, look, I think that like, he's not a good climate president in the sense that like he believes in climate change, but in terms of like capital formation. Right. You know, like he has shaken everybody and forced them to like, look at their priors and then recommit to this moment. And everyone did. I mean, you just saw major announcements this week between Nextera and Google and like Meta buying more gigawatts and then the Clean Energy Buyers alliance announcing that this has been a record year for long term contracts of renewable energy. Right. Battery storage has like been on a tear. Right. I mean, you know, I just think that like, do I think that like this president is good for capital formation? No, not at all. Right, but do I think that this president has like forced people to reconsider whether they're really buying these technologies because they're superior to their fossil counterparts or whether they're actually being subsidized? Yes. And like in almost all cases they're like, these are superior solutions to their fossil counterparts. Like we're buying them because they're better for us.
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D
I think Bill Gates, you would consider the outlier in that, right?
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C
Oh my God, don't get me started. Catherine, you're just baiting me.
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B
Catherine, Catherine, have you seen states step up more than they otherwise would have or have they suffered because of the drawback of federal funds?
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D
And yeah, so I think that both can be true. So, you know, a lot of these, like Solar for All program was completely cut after funding had already gone out to the states. So the states was just at an event in Michigan this week and they're like, yeah, we're like setting up all the instruments we need to continue to do the program regardless. Like, we already had all the systems in place, we had the communities gathered. Let's do it. So I think it's a little bit of trying to get things done in spite of what's happened.
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B
All right, Catherine, over to you. Is it about does your heartbeat when I do this?
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D
I'm just like, is it a Patter, that's all I can think of.
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B
There has to be pain felt about taking these votes. When they wrote letters and letters, clutching their pearls and saying, oh, we'll never vote for a bill that does any harm to our constituents. That was you talking about Republican members of Congress who, you know, you were calling for political accountability. You're pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans who privately supported these clean energy tax credits but then ultimately voted to repeal them anyway. So what will we look back and say about this Republican Congress when it came to the energy legislation?
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D
Well, hopefully in the midterms we'll see some accountability for all the votes that they took, not just against clean energy, but against people's pocketbooks. And I think you saw that in the sort of off year elections in Virginia and New Jersey and other places and Georgia. The PSC people are mad. They're mad about their energy costs and what they took the vote on is definitely detrimental to all of that and isn't helpful. So I'm. They haven't been held to account yet, but I think they will be.
- [19:12]
B
Jigger. What does accountability look like in this, the context of this story?
- [19:17]
C
I mean, the problem with our industry is that the people who lead our industry do not actually understand what it means to go for the jugular. Right. When someone wrongs you, like, they sign a letter and then they just say, oh, I'm never gonna have consequences for voting against the letter. What you do the next day is you bas find the most right wing Nazi you can find in their district and you give them $100,000 to primary them. Right. And you make them have to spend 10 times more to defend their seat in the primary and say all sorts of unconscionable things that you, that they don't want to say on the record to defend their seat and you embarrass the crap out of them. And then the next time you see them, you say, hey, next time you wrong our industry, I'm going to do that again. And so like, don't do it again. Right, but we didn't do that. So in the end they're like, I can make empty promises to the clean energy industry and there's no consequences to that.
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B
Yeah. One of the more interesting interviews that I heard this year on that subject was between Lara Pierpoint and Shamik Duda of Overture vc and they were talking about how to build political power in Washington and he, you know, explicitly talked about the crypto industries playbook. Like they went for the jugular. They go after lawmakers, specifically, they run campaigns, they spend a lot of money. And he said, like, we need more cojones in this industry. I thought that was, like, a really interesting corollary.
- [20:52]
D
Yeah, I'm going to dig in a little bit more to that later in the show about some of these numbers.
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B
All right, let's do one more for each of you. Jigger, I'm going to pull a few out here. I want to get, like, I have.
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C
A really spicy one in there. I'm going to find it.
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B
Okay, first try this one. Got a lot of spicy reactions. Residential solar has a bad product today. Put your big boy pants on and fix your product. That was Jigger, much earlier in the year, talking about why. We were talking about the high cost of residential solar in the US Compared to other countries and how the industry needs to mature and. And focus on a better experience for homeowners. Jigger, there are a lot of reactions to this online. Do you stand by it?
- [21:45]
C
Of course I stand by it. Not only do I stand by it, I worked really hard to help them this year. And we got Tesla to, you know, issue that paper around how they can shave, you know, a third or 40% of the costs of their project. We created a coalition at RE plus of installers. There's roughly 10% of all the installers in the country who have now committed to hitting $2 a watt installed by the end of 26. We've gotten, like, all of the supply chain folks to agree that they have to figure out a way to cut costs across the mechanism. We figured out AI tools that can help really reduce soft costs. We helped pass laws in Texas and New Jersey to actually make the permit more streamlined. And so, I mean, I still stand by it. I mean, people should not be fleeced at $4 a watt. And my God, if you're being asked to pay $4 a watt for solar, please go tell them to go take a hike and find somebody who will install it for $2 a watt. Like, it is unconscionable that our industry continues to, like, take something that costs 90 cents a watt for the raw equipment. That's what you can buy all the equipment for on Amazon, direct ship to your house, and then get to $4 a watt for that.
- [22:54]
B
So there were two pieces of the argument. One was like, the financialization of solar has driven costs up in the US and the other piece is advocating for solar as a benefit to utilities for grid services paired with battery storage, changing the business model so that solar is a real resource for Utilities. Have you seen the solar industry? Obviously, battery attachment is, like, really high right now in the industry, but in terms of the types of services the solar industry is rallying around, have you seen much change?
- [23:27]
C
No, I mean, I'm doing a lot of that work. Right. Through a new nonprofit I created called Deploy Action. But. But when you ask Sia, what is your official position around net metering, it's crickets, right? Like, we should be in the business right now of proving that behind the meter batteries are capacity, and that capacity should get compensated by the utilities. And if that is net net resulting in net metering, fantastic. Right. But, like, you should not be getting net metering for solar without batteries in this moment. It is very obvious that capacity comes from batteries. Right. That there was a time when you could get some value from putting a little bit of solar on your house because of air conditioning peaks in the summertime and all that stuff. But today there's so much solar on the grid across the country that a lot of, you know, regional wholesale power markets have lower costs now during the middle of the summer, in the middle of the day. Right. And so the capacity value comes from batteries. And the solar industry is the one who should be leading on that for no other reason than in their personal financial interests. The tax credit has been passed through 2034 for batteries. So they are no longer the solar industry, they are now the battery industry.
- [24:54]
D
Yeah, and I think a lot of groups are working on it. It's, you know, you've pointed to sia, but like Solar United Neighbors has been working on distributed power plants for a long time. Illinois has been passing some good stuff. There's just. There are lots of things going on. I think they're somewhat disaggregated at this point. And so groups like Common Charge are going to try to help build some more capacity to get some of this done. And I think that'll help everybody. And it's not just about solar and batteries. It's also about efficiency and, you know, all of the other pieces on the distributed asset side of the equation.
- [25:27]
B
Okay, Catherine, back into your festive stocking for the last choice. Here we go. These are not just faceless bureaucrats. These are people who had really important jobs and wanted to do those jobs. That was Catherine talking about the impact of massive layoffs and restructuring across the government. We were talking about the. The unforeseen consequences when laying off key people in the federal workforce. And of course, that was the big story of the beginning of the year when Doge was sweeping through the government. Katherine, any updates to this story? Obviously, I assume you stand by it, but how did that story play out as we headed toward the back half of the year?
- [26:12]
D
Yeah, it just like stopped everything in its tracks because all the people who made the trains run had been kicked off the train. And luckily a lot of those folks have found really good jobs or have created their own ecosystems and are doing well. Others need new jobs. There's just so much talent out there and those folks are trying to pick up the slack from what they weren't able to get done. Update. The laboratory that I worked for, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, they took the words renewable and energy out of the name and now it's just the National Laboratory of the Rockies. They've reorganized doe. They do still have staff. So there are program people who are in programs that are sort of favored programs by this administration, the ones that are priority programs. But yeah, I think they lost a lot of really good people. They lost a ton of scientists out of epa. And so what that means is you don't get a lot of scientists helping on the decision making process. It's just become much more political and continues to be so jigger.
- [27:15]
B
What's your read on this? So I think that because the story is not front and center in the news anymore, people might not be thinking about it, first of all. And second of all, we haven't had any like blackouts or public, massive public safety problems because of these layoffs. So if someone were to ask you, like, what's the big deal? Why these, like, what, what do these layoffs actually do? What would you say to them?
- [27:39]
C
Do we still have a coherent policy on critical minerals and rare earths in this country? Like, you know, everyone keeps saying that we're going to like streamline everything around nuclear power. Is that going to happen? Are we actually going to build new nuclear in this country between now and 2030? Like, I just think that when you think about what it takes to take an executive order that the President is going to sign regardless of what it says, and then actually turn it into something that sends a signal to investors and entrepreneurs to do something different, that last part is not happening. Right. They're just signing executive orders and then the rest of us are going like, has something changed? Are we getting new signals? Is there like a new set of rules by which we're supposed to operate? And the answer is we'll get to it when, you know, the three people who are left can actually get to it.
- [28:32]
D
Yeah, try getting a hydro license through. I mean, they were talking about like everything's just going to be streamlined and you know, and pay us a little bit more money to do it. And somebody's like, all right, well where do I pay the money because I need to get it done. Nothing.
- [28:52]
A
Next Tracker is now Next Power Electricity demand is surging due to AI data centers and electrified infrastructure, and solar is the only power source that can scale fast enough to meet this moment. Nextpower is the revolutionary technology platform ready to deliver it. Born from the leadership of NextTracker, NextPower provides connected systems that unite the structural, electrical and digital technology of a utility scale solar plant. By designing and delivering TurnKey integrated systems, NextPower is accelerating the deployment of reliable energy generation to meet the massive need around the globe. Powering what's next@nextpower.com Open Circuit is brought.
- [29:29]
B
To you by Natural Power for nearly two decades, Natural Power has delivered expert, independent engineering and consulting services for renewables projects across the US and beyond. Success in project transactions requires an independent engineer who's laser focused on timelines, understands the nuances of risk, and collaborates seamlessly to develop solutions tailored to your needs. Natural Power excels at working within tight time constraints while ensuring diligence never takes a backseat. With a deep expertise in wind, solar and battery storage, Natural Power delivers top tier support and independent engineering, technical due diligence, energy estimation and developer support accepted by major financiers. Their flexible approach ensures projects are built on a strong foundation powered by expertise driven by sustainability that is natural power. Find out more@naturalpower.com or click the link in the show notes.
- [30:20]
A
Last year alone, the US saw $27 billion disasters. 27 utilities are under pressure from every direction regulators, investors, insurers and customers to step up and get serious about resilience. It is one of the most important macro trends shaping the grid. That's why we're bringing together top experts for the first ever Power Resilience forum taking place January 21 to 23 in Houston. The event, hosted by Latitude Media and the Ad Hoc Group, is convening leaders from CenterPoint, EPRI, Edison International, Accel Energy and more who will share real strategies and forge the partnerships that will define the next playbook for resilience. Register now@resilience-forum.com.
- [31:11]
B
Okay, before we go into our awards, I've got a bonus round here. I pulled together some quotes from our guests over the last 11 or 12 months and I want to see if you can guess who said what my professional policy analysis of this bill is. It stinks. Who was that? Costa that's right. Costa Samaras.
- [31:32]
D
That's right. Jigger wasn't on that.
- [31:34]
B
Oh, yes, that's right. It does sound like something Jigger would say too.
- [31:38]
D
He was playing the part of Jigger.
- [31:40]
B
That was one of my best. That was one of my favorite takes.
- [31:43]
D
I loved it. Yeah, he was good. He was a good guest.
- [31:46]
B
We connect all loads and all the grids today. Like they're all Home Depots.
- [31:50]
D
Arushi.
- [31:51]
B
That's right. Arushi Sharma.
- [31:52]
C
Frank, you are way better at this Catherine, than me.
- [31:58]
B
Yeah, you're doing really well, Catherine. Generally speaking, we're politically naive. You guys know all our friends who run these companies and they tend to be introverts who are sitting in front of AutoCAD just designing stuff. That was someone talking about the lack of political power. That's right. Tim Haid.
- [32:13]
C
Wow.
- [32:14]
D
Very cool.
- [32:15]
C
I got one.
- [32:17]
B
I think it's possible that we look back 10 years from now and we say, yeah, that was actually an interesting moment. That was a FULCRUM moment. Talking about this moment in 2025 and our ability to build things. Brian Dees.
- [32:31]
C
Oh, man.
- [32:33]
B
And finally, my favorite, it's up there with veterans benefits for isis.
- [32:38]
C
Oh, my God. Who would say that?
- [32:41]
B
That was Michael Gruenwald talking about pollsters who have polled putting taxes on me.
- [32:46]
C
Oh, my God. Talking about RFK and his vaccine policy.
- [32:51]
D
Must have just.
- [32:53]
B
Yeah, Blaked on that one. I think Catherine won that round.
- [32:55]
C
I mean, by a country mile.
- [33:00]
D
And I got a country mile out here.
- [33:03]
B
All right, let's move on and get into our awards. It wouldn't be a year end show without some kind of awards. And given the storylines that 2025 threw at us, we've got plenty to choose from. So after a lengthy consultation with the judges me, we've narrowed it down to four categories and we're gonna present our winners for each. Those categories are the biggest plot twist of the year, the breakout star of the year, the best villain of the year, and the most underrated story of the year. Catherine, what is your plot twist of the year?
- [33:33]
D
Unlike the parrot in Monty Python, solar is not dead yet. And I think that there was just a lot of, as we have talked about before, pearl clutching about solar. But globally, for the first time ever, global electricity generation from renewables, which is solar and wind, mostly marked a major turning point of producing 5 terawatt hours of power, as opposed to coal's 4.8 terawatts of power. Terawatt hours of power. So there is already an increase globally of solar and then in their latest WoodMac report for SIA, the US solar industry in Q3 installed almost 12 gigawatts of capacity of solar, which was a 20% increase from 2024. At the same time, a 50% increase from Q2, 58% of all new generating capacity added to the grid through the third quarter of 2025 was. And then solar and storage combined accounted for 85% of the new capacity in the same timeframe. And granted, people are trying to get things done quickly before the tax credits expire, but it also shows that everybody is full steam ahead. And I don't think that's gonna slow down because I think those with good fundamentals are gonna continue to move apace. It's the cheapest form of energy, and paired with batteries, solar is gonna be what we need.
- [34:59]
B
Jager, does it feel like an I told you so moment?
- [35:01]
C
Oh yeah, we've been telling you so. So like, I think it's fantastic. I think the other thing that people don't understand is if you take all of the dispatchable natural gas manufacturing capacity in the entire world, fuel cells, recip, engines, everything, together, it's less than 100 gigawatts a year. So like, it doesn't matter how much you pray, like there's only so much capacity that you could add through natural gas.
- [35:26]
B
Jigger, what was your plot twist of the year?
- [35:29]
C
My plot twist was Chris Wright's letter to FERC demanding fast interconnection for data centers that accept flexibility.
- [35:37]
B
Yes, extensive conversation on that. What was so twisted about it?
- [35:42]
C
I just think that like when we started the year, everyone was like, oh, there's all this dispatchable power and it can just be off grid and we're so amazing. And now Chris Wright is using our talking points. I feel like he's just listening to open circuit and writing it down into a letter to FERC basically saying 98% of the time the grid has plenty of capacity, it's only that 2% that you actually need them to be flexible. And you can either do it with behind the meter natural gas or probably behind the meter batteries. And I just like, ah, I don't have to do this fighting anymore. Chris Wright will do the fighting for me.
- [36:22]
D
Yeah, it's this market based approach that is in essence very conservative. I wouldn't say it's free market because there's no such thing as a free market, but market based is really important because you set the ground rules and then everybody comes. Anybody who can provide that service comes and you get paid for it and what was so cool about that anoper the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking that Chris Wright sent over is that there were hundreds and hundreds of people who commented the record is going to be very strong in this and everybody has ideas about what should happen. And I think that's really good because it's definitely given people something to focus on on and something that's really important for the grid of the future.
- [37:04]
B
Yeah. And I think it's just a great example of there's way more overlap than people think between conservative energy policy ideas and what the clean energy industry wants. My plot twist was something that we covered at the beginning of the year and that is the rapid end to the net zero ESG era. And I think that there's been this defining narrative over the last decade that we needed this aspirational march toward net zero emissions. And 2025 was the year that officially collapsed. We had Wall street and corporations abandoning their net zero policies. The AI scramble, of course, has led many tech companies to reconsider their climate targets. The financial sector has retreated from explicit climate alliances. And I think that this kind of signals an end to a lot of the performative decarbonization, this aspirational decarbon carbonization. And it is the rise of hard nose risk management and profit seeking. And Laurent Segalin said it really well in our episode with him earlier in the year. Earlier this summer, he said the 2010s was the era of the Kumbaya, let's go to COP, let's decarbonize, let's be friends. And he said that is done, it's gone. Of course we talked about Jeff Curry from Carlisle, his report on the new Jewel order about how we've reached peak trade for fossil fuels and countries are no longer asking, you know, necessarily how clean is our energy, but how secure is it. So I think this is something that has played out over the last couple of years, particularly the erosion of ESG. But the 2025 was the year when it all crystallized.
- [38:50]
C
Yeah, I definitely think that this was a plot twist. I mean, I don't know that I agree with your take in the sense that, I mean, ESG was always about governance. Right. And so I think the governance still matters. And I think that, you know, when you think about the report that Kate Gordon wrote with Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer and Hank Paulson on the risks around insurance, I mean, we're seeing that in real time now, right? I mean, you can't get insurance in places like Florida or California. So like I Think like, what I'm glad to see is that folks are rooted in data. What I'm not glad to see is that folks have their head in the sand when, you know, millions of Americans might lose the largest asset that they, they own today in their home because people have overcorrected.
- [39:38]
D
Did you see realtor.com is going to pull all the climate risk factors off of things?
- [39:42]
C
Zillow, I think, right?
- [39:43]
B
Oh, wow.
- [39:44]
C
I think it was Zillow.
- [39:45]
D
Yes. Oh, maybe it's Zillow. It's nuts because it's like, oh, because we're not being able to sell our homes. Like, why would you be able to sell your home if it's sitting on stilts in the water? I mean, come on, y'. All.
- [39:54]
C
No, I know.
- [39:55]
B
No, I did not see that. But case in point, who's your breakout star of the year? Catherine. Moving on.
- [40:03]
D
So I'm a big Stan of geothermal and there's some big stories. One was Zanskar, with their AI based discovery tool that can find new geothermal sources without having to be a groundhog all over the place. But the one that I work with that I truly am a fan of is Evergeothermal. They just started up the first in the world closed loop commercial project. It's in Geretsuit, Germany. It produces 8.2 megawatts of electricity and 64 megawatts of heating to a town in Bavaria. And what's so cool about this is that it's closed loop. So it doesn't require any stimulation, like no fracking. It requires very little water because you put these tubes down under the ground, you pump like a. You put like a swimming pool worth of water in and it just keeps circulating so you don't have to use a lot of water. You can put it literally anywhere. And Germany does not have great geothermal resources, not like the American West. And yet they were able to do this. And it's really exciting. It's something that has been behind on some, based on some of the other technologies, like what Fervo is doing. But I also think that this has a whole lot of use cases and, and the heat use case to me is super interesting because in Germany and throughout Europe, there's just a ton of heat that's used and that's coal based. And this could basically replace all of that. And I could see things like this in the US happening pretty quickly too.
- [41:37]
B
Yeah. Not only have we seen a lot of commercial progress, they've gotten. The industry has gotten a lot of love from the administration at a time when other renewables have become political pariahs.
- [41:48]
C
Yeah, no, it's frankly a fantastic thing to see. I will say that I think the lack of ambition in this industry is just shocking. When we wrote the liftoff report in geothermal, we had suggested they could easily have $40 billion worth of projects under construction by 2030. They're not even close. And they're not going to be there. They just don't have the ambition to be there.
- [42:10]
D
Well, part of it is that they're not used to it. They don't have the muscle that some of the other industries have because geothermal's just been put down for so long. And now they finally are going to get some real money in the appropriation cycle this year and I think they're going to start stepping up. I'm looking forward to it.
- [42:26]
B
Yeah, it's just kind of a funky industry. Dawn Owens said it in last week's pod in the panel that we posted. She was like, it's just a bunch of people who love rocks and we haven't really been good at political organizing. And you know, there are a lot of like cowboy figures historically in the industry. A lot of people went into oil and gas from geothermal and the kind of the, the early 2000s, you know, 2000s. And so they lost a lot of talent. They just haven't had any real organizing power or passion to grow the industry. But I think that, you know, I'm seeing some, some glimmers of change here.
- [43:04]
C
Glimmers? Glimmers.
- [43:07]
D
Sparkling rocks. I'm all in. Yeah.
- [43:11]
B
Jigger, who's your breakout star?
- [43:13]
C
So, I mean, the breakout start for me was the filing that Xcel Minnesota did on the distributed capacity procurement in Minnesota. It's the first time in my lifetime that I've seen a utility company in a formal filing actually say that at entire territory scale, the distributed power could actually, you know, provide these essential services to accelerate interconnection and, and get more out of the grid that we've already paid for. And I think once this becomes final, I think you're going to see it send shockwaves across the country because you're not going to be able to put these solutions in the pilot. It only works in certain circumstances categories, which is where we've been for 10 years.
- [43:58]
B
And why was there pushback on this particular policy?
- [44:02]
C
Well, in this case, Xcel Minnesota is rate basing the first, I think, 6% or so of the deployment. And so I think there's a lot of folks who are like, we just don't like utility ownership of batteries. And I get it, a lot of.
- [44:14]
D
People don't want that.
- [44:15]
C
But you know, they're not going to get what they want unless, you know, like there's a compromise.
- [44:20]
D
I think, yeah, I think the devil's in the details here because I think it's a good idea. Of course, like distributed assets should be part of the solution and all utilities should open the doors to them and allow virtual power plants and aggregation. The issue is like, we gotta let third parties come in. There are plenty of them, plenty of em to come in and bring solutions. The utility needs to enable that.
- [44:41]
B
Does this push out third parties? Jigger this particular program?
- [44:45]
C
No, this one actually has a separate third party track that's in the Excel Minnesota filing. So the third party track is in place, the utility ownership track is in place. I think there's just a lot of people who really hate the concept of utilities treating batteries as part of the distribution grid. They don't want them to be able to rate base it because remember, in lots of states across the country, utilities are banned from owning generation. Today batteries are defined as generation. They don't want batteries redefined as distribution assets.
- [45:16]
D
Also, if you have a regulated monopoly that is competing in essence against third parties, who's going to win? This is what we need to be careful about because the monopoly is going to absolutely win every time if they set it up that way.
- [45:30]
B
Well, I had a hard time choosing my breakout star. I had a few runner ups. One was geothermal, which as Catherine identified, has seen a lot of commercial and policy progress this year. My runner up was also utilities, utility stocks specifically, which have surged over the last couple of years. They've dropped recently because data centers haven't materialized on grids as quickly as investors expected. But I do think that there is this belief that we're in a golden age of power. Flexible data centers were a runner up for me as well. You know, everybody's talking about flexibility. We saw the emergence of companies like Emerald, AI Verus, Saluna. They were getting a lot of attention, but there's not a whole lot of activity happening outside of like what Google has been doing with pilots for data demand response. So I just think we're going to have to wait and see if these companies can actually execute. And that's why I couldn't really make it my top breakout star. But my, my official pick is Transformers. You know, Transformers went from background equipment to the center of the story this year and for, you know, forever. Nobody really Thought about them, they were just part of the grid's plumbing. But with load growth spiking, this scramble for power intensifying, lead times stretched considerably. And it became, you know, really clear how reliant we are on a concentrated global supply chain. Lead times went from months to three to five years. We saw the prices, you know, almost double since 2018. We saw a bunch of interesting impacts of the transformer shortage this year. So there was that transformer fire that caused the power failure at Heathrow Airport. They couldn't get the equipment that they needed to make that upgrade. After the fire, there were housing delays. There was a Houston project that was delayed for 18 months solely because of a missing transformer. Elon Musk's ex AI data center in Memphis had to beg other utilities for spare transformers. And then we saw new entrants like Heron Power, led by Drew Baglino, a former Tesla exec, you know, finally starting to innovate around new tech like Solid State Transformers to bypass these choke points. So I just thought it was a really interesting window into how challenging it is to build infrastructure right now.
- [47:46]
C
Transformers. There's more than meets the eye.
- [47:49]
D
Exactly. I'm a huge fan of Transformers.
- [47:55]
C
Yeah, no, I mean, but this has been a long running story, right? I mean, I think we saw a lot of this, you know, really crescendo sort of in 2022. I think one of the big challenges that I see is that there's a whole bunch of people trying to solve this problem. And the big problem that you have is that there's a real huge trust gap here. So there are preferred suppliers, and people will not buy outside of preferred suppliers even if they can get them faster. So there are companies like Ayer Energy and others who are solving that trust gap. Right. So I think like, a third of the Transformer manufacturing capacity in India is unused. So they're bringing a bunch of Transformers over from India in half the time. But a lot of those Transformers haven't been used in the US For a long time. And so people are mistrustful. Right? And so figuring out how you bridge that, I think, is something that you're seeing a lot of people do right now.
- [48:45]
B
Jigger, who's your villain of the year?
- [48:48]
C
Well, you know, the thing about villains is that, like, they have to have super secret laboratories that are super cool to look at. So I'm thinking that year's prize goes to the data center companies. Like, I haven't met an organization so politically inept that, like, they had two gubernatorial races that were Basically defined by everyone in the entire state hating data centers to the point where now you've got, you know, both the, like Bernie Bros and the MAGA people who hate data centers. You have the bulwark hating data centers. Like, Like, I mean, at some point, how can you piss off more people than they have pissed off in this, this year? It is truly breathtaking at the extraordinary ability they've had to piss off everybody.
- [49:41]
B
And what do you think is behind it? Like, is it just because we've been pissed off at the tech companies for the last decade or so and that this is an extension of that frustration with their role in political discourse and getting people addicted to their platforms? Or is it, like, about the data centers themselves? What do you think is driving it?
- [50:03]
C
No, it's about the data centers themselves. Right. Remember, the way that the data center companies generally work is you send out a price signal. You have a whole bunch of people using private sector capital developing data centers in secret, right? With all sorts of fancy sort of SPVs and LLCs, and they're hiding behind this and that and whatever. And then in the end they sell that powered land to Microsoft or Google or whatever else, right? And so all of the sins of the developer are then absorbed by the tech companies, right? And so if they negotiate a deal where they can, like, use coal power at a cheaper price, and then Google's like, well, I didn't know it was coal power, but I just wanted power land. Right, and so what you found was that in general, I think that the utility, the tech companies are doing as good a job as they can, frankly, right now, to try to dig themselves out of a hole, but they allowed the hole to get very, very deep before they realized that they had a problem.
- [51:03]
B
Well, this really seeped into popular culture this year too. Did you see the movie Eddington from director Ari Aster?
- [51:09]
C
No.
- [51:10]
B
Oh my gosh, you gotta go see it. It's about the sort of political and social chaos in this small town in New Mexico during the pandemic. And a planned data center is a big P of the story. So highly recommend you go check it out.
- [51:27]
C
There we go.
- [51:28]
B
Comedy thriller gets a little murderous. Katherine, who's your villain?
- [51:33]
D
Yeah, so it took me a little bit because there's so many villains. And the person that I thought, well, this is the grinchiest of the Grinch is Lee Zeldin, who leads epa, which you know about the Grinch. You said the one speck of crumb he left in the house was a crumb that was even Too small for a mouse. The thing about the Grinch is that his heart eventually got three sizes or however many sizes too large it was, too small. And then it got big. And I don't really see that happening right now. So I dug into, like, what is it that makes him such a villain? And how do we think about villains a little bit, in a little bit bigger way. And one is that when he was in the House, he accepted over $400,000 from oil and gas interest. His policy stances are very much poro oil and gas. He has killed any programs at EPA that have anything to do that could possibly be against oil and gas. And so in the end, what I really landed on was the oil and gas industry. And so the American Fuels and Petrochemical Manufacturing association, the American Petroleum Institute, they're all in cahoots together. They have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to buy our politicians 219 million in direct contributions. And then really, if you look at it in a larger way, it's like 445 million, which is like lobbying and ads and direct political contributions. And we talked a little bit about accountability, but if you have someone who was funding your campaign that wants you to act in a way that supports the oil and gas industry, like, that's who you're gonna be really responsive to. And you think about, you know, in West Virginia, they even passed a law that made it a felony to protest oil and gas. And so I think the oil and gas folks are the biggest villain. Also, they fund the Heritage foundation, which wrote Project 2025, which is the blueprint for everything that we're seeing right now and the destruction of anything that has to do with clean energy and climate in our country. That is really all about our economic growth. So I'm gonna say that the oil and gas companies are the villain.
- [53:49]
C
They also got everyone to love Billy Bob Thornton in the Landman, which I haven't seen. It's actually a pretty good show. Even though, like, his epic tirade against wind power is, like, full of, you know, wrong falsehoods, but, you know, and written by, I guess, API behind the scenes within the script.
- [54:13]
D
But, yeah, he makes my skin crawl.
- [54:15]
B
So.
- [54:16]
C
Yeah, but it was a very entertaining show.
- [54:19]
B
Well, I had many competitors for top villain. You know, Russ Vogt, the guy in charge of dismantling government inside the Trump administration. I think Sam Altman is really emerging as a Zuckerberg like villain right now. Possibly someone like WeWork's Adam Neumann, depending on how ChatGPT does over the next couple of Years I was going to, you know, consider data centers jigger. I think that they're easy to hate for people right now. But I came on uncertainty as my supervillain of 2025. It has to be uncertainty itself. You know, it was one of the most disruptive forces of the year. We talked a lot about cancellations, and there was fresh data in the last week from Cleanview showing that there were 2,000 power projects canceled in 2025, totaling over 250 gigawatts of mostly clean capacity. Some cancellations were obviously the result of, you know, interconnection queue problems, equipment availability, but a huge share came down to real policy whiplash. So new tariffs, unclear guidance, permitting freezes. That's roughly one sixth of the country's total generation capacity vanishing out of the pipeline in a year. And I'd be curious to hear what you think about this jig or how it compares to other years. But this is not a normal market correction. And of course, capital hates ambiguity more than it hates risk. And I wouldn't be surprised if Merriam Webster made uncertainty the word of the.
- [55:57]
C
Year this year instead of 6, 7.
- [56:01]
B
Which I still don't understand.
- [56:04]
C
Look, I mean, no offense, Stephen, but I feel like. I feel like uncertainty is a cop out. There is a person behind the uncertainty should have been the villain. And that person happens to be the 47th president of the United States.
- [56:25]
B
Sure, sure, sure. But I just felt like that was too easy.
- [56:28]
C
I mean, I don't think it's too easy. I don't think he gets blamed enough. Like, I just think that when you think about just how terrible the situation is that we're in right now around all sorts of uncertainty. I think you're talking about investor uncertainty, right? Whether it's in the manufacturing sector we talked about earlier in the episode, or whether it's about offshore wind leases or all sorts of things like that. But I mean, there's also uncertainty around whether we're going to have a fix for people's healthcare subsidies between now and the end of the year. Right. I mean, literally millions of people are going to be kicked off healthcare financially because they won't be able to afford their premiums. And I just, I think that the uncertainty is, is all around in ways that are just so intentionally painful to, you know, the people that we most love in our lives. And it's just, it, it is, it is breathtaking to me how many people find the moment that we're in not just uncertain, but just, like, outwardly cruel.
- [57:29]
B
Yes. Okay, let's go to the underrated story of the year to close out our awards. And, Catherine, I'll go to you first on this one.
- [57:39]
D
Yeah, I think something we haven't talked that much about, but I think we're going to talk more about next year, is magnets. I mean, it's like your whole thing about transformers, which seem kind of nerdy. I think magnets are kind of nerdy, too, but they're super important. So they are. You know, they're crucial to power generation. So going from kinetic to electrical energy, wind, hydro, fossil fuels, nukes, they all use kinetic to electrical energy with magnets and then the opposite, electrical to kinetic energy, which is like electric motors. Storage uses magnets, smart Grid uses magnets, EVs, all of these technologies use magnets, and a lot of them are based on rare earths, which China has a huge control over, like 70%. And so I see this as there's a global piece of it about trade and supply chain, but there's also a need for a lot of innovation to make sure that we diversify, that we're able to source differently or locally and that we come up with alternatives. I just think this is a story that, you know, and I know we spent a lot of time on AI but magnets are so crucial to everything working. And so I think that we're gonna need to see this story. This is an underplayed story that will be even bigger next year.
- [58:56]
B
Was there something that, like, grabbed your eye that made you think magnets? This is it. This is the story.
- [59:02]
D
Ye. I was just like, what is underpinning everything? What's causing all this uncertainty? Not knowing where the magnets are coming from.
- [59:12]
B
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
- [59:15]
C
Well, you know, I mean, but I think it's also tied to the personnel story. Right? I mean, there are just extraordinary experts in the US Government that were let go during Doge, et cetera, who were experts in critical minerals and rare earths and magnets. And. And we should be picking companies based on their ability to solve this problem, not based on the fact that Donald Trump Jr. Has some sort of venture capital investment in the company. Right. And so part of my concern in this moment is I totally agree with you, and I think that there's actually remarkable companies that should be backed to help diversify that supply chain. But I just hope that we haven't lost all of the expertise from the US Government to be able to do it.
- [59:55]
B
All right, Jake, a story that was underrated this year.
- [59:59]
C
All right, so the story that I think we didn't talk about either on our podcast or other places is what I'm hearing from all of my friends is that they are now able to develop solar and battery storage projects for 90% less than they did last year. Right. So when you have companies like CIR and other companies who are doing everything from your studies to your land work, to figuring out how much it might cost to interconnect to the transformer, to all these other things, you have this ability to use agentic AI to reduce the cost of developing battery and Solar projects by 90%.
- [60:41]
B
That's wild. So you're hearing that consistently. What does that mean for both the margins and for the ultimate price for the consumer?
- [60:51]
C
So I think, think paradoxically, I think what it's going to end up doing is actually bringing the community solar developers up to, like, 30 megawatt projects and bring the 100 megawatt project developers down to the 30 megawatt projects. Because the thing is, is that we have a lot of room in our grid for these smaller projects. We don't have a lot of room in our grid for these 500 megawatt projects. And so I think as you reduce the cost of developing projects, it will be profitable again for people to be chasing smaller deals which are easier to tuck into our existing utility grid.
- [61:31]
D
Yeah. And on the grid, there are all these nodal issues that you solve. It's not universal. You have to go very localized. They agree with that.
- [61:40]
B
Now, I distinctly remember you at Transition AI all over me for being optimistic about AI and the fact that I think it's going to transform certain industries. And does this mean that you've come around?
- [61:54]
C
No, that is not what you said. Revisionist history, man. You said, on net, is AI good or bad for the planet? And I still believe for sure 100x it's bad for the planet from a resource perspective, et cetera. Like, does it do some good things on the side? Sure. I absolutely think it could help us get more out of the grid that we've already paid for. They could reduce transmission mission studies from 22,000 hours from a GE and Siemens group down to, like, four minutes. But, like. But no, I mean, on balance, like, you know, having people create, like, superhero versions of themselves using, like, AI is bad for the planet.
- [62:37]
B
God, I wish there was a way to do this bet without destroying the planet potentially without having to create a superhuman race of machines or potentially destroying the planet. Wouldn't it be nice? Oh, gosh, okay. Well, you know, I had a bunch of underrated storylines that made My list, the vibe shift on AI itself actually was one of them. I hinted at it last week in my monologue. There's, you know, there's of course increasing worry about bubble dynamics, more skepticism around LLMs and how smart they can get, and then I think, continued uncertainty around what load growth projections, how they'll materialize. I also think just workforce constraints are so acute right now, we can't find enough skilled workers, huge engineering shortages are plaguing everyone. And that was just a storyline that underlined everything. So after deliberating on all of those, my final choice was the end of shared reality.
- [63:31]
D
Yeah, I agree.
- [63:34]
B
I think there's a few things that are coming together. One is just a of about climate coverage specifically. So if you remember, not long ago, we measured the climate conversation based on how TV news covered it, and media matters and other organizations would track it. And TV just isn't the battlefield anymore. So it's the YouTube and podcast giants. And those dominant voices are Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, now Alex Epstein. And these are creators that totally dominate the conversation right now in a mainstream way. And on these channels, what we've seen over the last couple of years, and in particular particular this year, was that the COVID skeptic universe and the climate skeptic universe have fully merged. What we're hearing is, you know, first of all, this distrust of institutions. But it's not even necessarily that they're saying that climate change isn't real. What they're saying is like it's a pseudo religion. It's not really that bad. It's this Marxist Trojan horse. And then we're also seeing this narrative emerge that the solutions don't work.
- [64:41]
C
Right.
- [64:41]
B
This is part of Alex Epstein's moral case for fossil fuels. This has become a huge part of mainstream discourse over the last decade. There was this feeling that clean energy solutions were gaining momentum. And now I think on a lot of these channels, what you hear is the talking points of Bjorn Lomborg that renewables will never scale at the same time. What we've seen in the platforms is, is that they've completely abandoned all fact checking. Right. And I mean, I believe very strongly in free speech. So this is a really tricky one to get right, you know, how the platforms determine what should be on the platforms or not. But I think you can't ignore the facts that these platforms are so influential and that because they have just pulled back completely, you've seen this explosion of climate misinformation and the continued rise of outrage bait that favors arguments like solar panels cause cancer and wind turbines catch fire and you know they're going to destroy your community. And these platforms in particular Facebook have been highly influential on a lot of the local opposition that has gained strength. And then finally, on top of all that, we have the rise of AI generated content that is starting to erase whatever guardrails on reality we had left. So the release of Sora2OpenAI's video generator just created this scenario where I can't trust half the videos on my feed. I go into a social media platform, particularly Facebook, and it's like all a bunch of junk and people are getting angry about it. You can actually see in the comments that people are already getting exhausted by this. But I think what it's doing over time is teaching people to completely distrust anything that they see. And I think that that's like a bad thing for discourse generally when we can create our own, own hyper customized versions of reality for ourselves. And then we also don't trust what others are saying. So I just feel like those three elements came together in a way that created a turning point in 2025.
- [66:41]
D
Well, that's why Open circuit is so important, Stephen. And outlets like ours where we just have honest conversations for sure.
- [66:48]
B
And I think that we really take seriously, you know, we've got this niche audience in the energy industry of tens of thousands of of people, but we really take seriously sticking to reality. And you know, we have our own opinions, we have takes that people don't agree with. But I think it's really important to take the idea of a common set of facts out in the world very seriously. And unfortunately a lot of the highly influential media outlets just like don't do that. That's not how they operate.
- [67:23]
C
Here's the thing, right? Is that no matter what case people make, we always win, right? The electoral state always wins. Like the most fragile system in the entire world is the oil and gas industry. That is why they're so scared. Remember, like a fleet of drones from Ukraine has taken out all of the refineries in Russia, right? And so like it is very, very fragile to work in the oil and gas industry. It is very robust, which is why all of Syria, when we got in there, was powered by solar and battery storage. All of the Ukraine now is being powered by solar and battery storage because one drone can't take it out, right? Like, I just think that in general, if what you think is happening is that the world is going to become a more troubled place and that people are going to trust institutions less it goes towards more solar and battery storage.
- [68:13]
B
All right, if all that can happen in one year, what about five more years? As we roll into 2026, we're headed into the back half of the 2000 and 2020s. So let's add one more opportunity for us to be accountable. If you had to bet your reputation on one long term prediction for 2030, what would it be, Catherine?
- [68:33]
D
All right, so over Thanksgiving break, I drove my EV further into the mountains. Actually, we have even more mountains to go to. And I could have been in what you would call Dante's fifth circle of hell, which is the wrath piece, where everybody's like fighting it out in the River Styx. It's all muddy and everything. Because en route, there is only one charging station in Lynchburg, Virginia. It actually has two places to charge, but one was broken. So there was one charging station on all of Route 29 going from north to south. You could get recharged in Charlottesville, you could get recharged in Danville, Virginia. And there was one in Lynchburg. And I had to wait two hours to get charged so I could actually get to Charlottesville to the next charging station. And what I found was a ton of people of all different kinds with EVs. And they were actually not fighting it out. Everybody was going like, it's gotta be better than this. And I said, in five years, we will be laughing at this situation. And so that's where I am. In five years, we're gonna have charging stations everywhere. We're gonna have much more access to electric vehicles because everybody there, whether they were renting cars, and there was one family that got towed there because their rental company didn't tell them the only car they had left was an electric car. And they did not know they had to return. So they were towed to the charging station. And they still did not hate their ev. They're like, oh, we just didn't know what we were supposed to do. So now we're gonna plug in for an hour and a half. Cause we were just towed here. But there were people in SUVs, there were people in lightning trucks, there were people in all kinds of vehicles. And they were all, well, happy because it was Thanksgiving and full, but also just really into EVs. And they weren't just Tesla people, they were people of all kinds. And so I think in five years we'll have charging stations everywhere because people will want them and people will have EVs. I mean, there's some data to back it up too. EVs are selling really well, they're not in a hockey stick like they could have been, but they're doing really well. And once you get one, you never go back. So that's my prediction for 2030.
- [70:49]
B
And what an opportunity it is to reinvent how we stop and rest stops and experience, you know, places that we take breaks in, from a dining experience to a shopping experience, and the way we go and interact in convenience stores and what we buy. Like, what a great opportunity to reinvent all of that. And it feels to me like someone will have figured that out in the next five years or so.
- [71:16]
D
I agree. It also spurred a great sense of community. It was just like, we're all in this together. We all really like our vehicles and we're not gonna change that. It's not like anybody said, oh, I wish I still had my gas vehicle. They just said, like, I wish there were more charging stations and department jigger.
- [71:31]
B
What are you going to stake your reputation on?
- [71:34]
C
So in the first three quarters of this year, over 100% of all global electricity growth has come from solar, wind and nuclear. And I think that will be the case for the next five years. And so coal, natural gas, all of it will be net neutral over the next five years. So if we build new natural gas, we'll retire the same amount of natural gas. If we, we build new coal, we'll retire the same amount of coal, probably more. You know, some quarters will be up, some quarters will be down. But I think over the next five years, 100% of all new capacity globally will come from solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear.
- [72:14]
B
And when you make that prediction, are you looking at IEA numbers? Like what, what numbers tell you that? That?
- [72:23]
C
Yeah, I mean, these numbers are IEA numbers that were Glo made glossy by ember. But, you know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of data sources that show it. Like, we are this year on track to meeting for the first time in my lifetime, 100% of all new terawatt hours of growth are going to come from solar, wind and nuclear. And I think that'll be the case for the next five years.
- [72:47]
B
All right, my prediction is that by 2030, jobs in the trades, electricians, welders, H vac techs, they are going to be. Those jobs are going to be as coveted as coding jobs were in the 2010s. I think that they are going to be the jobs that young people chase, the jobs that parents brag about. Obviously, some of this is due to AI. I do think that AI will start to automate a big chunk of white collar work. Not all of it, but enough to change the calculus for a lot of people entering the workforce. And if you're choosing between a bachelor's degree for a job that might be partially automated, or a two year tech technical program that leads to a career that AI can't replace, I think the value proposition shifts. And of course we just need a legion of skilled workers for this digital and electrical build out that we talk a lot about. There's a lot of physical work and you know, the people who can do it are retiring faster than we are replacing them. So my bet is by 2030 the trade jobs are the new prestige jobs. We spent the 2010s telling people that they need to learn to code. The 2000 and 30s are going to be about learning to build.
- [73:52]
C
I hope so.
- [73:53]
D
Yep. Love for the community colleges and tech schools.
- [74:02]
B
Absolutely. And that is going to do it.
- [74:05]
C
It was great. It's been a fantastic year.
- [74:08]
B
Sure has.
- [74:09]
D
Yeah, it's been awesome.
- [74:11]
B
And make sure you come back next week for our final installment of the year. And boy is it going to be a doozy. We've got some some big news to share, so make sure you listen. Open Circuit is produced by Latitude Media. Chigarh Shah, Kathryn Hamilton, they are my co hosts. I am Stephen Lacy. I am your host and executive editor. The show is edited by me. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Ann Bailey is our senior podcast editor. Sign up for Latitude Media's newsletters for stories on all the stuff that we cover on this show and you can find Open Circuit anywhere you get. Podcasts and transcripts are there as well. And please give us a rating and review wherever you get your shows. Thank you so much. We will be back for our last episode of the year next week. We'll see you then.