Utilities and their regulators are often protected by a "force field of tedium," but in this episode, I pierce the veil to discuss the complex machinery of utility profit-making. I’m joined by Joe Daniel of RMI to unpack the critical distinction between "return on equity" and "cost of equity," and why the former is almost always higher than necessary. We discuss how regulators can close this gap to lower consumer costs without hindering essential grid upgrades.

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Sarah Kapnick about the core of climate science and the wild variables that have emerged in the last decade. We discuss the “accidental geoengineering” experiment of reducing shipping aerosols, the newfound ability to pinpoint methane leaks from space, and the legal implications of being able to attribute financial losses to climate change.

How does a small, mountainous island with no interconnections and a massive industrial load clean up its grid? In this episode, I speak with Yeh-Tang “Ricky” Huang about the technical and political bottlenecks holding back Taiwan’s energy transition. We explore why the country has struggled to deploy wind and solar, the realistic prospects for advanced geothermal, and the absolute necessity of demand-side flexibility in such a constrained system.