Even as he has torn down climate policy, Donald Trump has normalized the use of more powerful & aggressive tools of economic statecraft, like equity stakes in private companies, new federal authorities, and sovereign wealth funds. The Roosevelt Institute recently issued a collection of 17 essays exploring how a future administration could use the tools Trump has assembled for decarbonization. I talk with Todd Tucker, editor of and contributor to the volume, about these new industrial planning tools.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:32 – Did Biden's green policy prove durable?

09:39 – The Defense Production Act and the Sable pipeline

14:59 – Whether to leave the DPA on the table

15:35 – Executive orders and the durability problem

19:01 – Whether the Supreme Court treats Democrats differently

22:03 – Executive power and a disempowered Congress

25:05 – Senate malapportionment and filibuster reform

29:43 – Court reform and the major questions doctrine

34:13 – Manufacturing vs. deployment

42:52 – Permitting, abundance, and theory of power

49:20 – Public ownership and the U.S. Steel golden share

55:22 – What state capitalism could look like for green ends

59:56 – Shelley Welton on utilities as planning tools

1:02:42 – Speed vs. deliberation before 2029

Typically, AI data centers are large, inflexible loads that the grid has to build around, which is one reason utilities take so long to connect them. Emerald AI has designed a “digital brain” that can ramp down, move, or delay computing jobs in a data center on demand, making a data center a flexible asset to the grid. I talk with CEO Varun Sivaram about how the software works, what flexibility costs the compute, why it beats just installing batteries, whether utilities can enforce it, and what it would mean for clean energy.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:05 – Temporal, spatial, and resource flexibility

06:26 – What Emerald Conductor touches on site

08:35 – Who decides which workloads can flex

10:55 – Who is liable when a job slows down

13:45 – Who actually signs the contract

14:49 – Larger and faster grid connections

18:02 – Enforcing the flexibility promise

19:05 – What broke in the demos, from bad nodes to slow telemetry

26:41 – What flexing costs the compute jobs

29:21 – Why not just use batteries, and the demand merit order

35:44 – Training, inference, and substation-scale data centers

40:23 – PJM, ERCOT, and legal enforceability

44:50 – Renewables, gas, and consumer bills

When it comes to innovative new grid technologies, every utility wants to be the third in line to try them. None of them want to be the first to take risks and iron out new processes. That's one reason grid-enhancing technologies, better software, and smarter internal procedures stay stuck in pilot purgatory, even as the industry faces the biggest buildout since rural electrification. PG&E's Quinn Nakayama and Microsoft's Hanna Grene discuss what's actually blocking utility innovation — and Quinn offers a novel proposal for paying someone to go first.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:44 – Why grid-enhancing technologies stall in the US

07:54 – Selling grid software into utilities: what goes wrong

11:08 – From a pipes-and-wires company to a technology company

12:38 – Pilot program hell and the last 30 percent

15:04 – Innovation as a bolt-on, and the three muscles

17:47 – The digital spine, data quality, and smart meters

23:56 – Org chart versus work chart

25:09 – Strategy, structure, people, process, technology

29:24 – Build, buy, and the ecosystem skill set

36:15 – Data leakage, shadow AI, and paying twice

41:12 – Why utility product cycles run five to seven years

46:27 – Human in the loop, and EPRI's SAFERai.power

49:06 – Advanced market commitments and the kingmaker problem

53:22 – EPIC, and whether software counts as infrastructure

01:00:05 – The CapEx incentive problem and final advice

1:04:34 – Digital Infrastructure as Capital Spend

1:06:53 – Final Advice

Ramón Méndez Galain helped Uruguay decarbonize its grid (today it’s 98% fossil-free) while keeping the utility public and letting private capital foot the bill. Now he’s trying to export the same playbook across the global South. We talk through how Uruguay pulled it off — the hydro “battery” for wind & solar “baseload,” the cross-party political deal, the market redesign — and what actually transfers to countries without the same advantages. We also discuss why, seven years on, no other country has followed Uruguay’s path.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

03:09 – From particle physics to a nuclear proposal

05:46 – Taking the job as energy secretary

07:00 – The 2008 crisis: drought, expensive oil, blackouts

09:26 – Getting every party to sign the same plan

12:51 – Why climate was not the lead argument

15:42 – Attracting private capital without privatizing

20:22 – What a public utility made possible

23:06 – Planning a grid where wind and solar are the base load

29:26 – Thermal plants as insurance, and the last 2 percent

32:36 – EVs, smart meters, and building an electrostate

37:33 – Why bills fell less than generation costs

39:46 – What transfers to other countries

44:15 – Optimum curtailment, Colombia, and Haiti

50:51 – The political work, and the argument against the dominant narrative

56:36 – The Global South and the NDC as development catalyst

As the U.S. EV market slows and federal charging support recedes, IONNA, a fast-charging network backed by eight major automakers, is still expanding. On Volts, CEO Seth Cutler makes the case that public charging is entering a new phase focused on reliability and customer experience, but the economics remain difficult, with low utilization and demand charges squeezing margins. With roughly 1,300 bays live and a target of 30,000, IONNA is testing whether a multi-brand network can offer a Tesla-like charging experience while building a sustainable business.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction: can public EV charging be as reliable as a gas station?

02:30 – Public charging’s four phases, and IONNA’s phase-four bet

08:17 – IONNA’s origin story

09:55 – Scale, footprint & site strategy

11:52 – Rechargery @ vs. freestanding: the two site formats

18:45 – Can DC fast charging make money? Unit economics

21:29 – Demand charges & why fast charging is expensive

23:57 – Getting power: permitting, interconnection & utilities

29:18 – Site design, amenities & the monetization question

34:14 – Regional site customization: the gas station turned bakery

36:35 – The charging experience: apps & Plug&Charge

39:03 – Reliability strategy & metrics

42:47 – Headwinds: the EV market downturn & policy risk

46:54 – Business model, profitability & the IONITY comparison

50:09 – Geographic rollout: the chicken-and-egg problem

54:07 – Competitive position vs. Tesla

56:37 – Closing: vision, fears & timeline

Could the US grid be brought down by Chinese hackers? To find out, I talked with Patrick Miller, who helped write the cybersecurity rules for the bulk power system and became the first person with federal authority to enforce them. We get into what's actually been hacked, why those "rogue devices" in Chinese inverters are less sinister than they sound, and why squirrels still do more damage than hackers.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:47 – What state utility commissioners get wrong about cyber risk

04:50 – Real attacks on the grid so far: Ukraine, Poland, and the US

06:57 – IT versus OT, and why grid devices are hard to protect

10:30 – The NERC CIP standards: scope, requirements, enforcement

17:40 – Distributed resources outside the CIP perimeter

20:54 – Dropping the threshold to 20 MVA, and federal jurisdiction

29:12 – Chinese inverters and the commodity board

36:09 – Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, and China's intent

39:26 – Data centers as a new attack surface

43:19 – The trade-off between security and speed

47:44 – Cyber-informed engineering and analog safeguards

54:05 – AI on offense and defense

1:02:21 – Squirrels, balloons, and physical threats

1:04:24 – CISA cuts, CIRCIA, and harmonizing the rules

State legislatures are writing data center rules faster than they can verify the demand forecasts underneath them. Fifteen states accounted for 80 percent of data center electricity demand in 2023, a single hyperscale campus can arrive as 15 to 20 percent of a utility's demand, and the transmission to serve it takes five to 15 years to build. On this episode of Volts, David Roberts works through Climate Cabinet's Taming Data Center Turmoil series with Saleem Chapman, who leads the group's electricity affordability policy work, on why Georgia's regulated utility, PJM's capacity market, and ERCOT's competitive market each left ratepayers holding the risk, and what a state can require before it approves a project, while the facility operates, and after the deal is done.

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction

02:49 – How Climate Cabinet came to the data center fight

03:58 – Three things that make hyperscalers unlike past industrial loads

07:51 – Warning signals: forecast opacity, gas dependency, unconditional subsidies

13:44 – Siting near overburdened communities and the Memphis case

15:34 – State preemption versus local control

18:31 – The same failure pattern in Georgia, PJM, and ERCOT

23:52 – Why not just ban data centers outright

28:07 – The framework, and what to require before approval

34:54 – While operating: real cost pricing and on-call load flexibility

37:39 – Scenario-based planning and the utility incentive problem

39:37 – After the deal: new and matched clean energy

43:48 – Siting standards and performance-tied incentives

50:27 – Existing facilities and the threat to build elsewhere

55:41 – Which states are ahead, and step one for lawmakers