How Utilities Actually Think

Shift Key with Robinson Meyer · Apr 7, 2026 · 1h 2m

How do utilities decide what they want — and need — to build? It’s one of the most important problems driving the data center and clean energy conversations right now. But it’s hard to get a sense of what constraints and ideas actually drive utility decisionmaking from the inside.

Alice Yake is the vice president of GRIDS at Breakthrough Energy, and the former senior vice president of system strategy and chief planning officer at Xcel Energy in Colorado. On this episode of Shift Key, she walks us through a half century of the grid’s biggest decisions — what constraints utilities and planners…