Shows / Energy Empire
Energy Empire
Welcome to the Age of Energy Abundance
A once-in-a-generation shift is underway in how the world is powered. Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these technologies simply work better. They’re cheaper to build, faster to deploy, and easier to scale than anything that came before.
The technology is ready. Now the race is on to build it…everywhere.
Energy Empire is a podcast about…
Episodes
Energy EmpireTurning America’s Waste Heat Into 15 Gigawatts of Power
Factories and gas pipelines vent heat into the air every day. Captured, that heat can produce clean electricity around the clock. Today, the US gets less than…
Energy EmpireWho Benefits From $6 Diesel? Sen. Tina Smith Says Follow the Money | Energy on the Ballot
Gas is up more than a dollar a gallon since the Iran war began, and diesel set an all-time record in September. Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) says the president’s…
Energy EmpireIs Venture Capital the Wrong Tool for Clean Energy?
In the first half of this year, 86% of U.S. venture money went to AI. Climate venture funds have raised less than $1 billion, down from more than $10 billion…
Energy EmpireA Third of Australian Homes Have Solar. Why Is the U.S. So Far Behind? | Energy on the Ballot
About one in three homes and businesses in Australia have solar on the roof. The state governments there made it simple, with incentives, certified installers…
Energy EmpireThe Utility CEO Who Wants to Cut Your Bill | Recorded Live at Future Currence
Demand on ComEd’s grid barely moved from 2009 to 2022. Now the utility expects about 10 gigawatts of data centers to connect by around 2030, against an…
Energy EmpireSemafor’s Tim McDonnell on Covering Russia’s Energy War From Kyiv
Ukraine has learned how to keep a power grid running while someone is trying to destroy it. Every country that imports oil now needs the same lessons. Last…
Energy EmpireGov. Spanberger on Making Data Centers Pay Their Fair Share | Energy on the Ballot
Northern Virginia is the biggest data center market in the world, and pushback is growing. So are power bills. A typical Dominion bill is now about $180 a…
Energy EmpireVoltus Just Raised $225 Million to Pay You to Use Less Electricity
When a warehouse turns its freezers down for two hours, it looks to the grid like a power plant switching on. Voltus pays thousands of businesses to do exactly…
Energy EmpireSenator Whitehouse on Why Democrats Need a Climate Villain | Energy on the Ballot
"Little Red Riding Hood is kind of a dumb story without the wolf." That's how Senator Sheldon Whitehouse thinks Democrats have been telling the climate story…
Energy EmpireNVIDIA on Whether AI Can Fix Its Own Power Problem | Recorded Live at Climate Week NYC
AI data centers are straining the grid. NVIDIA and Phaidra say part of the fix is more AI: software that runs the cooling, data centers that ease off when…
Energy EmpireThe Permitting Bill Is Out. Senator Heinrich Walks Us Through It.
Four senators introduced the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act on September 30. One of them recorded this episode with Jigar the day before. The…
Energy EmpireEnergy on the Ballot: Who Do You Blame for Your Electric Bill?
Electricity bills are rising across America, and for the first time in years, they're a campaign issue. Candidates on the left and the right are promising to…
Energy EmpireBalcony Solar Costs $285. Why Is It Still So Hard to Get?
In Germany you pick up a solar panel at IKEA or the grocery store and plug it in at home. Here you order online, the cheapest kits can take four months to…
Energy EmpirePower Prices Have Barely Moved in 10 Years. So Why Is Your Bill Going Up?
In most of America, the cost of generating electricity has barely moved since 2015. But, over the same 10 years, residential rates are up 37% (EIA). Lee Taylor…
Energy EmpireWill Sustainable Aviation Fuel Ever Take Off?
The jet fuel that could replace kerosene is made from used cooking oil. It costs two to six times more, and there isn't enough of it. This week's guest is…
Energy Empire1 in 50 American Sheep Now Works in the Energy Industry
Sheep are replacing lawnmowers on solar farms across America. They're quieter, cleaner, and in many cases cheaper. More than 113,000 of them now graze over 500…
Energy EmpireWhy Are AI Companies So Obsessed With Gas?
Amazon is building a 7.65 gigawatt gas plant in the West Texas desert. Microsoft just signed a 20-year gas deal with Chevron, 30 miles away, and Meta, OpenAI…
Energy EmpireWho Is Jigar Shah? (Part 3): Taking Over the Office He Called "Irredeemable"
On a podcast in 2020, Jigar called the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office "irredeemable" and said it could never be trusted again. A few weeks later…
Energy EmpireAsk Jigar: Is a $20,000 used EV the cheapest home battery you can buy?
A used EV costs $200 a kilowatt hour. A Powerwall costs $900. In this episode: Unsubsidized rooftop solar at $2,100 a kilowatt, and why Australia does it for…
Energy EmpireFive Months Into the Iran War, China Is Saving Its Oil for the Next One
Five months into the Iran war, the largest supply shock in oil market history has been managed into a strange calm. Exxon just made $14.5 billion in a quarter…
Energy EmpireIntroducing Grid 2.0, the Open Protocol for the American Grid (Bonus episode)
This is a special bonus episode where Jigar sits down with Chris Shelton to launch Grid 2.0. If this gets adopted, it changes how every new data center and…
Energy EmpireAI Is Breaking the Grid. A Flywheel Could Fix It.
AI data centers make power demand jump in milliseconds. The grid can't keep up, and ratepayers get the bill. Nate Walkingshaw, founder and CEO of Torus, has a…
Energy EmpireA Decade as Clean Energy's Republican Whisperer with Heather Reams
For nearly a decade, Heather Reams had one of the toughest jobs in Washington: selling Republicans on clean energy. As president of Citizens for Responsible…
Energy EmpireAdam Met on Permitting Reform, Building Clean Energy Superfans, and Selling Out Madison Square Garden
Sting has the rainforest. Pierce Brosnan has the whales. Adam Met has permitting reform. The AJR pop star, who has more than 5 billion streams on Spotify and a…
Energy EmpireCrossover with Volts: Data Centers Could Win Over Neighbors for Pennies. They'd Rather Fight
Dave Roberts spent years covering energy for Grist and Vox before building Volts into one of the most influential independent energy podcasts in the country…
Energy EmpireThe Nurse Who Built a $400 Million Generator Company
Every construction site, concert, film set, and hurricane recovery runs on temporary power. So does the Super Bowl, and so do data centers that can't wait…
Energy EmpireSheldon Kimber on Why Google Paid $4.75 Billion for His Power Company
In March, Google paid $4.75 billion to buy Intersect — the first time a Big Tech giant has bought a clean energy developer. Jigar and Jamie talk with Sheldon…
Energy EmpireHow to Add 300 Gigawatts to the Grid Without Building a Single Power Plant
The hyperscalers are racing to secure power, pouring billions into new plants, nuclear, even fusion. But interconnection queues still run for years. This…
Energy EmpireJennifer Granholm's Data Center Playbook for Governors
Data centers have become one of the most charged political issues in the country, and it cuts across both parties. Electricity bills are climbing, 36 states…
Energy EmpireThe Costco of Solar — Meet the Man Quietly Cutting the Cost of Clean Energy
Four generations of Daniel Dus's family have worked in American energy. His great-grandfather was a coal-mine engineer who became president of Michigan Tech…
Energy EmpireCan a Climate Democrat Win a Trump District? — with Rep. Kathy Castor
Kathy Castor has represented Tampa in Congress for 20 years — four of them chairing the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the policy engine behind…
Energy EmpireForget Solar Stocks. The Best Solar Returns Are Overseas.
Brazil: 14% returns. South Africa: 9.8%. United States: 7.1%. That's not a typo. Mike Silvestrini has deployed $476 million in solar projects overseas and at…
Energy EmpireThe Utilities Want $1.4 Trillion. The Hyperscalers Want a Gigawatt. Nobody Did the Math.
Electric utilities are on track to spend $1.4 trillion on the power grid by 2030. Hyperscalers keep asking for gigawatt-scale data centers. Nobody is required…
Energy EmpireAsk Jigar: Should You Cut the Cord on Your Utility?
Solar on the roof. Battery in the garage. You can run your house yourself now. The question is what that does to the grid we all share. This week on Ask Jigar…
Energy EmpireInside California's Plan to Fix the Utility Business Model with Senator Josh Becker
California built the one of the cleanest grids in the country and wholesale prices have never been lower — but utility bills keep going up. One reason…
Energy EmpireAsk Jigar: Where do you actually start when you want to electrify your life?
A lot of people are walking around with energy questions and not getting straight answers. That changes now. Ask Jigar is a new weekly segment on Energy…
Energy EmpireWhat If Data Centers Paid You?
The backlash against data centers is, in many places, a backlash against rising electricity bills. Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, thinks the solution…
Energy EmpireThe Guy Who Built American Wind — and What He’s Betting On Next
Sandy Reisky started building wind farms in 2000, before it was an asset class. He founded Apex Clean Energy in Charlottesville, Virginia, scaled it into one…
Energy EmpireBonus episode: Why Is Lady Liberty Holding a Power Cable?
The Energy Empire logo has a two-prong plug. Apparently, that's a problem. Since launch, we've been getting called out on LinkedIn by people who are very…
Energy Empire"Nobody Cared About Deployment" — Who is Jigar Shah? (Part 2)
In 2013, Jigar wrote a book arguing climate didn't have a technology problem. It had a deployment problem. The breakthrough-tech crowd called him naive. A year…
Energy EmpireBonus Episode: Dan Shugar on Reshoring Solar Manufacturing (recorded at UNC Clean Tech Summit)
When COVID broke global logistics in 2020, Dan Shugar made a call most of his peers didn't. Nextpower absorbed over $100 million honoring existing contracts…
Energy EmpireBonus Episode: Former EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Data Centers and Public Health (Recorded at UNC Clean Tech Summit)
Michael Regan served as the 16th Administrator of the EPA under President Biden — the first Black man to hold the role — and before that ran North Carolina's…
Energy EmpireTrump's Iran War: Hubris, Blowback, and Peak Oil
The Iran war is now the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Physical crude hit $150 a barrel. Futures markets are acting like a…
Energy EmpireRussell Gold on Leaving The Wall Street Journal for the Solar Industry
For two decades, Russell Gold covered the energy industry for The Wall Street Journal, breaking the Deepwater Horizon story and exposing PG&E's role in the…
Energy EmpireBonus Episode: Tom Fanning on 43 Years at Southern Company (recorded at UNC Clean Tech Summit)
Tom Fanning spent 43 years at Southern Company — 15 different jobs, 13 years as CEO — and oversaw the construction of the only new nuclear reactors built in…
Energy EmpireWe've Been Piloting Grid Solutions for 20 Years. It's Time to Deploy.
Your electricity bill keeps going up. Utilities are spending billions on new infrastructure. But the grid we already have is running at a fraction of its…
Energy EmpireNo Fertilizer. No Data Centers. No Birthday Balloons. The Iran War Is Not Just Impacting Oil.
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Everyone is focused on oil prices. But oil isn't just fuel — it's feedstock. 92% of the world's sulfur comes from refining…
Energy EmpireHow My Retired EV Ended Up Powering Homes in Ukraine
After an accident totaled his Tesla, Philippe Dunsky forgot to remove it from the app. A year later, his 18-year-old daughter texted him: "Papa, what is…
Energy Empire500 Miles on a Charge: Is This the End of the Diesel Semi?
Electric semi trucks that go 500 miles on a single charge and fully recharge in 30 minutes. That's what the Tesla Semi is promising — and trucking companies…
Energy EmpireTrump: The Accidental Clean Energy President
Trump promised to cut energy bills in half. Instead, he started a war that pushed oil past $100 a barrel, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and sent every…
Energy EmpireThe Cheapest Grid Is the One We Already Paid For
Your utility bill keeps going up. But the problem isn't that we need to build more — it's that we're barely using what we already have. Arnab Pal, founder of…
Energy EmpireWhy the War in Iran Is Speeding Up the Clean Energy Transition
The US bombed Iran on Saturday. We threw out our planned episode and called James Gutman, Strategist & co-author of The New Joule Order at the Carlyle Group…
Energy EmpireThe Case Against Off-Grid Data Centers with Tim Hade
Tim Hade, Air Force veteran and founder of Scale Microgrids, joins Jigar and Jamie to make the case that the rush to build off-grid data centers is solving the…
Energy EmpireWhy Wars No Longer Move Oil Markets with Kevin Book
Oil shocks once defined the global economy. But even as conflict returns to major energy regions, prices remain relatively stable. In this episode, Jigar Shah…
Energy EmpireA Decade as Solar’s Top Lobbyist with Abby Hopper
Abby Hopper spent nearly a decade as CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), representing one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S…
Energy EmpireThe American-Made Solar Billionaire with Dean Solon
Dean Solon went from carrying his dad’s HVAC toolbox as a kid to building Shoals—and becoming one of solar’s rare self-made billionaires. Dean breaks down how…
Energy EmpireWho is Jigar Shah?
He’s helped finance billions in clean energy and served as one of the U.S. government’s top energy officials—but Jigar Shah rarely talks about himself. In this…
Energy EmpireEnergy Empire Trailer
Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity added to the grid — not because of politics or ideology, but because these…
Energy EmpireWelcome to Energy Empire
A once-in-a-generation shift is underway in how the world is powered. Across the United States, clean energy now makes up more than 90% of new electricity…