Energy Capital Podcast

This episode was recorded just three days after the U.S. presidential election. My guest, UT Law Professor David Spence, recently published an exceptional book Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship . I believe this book is perfect for this moment and one of the best I’ve read on climate policy—and I read a lot on climate policy. David and I dove into...

My guest this week is Ram Narayanamurthy, the Deputy Director of the Building Technologies Office at the Department of Energy (DOE) for the last two years. Before joining DOE, he led the buildings program at the Electric Power Research Institute, or EPRI, for a decade. He has 27 patents to his name and has worked extensively with builders, developers, and utilities to scale new technologies that c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com Texas is number one in the United States for many energy-related achievements: wind and solar generation, oil and gas production. But Texas is also the number one state for weather related outages, with nearly 50% more outages over the last 25 years than California. Just within the last four years Texans expe...

When Hurricane Beryl hit, residents all across Harris County, from every economic status, educational attainment, and racial and ethnic background lost power. But even as the storm destabilized life for almost everyone in the region, the impacts of the storm — and the safety and wellbeing of Houstonians during and after it — have not impacted everyone the same. But it doesn’t have to be this way....

Today's episode is a special one: an interview with Thomas Gleeson, the Chairman of the Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas, recorded live on September 20th at the SPEER Industry and Policy Workshop.  The PUC oversees ERCOT and the transmission grid, fully regulates the monopoly transmission distribution utilities, and has power and authority over just about every part of the power grid. Chai...

Today's episode is a special recording of my live interview on September 6th in Austin with Jigar Shah, Director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). Previous to LPO, Jigar founded SunEdison and served as president of Generate Capital. He also wrote a book called “Climate Wealth: Unlocking the Impact Economy,” and many of the book’s themes come up in this interview. Jigar also...

There aren't many grid strategies that increase reliability, resiliency, affordability, and sustainability. While many strategies may address one or two of these factors – perhaps even three – distributed energy resources uniquely check all four boxes . After Hurricane Beryl, Texans, including policymakers, were left questioning how such a disaster could happen again, especially so soon after Wint...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com What steps do we need to take in Texas to foster growth in this important emerging market? To explore this question, there's no one better than John Berger, founder and CEO of Sunnova Energy. Headquartered in Houston, Sunnova is a leader in residential solar, battery storage and energy management technologies...

I spoke with Jeff Goodell, the bestselling author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet , on the dangers of heat waves, especially when in combination with other natural disasters. Timestamps 4:12 - Physiological impacts of heat and how to stay safe 9:13  - Scale of heat-related deaths and illness 12:28 - What is a Hurricane Katrina of heat and how is heat a threat m...

In the wake of Hurricane Beryl, after millions of Houstonians lost power and at least 36 people died, many of them because they didn’t have AC in the heat following the storm, Texans were once again left with many of the same questions we’ve been asking for the past decade. How do we make sure that the power stays on when a storm hits or disaster strikes? How can our state, rich in all its energy...

During Winter Storm Heather this past year, battery storage reduced power costs in Texas by $750 million. This finding was only one of many in a report released by Aurora Energy Research this May, “ The Role of Battery Energy Storage Systems in the ERCOT Market .”  The report is one of the most in-depth analyses to date on the impact of battery storage, which has grown exponentially in Texas over...

I speak to energy experts from all facets of the energy industry and the one thing that keeps coming through in these conversations these days is the need for better planning to deal with rising load growth, extreme weather, higher costs and emissions. As I think about these problems, I try to think of people who I can learn from and that will help my audience understand these issues as well. My g...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com Hi All: We initially distributed this episode on Wednesday. Unfortunately, due to technical issues with Substack, some of our subscribers did not receive it. If you've already downloaded the episode, there's no need to do so again. For those who have yet to receive it, we apologize for the delay and hope you...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com To understand what's happening, you have to know how you got there. You need a sense of the history. That's one of the reasons I've enjoyed interviewing past Commissioners and Chairs of the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC). At the Texas Power Podcast , I interviewed Pat Wood and Barry Smitherman , both f...

In April, ERCOT's Regional Planning Group published projections that ERCOT's electricity demand may double by 2030 compared to 2021. Initially anticipating a peak demand of about 90 gigawatts by the end of the decade, ERCOT now expects a staggering 152 gigawatts, up from approximately 75 gigawatts at the beginning of the decade. This would mark the largest growth rate in the decade since the post-...

As Texas navigates an era of rapidly rising energy demand, the quest for clean, reliable, and affordable energy sources becomes increasingly critical. Among the many options, there's one resource that hasn't received nearly enough attention: geothermal energy, specifically enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). EGS differs from conventional geothermal energy, which relies on specific geographic condit...

One of the hardest things about energy efficiency is measuring it. It's difficult to do, but with increasingly sophisticated software platforms, it's getting easier and more precise. As homes and buildings begin to use more electricity for things like heat pumps and electric vehicles, and as solar and wind power continue to grow, there will be many times a day and most times of the year when it wi...

For this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Zach Dell, who recently launched Base Power Company , the first and only retail electric provider in Texas to offer customers a home battery, monthly energy service, and installation all in one package. This episode demonstrates one of the things I most love about Texas’ competitive energy market. It has its flaws for sure, but we are seeing a l...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com In 2020, at the Annual Meeting of the Greater Houston Partnership – the city’s powerful Chamber of Commerce and economic development organization with a heavy concentration of oil and gas companies – Bobby Tudor, the incoming Chairman of the Board, told the membership : “The oil and gas business is not likely...

My guest for this week is Megan Kimble. Megan is an extremely talented writer and her new book entitled City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways is a must read for anyone interested in climate change, transportation, or just how cities came to be the way the are: How did we end up with massive, noisy, smelly, dirty highways right in the middle of every major ci...

Before you listen: I will be hosting a mailbag episode in the next couple of weeks and am asking listeners to submit questions. Please send an email to douglewin@substack.com or leave your questions in the comments for this episode.  Following Winter Storm Uri, the Texas legislature worked to identify proposals that can increase the reliability of the ERCOT grid. In this week’s episode, State Sena...

During Winter Storm Uri, electric demand spiked to a record level. We don’t know exactly how high demand went, but ERCOT now estimates that next winter, in Uri-like conditions, demand would hit a whopping 92 gigawatts. One of the best ways to reduce risk of outages, and one of the only ways to save money while increasing reliability is to replace inefficient heating units with high efficiency heat...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com For this week's episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Andy Bowman. Andy has been developing renewable energy projects around the US for 25 years, which puts him back to the 1990s and some of the earliest wind projects in Texas. And while he's developed all over the US, he says ERCOT and Texas are his fa...

Electrons and molecules don't usually mix. Power grid people and gas supply people don't talk to each other much, nor do they much understand each other's worlds, languages, or businesses. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) cited this lack of gas and electric coordination as one of the causes of the Winter Storm Uri outages. However, it's not just a problem for reliability and energy...

In this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, I had the opportunity to speak with Pablo Vegas, the President and CEO of ERCOT. There was a time when very few Texans knew what ERCOT was or what it did. Those days are long gone. Texans pay close attention to the grid following Winter Storm Uri and the ensuing outages. And the 13 conservation calls over the last nine months or so have kept ERCOT ver...