Energy Empire

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 Empire. Three listener questions per episode. Jigar answers them on air. No hedging, no "it depends" non-answers. Should you sign a long-term electricity contract? Is your utility actually serious about clean energy? What separates the s...

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 isn’t to stop building — it’s to change who benefits. In this episode, Nick explains why the way data centers currently connect to the American power system puts the costs on nearby communities while sending the upside elsewhere. He breaks do...

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 of the country's largest independent wind developers, and in 2015 bought up distressed wind projects when the tax credit extension looked uncertain. Wind now generates around 12% of U.S. electricity — 30 to 50% across the Great Plains. Ji...

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 concerned about electrical safety. So we brought in our designer, Rosie Jewell, to finally answer for it — is our brand unsafe? What happens if Lady Liberty gets struck by lightning holding a janky appliance? What exactly is she plugging...

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 later, he co-founded Generate Capital to prove it — a C-corp, not a fund, because seven-year fund lives kill infrastructure deals before they work. First close: $55 million. People were whispering "vanity project." By 2024, Ge...

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, then built the manufacturing it needed at home. Today the company has 35+ US factories — including a former Bethlehem Steel mill in Pittsburgh now shipping hundreds of trucks a week — and a backlog north of $5 billion. Jigar joins SunCast...

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 Department of Environmental Quality, where he won the largest coal ash settlement in U.S. history against Duke Energy. This is a special bonus episode from UNC Clean Tech Summit, recorded in collaboration with Nico Johnson's Suncast p...

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 deal is around the corner. And James Gutman is back on Energy Empire to explain why those two numbers don't match — and what happens when they do. This is James's fourth time on the show. He walks us through why the shock has already...

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 Camp Fire. Now he's on the other side — running communications and strategy for T1 Energy, a company building a fully domestic solar supply chain across the United States. Jigar and Jamie talk with Russell about why he left journali...

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 America in a generation. This is a special bonus episode recorded live at the UNC Clean Tech Summit in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in collaboration with Nico Johnson's Suncast podcast. Jigar and Nico sit down with Fanning to talk about wh...

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 capacity — and the technology to unlock it has existed for 20 years. Vishal Kapadia knows this firsthand. At Walmart, he watched reliability decline and costs rise across thousands of stores. Now, as CEO of LineVision, he's deploying sensors...

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 oil and gas. A third of global helium is offline. Half the world's food depends on fertilizer that flows through a 21-mile chokepoint. And your kid's birthday balloons? Those need helium too. James Gutman returns to Energy...

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 Georgia doing in Ukraine?" Their old car — named Georgia — was charging in a rural town in western Ukraine near the Polish border. Someone had salvaged the 90-kilowatt-hour battery and repurposed it to keep homes warm and lights on during Russian...

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 are already placing orders by the hundreds. In this episode, Jigar and Jamie sit down with Adam Browning to dig into what's actually happening with zero-emission freight — what he saw inside the massive Tesla Semi factory in Sparks, Ne...

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 oil-importing nation on earth scrambling for solar panels and batteries — mostly from China. James Gutman returns to Energy Empire with a provocative argument: Donald Trump has inadvertently done more to accelerate the global clean energy transiti...

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 clean energy advocacy group Deploy Action and co-author of a new grid affordability playbook, joins Jigar and Jamie to make the case for grid utilization: the unglamorous, cost-cutting strategy that governors, regulators, and util...

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, to make sense of what comes next. James explains why the US has no incentive to protect global energy supply chains, how Venezuela and Iran are reshaping China's energy calculus, and why every oil-importing nation on earth is now rethinki...

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 wrong problem.  With 56 gigawatts of co-located data centers in the pipeline, Tim explains why most won't get built — and why the real answer is batteries, load flexibility, and making the grid work for data centers, not around them. F...

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 and Jamie Nolan speak with Kevin Book about how electrification, energy efficiency, and avoided oil demand are reshaping global markets — and what it means for energy security in a world less dependent on the barrel.  Energy Empire is a week...

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. economy at the center of Washington’s biggest political fights.  In this episode of Energy Empire , she joins Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan to talk about what it’s really like to lead solar through culture wars, trade battles, and rising scrutiny f...

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 he thinks, how he sells, and why he’s allergic to corporate nonsense. We talk tariffs, solar factories, microgrids, Disney, and the hard truth about what it takes to make clean energy in the U.S. without getting crushed. Energy Empire is a...

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 episode, Phil Radford, CEO of Consumer Reports and Jigar's best friend, joins to change that. Jigar shares the personal story behind SunEdison, the early days of third-party solar finance, and the setbacks that came with building comp...

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 the people...

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...